Re: Apple2 USB Stick interface with Vinculum chip

[mdj <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

On Apr 28, 7:44 pm, biel...@terra.es wrote:
> mdj wrote:

> > Firmware on the Apple II side would be better dedicated to handling
> > the variety of USB media types - for instance memory card readers
> > which would allow it to read CF cards.
>
> No Matt, not so. This is not handled by the Apple II code. And there's
> not any additional action/code/anything required in order to use a USB-
> CF reader with this, nor a hard disk, nor a digital camera, nor an
> ipod, nor whatever as long as it behaves as a USB standard mass
> storage device : <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> USB_mass_storage_device_class>

I understand that all such devices present the same interface to the
USB host. However, establishing the fairly important concept of device
priority is non-trivial and has to be done on the Apple II side. The
device you nominate as 'fixed' may be your normal boot device, and
without some extra smarts, there's no way to ensure that it stays as
SmartPort device one and hence bootable.

Last I checked, USB devices don't have clicky-spinny ID number
selectors on them.

I suppose you could constrain it to the use-case where there's only
ever one storage device on the bus, but where's the fun in that ? ;-)

Matt