Re: Hardware musings

["BLuRry" <brendan.robert@gmail.com>]

> 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.

You might be able to do this with a catweasel card, actually.  If
anything, it would be fun to have for the amiga disk support and sid
chip sound in your case :-)

Second to that, the next best thing is attach the // to your pc via the
serial port (you know that crazy antique predecessor to USB ;-) and use
ADT to transfer disk images over.  ADT Pro uses the same serial port
package (RXTX) as the apple // game server -- between the two you can
probably come up with something interesting without having to write a
bunch of new code (the bootstrap init process of the a2 game server
could be used to bootstrap ADT for example.)  But that does leave your
apple // haplessly teathered to your PC/Mac temporarily.

> 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.)

I've looked into bootstrapping DOS, to replace the RWTS logic with
serial-driven communication.  Seems easy enough to adapt this to a
"magic black box" of some sort once you remove the need to emulate the
exact timing of the floppy drive mechanics.  But I have neither the
hardware skill nor time to tinker with hardware (let alone the bravery
to take a soldering iron thru FAA security checkpoints in this paranoid
day and age) -- so the best I can do is document the heck out of the
code I'm writing to this effect in hopes someone finds it useful or
causally interesting -- if anything to create a serial-based prodos
compatible harddrive driven by a combination of a pic and a CF-card
reader of some sort.

-B