Re: Hardware musings

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

Mark McDougall wrote:

> Having said that, I don't believe in this case that it is a fault with USB
> itself. My guess is either crappy windows scheduling, or crappy windows
> programming of the USB host controller.

Yeah - this is a big part of the problem. Most OS's don't have
sufficient RTOS-like capabilities to guarantee that kind of precision.
It'd be madness to design something which uses the now Universal Serial
Bus, and have highly specific OS requirements.

> Someone mentioned that the 'magic box' that was required would actually *be*
> an Apple II - and for protected disks this may well be the case. But it's
> not actually a bad idea! It's fast getting to the stage where a 6502 can be
> implemented in a CPLD (probably can now?) and without the graphics and I/O
> there's not much more to an Apple than a CPU and some ROM & RAM. I'm yet to
> think this thru myself but I'm wondering if that really could be the way to
> go here? Interesting....

The big question is, are there CPLD's out there with sufficient
capacity, yet still in a form factor that's compatible with hobbyist
level electronics work?

The nice thing about those PICs is they ship in a 28pin DIP that's easy
to breadboard with, and operating at 48Mhz gives sufficient grunt to
simulate a lot of simple hardware.

Matt