Re: Catweasel?

["Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com>]

Linards Ticmanis wrote:
> Mike Maginnis wrote:
>
> > Came across this today - I had forgotten about these things. Anyone
> > have any experience with version IV? Praise? Horror stories?
> > How does this measure up against some of the other custom drive
> > contollers out there?
>
>
> What's the highest sampling rate of disk data that the card supports, 
> anyway? Is there a list of possible sampling rates? Or a formula to 
> calculate them?

That is certainly the right question.  The card has a lot of logic
on board, so it should be capable of fast sampling.

A few years ago, I started down the path of interfacing a Disk ][
to a PC parallel port, planning to write RWTS on the PC side.  But
I was disappointed to find that the legacy parallel port I/O could
not sample faster than 500kHz--a factor of four less than what is
needed.  (It was hard to believe that a 500MHz processor couldn't
do "direct I/O" any faster than that, but such is the ISA legacy.)

I considered adding a shift register for a while, but finally
decided that it would be about as easy to interface a Disk ][
Controller, and less trouble--but having what I expected to be
and easy project turn complicated turned me off to it.  ;-(

-michael

Music synthesis for 8-bit Apple II's!
Home page:  http://members.aol.com/MJMahon/

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it is seriously underused."