Hardware musings

["Justin England" <justin@rapidcity.net>]

Hello all...  I have been an off and on reader of this newsgroup and the A2 
"hobby" in general for the last 10 years or so.  I moved several years back 
and haven't yet got around to setting up my A2 collection, but that will 
change soon.  Mind you, my first Apple was a //c that I purchased sometime 
in the late 80's while in high school, but used apples for several years in 
school before buying one.

After spending some time over the last few weeks scanning / reading the 
posts from the last few years, it seems that there are several topics that 
keep coming up that are of interest to me.

First topic, //c storage.  I would love to have the ability to attach a mass 
storage device to my //c in order to have access to my large collection of 
files / programs that I had collected during my //c days.  BUT, what I would 
prefer to have is access to an AppleTalk server.  Before anybody goes off 
and says that AppleTalk was never fully implemented on the //c, I am aware 
of that.

Some background, my current (still unpacked) set up includes a //e with a 
workstation card, a ROM 3 //gs with a HS SCSI card (amongst other goodies), 
my original //c, and various other //[c,c+,e,gs]'s.  When I had my systems 
last set up, the capable //'s were networked via AppleTalk using netatalk on 
my FreeBSD sever (with a Mac to do the localtalk - ethernet bridge.)  I 
started a project of copying all of my A2 files / progs to the BSD server so 
both my //e and //gs could access them without having to use a sneaker net 
(and for backup purposes.)  Therefore, that is why I would prefer to have 
AppleTalk in my //c so that I could have access to my network "share" on my 
BSD server.

A light technical overview of the project:  I did a quick scan in the last 
couple of days of the AppleTalk ROM listings in my //c Tech Ref book.  It 
appears at first glance that Apple set up the AT code in the //c to simply 
look like a smart port device.  Therefore, I would have to assume that 
ProDOS would have seen it as nothing more than another smartport.  Since the 
//c already has a smartport, why couldn't a device be built that connected 
to the smartport and talk to an AppleTalk network (via localtalk or even 
ethernet.)  My idea would be (mind you, I have forgotten most of what I ever 
knew about A2 hardware) to have something like a PIC that would receive the 
signals / commands from the smart port, and translate them to AT and send 
them down the localtalk wire.  There would also have to be some form of a 
CHOOSER that could talk to the PIC and could even store usernames, passwords 
and "shares" in NVRAM. A simple ATINIT could be written to map the "shares" 
to ProDOS volumes.

Second topic, disk transfer from a Windoze PC to A2 disks.  Since there is 
no way to directly connect a disk ][ drive to a PC (unlike other 8 bit 
computer's disk drives), why couldn't a "magic" box be built that would 
connect a disk ][ to a USB port.  It should be fairly easy to find a USB to 
TTL device that could talk to a PIC, and the PIC could directly manage the 
drive.  On the PC side, it shouldn't need to look like nothing more than a 
USB to serial device, therefore a simple protocol could be developed that 
the PIC code could interpret and perform the necessary functions. 
Considering the amazing CiderPress program, it should be easy for Andy to 
implement a way of sending data down the USB port that includes the protocol 
handshake and a raw disk image (in a predefined format.)  Again, I have 
forgotten most of what I knew about A2 hardware, but I can't imagine it 
being horribly difficult to "emulate" a disk ][ controller with a PIC 
considering it should have to ability to do the timing critical functions.

The ideas behind this are that it would make "boot strapping" a //[c,e,gs] 
much easier if you have no boot disks, and, more importantly,  it would be 
much easier / faster / convenient to use CiderPress on my PC to create real 
disks from the images d/l'ed from the internet (as opposed to using A2 
utilities.)

Any thoughts on if these projects are feasible or an I missing some key 
elements of A2 hardware that would make them too difficult to build.  Now I 
am mainly a programmer, and only have limited experience doing hardware 
design.  Granted, I recently returned to school (part-time) after a 15 year 
hiatus, and instead of going for a Comp Sci degree, I decided upon a Comp 
Engineering degree.  So maybe I could consider one of these ideas as a 
school project.

Just my hardware musings from the last few weeks,

Justin