Re: What's Next for the Apple II?

[mjmahon@aol.com (Michael J. Mahon)]

joe wrote:

>Bill Garber wrote:
>> "joe" <forspam@wideopenwest.com> wrote in message
>> j6adnVQAH4XtzZDdRVn-gg@wideopenwest.com">news:j6adnVQAH4XtzZDdRVn-gg@wideopenwest.com...
>> : Bill Garber wrote:
>> : >
>> : > Well, Bless me, and if you're patient, you'll
>> : > hopefully see some more new hardware. I have a
>> : > few things in the works, and there are a couple
>> : > others which are working on some things.
>> :
>> : Kinda along these lines...  I've noticed that there
>> : are CF adapter cards available (OK, so haven't really
>> : looked up to this point)  Anyway, any thoughts of using
>> : the CFFA card to access one of these?  Probably better
>> : to ask Richard Dreher directly, but thought I'd try here.
>> : Would it be a hardware problem or software problem to use
>> : these things?  Any thoughts?
>> :
>> : Joe Barbey
>> : (yes, that is an actual email address)
>> 
>> Well Joe,
>> 
>> The CFFA card has a CF card socket on-board,
>> so therefore, an adapter is a mute point.
>> The CFFA is a great card, and I am fashioning
>> one for the //c which will plug onto the CPU
>> socket and the CPU will plug onto my card.
>> I believe the //c has been neglected and I
>> hope to remedy this with this device. This
>> card will be able to use a hard drive ( will
>> need to remove the floppy and use a special
>> cable which I am also designing ) inside or
>> use one of above noted adapters to utilize
>> a CF card. I am not applying the CF socket
>> to the card as the adapters are cheaper than
>> I can provide one for. I have seen these for
>> as little as $20.
>
>Oops...  it seems I missed a rather important word above...  How about 
>CF NETWORK adapter cards.  Not quite sure why I didn't type that, but 
>that was what I meant.  Specifically, I've seen wireless networking 
>cards.  Sorry for the confusion!

I don't think you can expect much, since the CFFA is expecting
_exactly_ a CF memory card in that slot.

But if, by some chance, the CF network card has been made to look
_exactly_ like a block-addressed IDE drive on a CF card, then your
only problem will be writing drivers to make it do something besides
get warm.

For some reason, everyone seems to assume that physical connectivity
is the barrier.  It isn't!  The barrier is writing software to use these new,
often very complex, very poorly documented devices, with another
machine that their makers have no interest in.  These things are not
made with off-the-shelf TTL--it's ASIC's and proprietary on-chip code
we're talking about here.

In the _best_ of worlds, someone would reverse-engineer a 1.2MB
Windows .VXD to determine how to operate a device from an Apple II
in less than 64KB of code.  In many cases, the protocols to use
these devices are more complex than TCP/IP by a _lot_!

(BTW, USB-for-Apple II-advocates, I'm talking to _you_!  ;-)

-michael

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