Re: RFC : SOME IDEAS FOR THE APPLE II FPGA'ers

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

Michael J. Mahon wrote:

> Sure, but what about all the *existing* Apple II peripherals?
> Does my Quickie scanner get emulated?  My stepper motor control
> card?  See why I want the peripheral bus, and why I consider all
> the other stuff "emulated"?

Absolutely, and this shouldn't be compromised. I do think that a lot of
the common peripherals can, and probably should, be handled by the
FPGA. If nothing else, it saves you slot space for the interesting
things. This was the IIgs's most attractive feature for mine, that you
got all the 'standard' stuff without adding a card, leaving 7 slots for
more advanced things. I think it would be worthwhile to extend the
"design" (dare I call it that) to include that feature.

> > I  like the idea of an extension to the system to virtualise 5.25"
> > hardware, allowing the permanent archival of all my 5.25" media and
> > drives.
>
> Depending on the depth of virtualization, that could be either
> a tall order (quarter-track spirals) or a snap (CFFA card).

That's certainly true, but the design leaves scope for somebody to do
that over time...

> Yes, I regularly assemble a few thousand lines with Merlin 8 Pro, and
> with the screen listing turned off, it does it in seconds, not minutes
> (with an 8MHz Zip Chip).  That's fast enough that I don't get out of my
> chair.  ;-)

Yeah, although I sit there, with my eyes smarting a little bit from the
fatigue of a 60Hz, slightly blurry 20 year old display, wondering when
the day will come that some critical (at least, to my needs) component
will decide to open a blue-smoke vent.

Matt