Re: A new pseudo-disk for Apple 2.

[nogard@cishollywood.com]

Im interested in this board.

Thanks,
-Chris



On Thu, 20 Jul 2006 03:03:35 -0700, "Alex Freed" <alexf@mirrow.com>
wrote:

>I have finished a prototype of a new mass storage device for Apple 2 that
>uses MultyMedia Cards.
>So what, you'll ask. There is already a CF interface.
>
>Yes and no. My toy has a small AVR microcontroller on board and 2 modes of
>operation.
>The trivial mode simply interfaces the MMC to Apple as yet another ProDOS
>storage device.
>The fun starts with the "smart" operating mode. The device looks to Apple as
>a Disk ][ controller.
>So Apple happily reads nibble images as if they were real 5 1/4" floppies.
>This allows using
>images of DOS 3.3 disks or any other .nib images. For example a couple of
>games that do not
>use DOS work fine.
>
>The software is not quite finished: I need to add an application that will
>run on Apple
>and select one of many .nib images to use. My prototype just uses a single
>image, but that is
>not very difficult.
>
>The firmware can use a lot of improvements too. Currently I feed Apple a new
>byte every time
>it asks for one instead of changing it every 32 msec. Seems to work for
>quite a few images, but
>won't work with many protection schemes.
>
>The big question is is there any interest in this device? If there is, I can
>make a small production
>run and offer for say $100. If not, I'll be the only owner of the only
>prototype.
>
>The board has an AVR micro and a CPLD for fast interfacing. Originaly I
>though that an AVR
>running at 16 MHz is fast enough to do everything in software, but it is
>not. In addition the
>CPLD acts as a perfect 5v to 3.3v converter - MMC uses 3.3 V. I can add an
>EPROM
>to make this card bootable. Currently I boot from a real disk and DOS can
>see the other
>"disk" in another slot.
>
>The MMC card can have up to 4 partitions. Some partitions up to 32 MB can be
>seen
>as ProDOS volumes and one can have any number of .NIB images.
>Future driver will be able to see 2 images at once as drives 1 and 2.