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CompactFlash / IDE Interface for Apple II
jutpm writes: "This page describes a project to create an IDE / CompactFlash Interface card for 8 bit Apple II series of computers. The card is ProDOS 8 compatible and supports up to 64 Meg (two ProDOS 32Meg drives). I am very impressed with the work this guys work. Definitely a case of old technology meeting new."
For god's sake, man! Get yourself a newer computer!
The last piece I need for my Apple ][e mp3 jukebox!
j/k
"It's comin' back around again..." -RATM
When I was a lad, and my brother had a C64, and I bought an Apple //c, he laughed at me because my Apple only went 'beep, beep, beep' while his C64 played music, and had better graphics. Well, the jokes on him now! I can still use my Apple to play Asteroid--now with 64MB!! Geeze, I can load Appleworks into memory like 500 times, and still have room left over!
Boy, technology sure has come a LONG way!
Can you punch a hole in the corner of the flash card and flip it over?
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
just think how much space 64mb is to an apple ][e.... no more flipping disks!
true the technology of the host machine is slightly outdated but hell.... you could probably fit one's entire software collection onto a single card, and not have to worry about changing a disk. program the flash and just pop it in, run whatever you like.....
my question is , is there an easy way to access the filesystem other than on an apple?
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The guy that did this had written into the letters section and sent a link to Woz. Woz seemed impressed, understandably so. The funny thing is that this is considered mass storage for the ][e. For those that still put their old apples through the motions, this could save them a lot of disk swapping, as they could more than likely fit their entire software and data library onto a single 64meg card. neat!
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Some outfits sell the Focus Drive, which purportedly works with a 2.5" IDE disk... But seeing as how CF has dropped in comparison to a hard drive, and it's smaller, and it generates no(t a lot of) heat, and doesn't make you waste loads of space on the IIe, it has appeal.
I see the guy uses the same emulation tools I do -- I ported ADT to ProDOS chiefly to get my 6502 mojo working again... and Apple II Oasis is the best IIe emulator out for win32.
I'll most likely throw my name into the hat for a board... hopefully this is US-based. All the neat AppleII boards seem to originate in Europe for some reason.
--
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Compact Flash cards are controlled like a ide harddrive, wouldn't it be much easier to use a other flash media with a much simpler serial interface ? Like a smart media, multi media card or a memory stick ? (memory stick specs are now for free on www.memorystick.org)
Jan
I miss Beagle Bros. I remember having their giant chart of peeks and pokes on my wall... man, that was useful.
I don't believe there's a flavour of Apple ][ that can decode MP3 streams real-time in software. However, an Apple ][ should be able to easily run a GUI (and now IDE filesystem), and just send the resulting raw MP3 bitstream to to an inexpensive outboard decoder chip. (Some buffering for constant data rate may also be required).
FWIW, if anyone wants to take the leap, the standard homebrew decoder chips used today seem to be one of these...
Micronas MAS3509F Compressed-Audio Decoder
SGS Thompson STA013 MP3 Decoder
The Micronas chip is newer and doesn't require an external DAC.
The state owned TV company in NZ (TVNZ) up until very recently (Q4, 2001) used an Apple ][+ or Apple //e to power their Teletext system (a simplex news & info terminal built into most TV's sold in NZ). They've recently upgraded to a Sun Solaris host to provide the same functionality. The reason: they were no longer able to get spare parts and the system did start to become somewhat unreliable.
So while the system may not have been critical, it did provide a public service, produced revenue and worked moderately well - hardware faults excepted.
It wouldn't surprise me that much to hear that other organisations still use older technology to deliver a solution. After all, why fix it unless it's broken?
Fast, cheap & reliable. Pick two.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
this sounds like a really good hack, by my own definition of Good Hack, which is "do something nobody else has done yet, that's really hard and at the same time, almost completely useless to most people"
up there in my book would have to be the MP3 player for Newton MessagePads (which i installed, and it works really well. streaming MP3 on a newton? oh yeah...)
though, along with the ATA flash card driver for Newtons, it almost turns my MessagePad 2100 into my portable MP3 player. saves me $400 for an iPod (though i'm lacking about 4.9G of the storage...)
kudos to the hack, and massive props to apple][ users still out there who can take advantage of this and all the cheap storage of the new CF cards.
- Entertaining Bits from the Ancient Kernel Tree
It's about time Apples caught up to the Commodore 64 ;).
:).
.d64 images total) and still have room left over for the applications.
:). Some of those screenshots are pretty nuts. I can't imagine loading the Windows 95 CD-ROM using LOAD"$",8
:).
IDE64 has given them that ability for a while, since all you need is a CF to IDE adapter, and you can have up to two 8 GB harddrives on a c64, or a few CF cards, or a couple of IBM Microdrives
16GB on that machine is completely nuts. You could quite possibly store every c64 game ever made (which I estimate at over 30,000
Of course, you can go for the 8GB HD and a CD-ROM
Meanwhile, Nate has nearly hacked together an MP3 player for the c64 based on the MAS chip. That, and a quickcam, and a few other things. Look at the C= projects page. That's some wicked stuff.
Now that's a hacker's machine. Give them enough time and they even get a workalike UNIX with a GUI and IRC client, as well as a 20Mhz CPU, 16MB RAM, and many other cool things. From what I hear, XGA video and PCI are next.
I always did like these hackers of older systems. I would enjoy seeing those optimization techniques applied to modern code and compilers, especially gcc
I've mirrored it at the URL below. Photos will be up as soon as they've finished downloading. :)
:)
http://www.slimdevices.com/CFforAppleII
I dunno if my server's going to hold up any better, but it's worth a shot.
Just in case, a couple snippets from the page:
ast Update: Jan 17, 2002 - 11:40am CST
Project Introduction:
This page describes a project to create an IDE / CompactFlash Interface card for 8 bit Apple II series of computers. The
card is ProDOS 8 compatible. I did this project over the span of several months. Although it took much longer than
expected, it was a fun project. This project is very much a case of old technology (the
Apple II computer) meets new (IDE / CompactFlash cards and Altera CPLDs).
My reasoning for this project is described in detail in the last section, but suffice it to say, I
wanted to be able to pull out my old Apple and use it from time to time to reminisce about the
early days of personal computers. I wanted a reliable way to store my Apple II programs and
data files for many years to come. Due to the Apple II's floppy drives long term reliability
prospects and my general laziness, I decided a mass storage device is what I needed.
If there was enough interest in this project I would love to make a small batch of boards to
sell to those interested. But I would need at least 10 orders, and it may be hard to find 10 people interested in something
like this. I can be reached at rich@dreher.net
Currently I have only built a prototype, which means no extensive testing has been done
yet.
The Apple II was an excellent example of an open system, with unheard-of-today
documentation like system schematics, firmware listings, and peripheral design tips. Indeed
the only thing that was totally hidden was the source for the BASIC interpreter - "AppleSoft"
written by giga-monopoly Microsoft. In the spirit of the Apple II this project is completely
open.
Project Definition:
A CompactFlash/IDE Interface for 8 bit Apple II family of computers
Support for up to 64 Meg, (two ProDOS 32Meg drives)
On board EPROM for the ProDOS 8 driver code
Allow booting ProDOS directly from the Interface card (for a floppy-less system)
Current version of driver code requires a 65C02. (IIe Enhanced or later)
Project Prototype Hardware:
My first prototype used no discreet 74HCTxxx series parts and all logic was in the CPLD, but due to several unrelated
problems with construction and the consumption of all PLD resources, I decided to build a second prototype with using
74hct373 parts, this time paying more careful attention to power distribution. I still believe it would be easy to eliminate
the discreet 74xxx series parts if you used a larger PLD, like the EPM70128S. Although it might not be very cost
effective.
Here is the schematic I developed AFTER completing my prototype. That means this schematic has not been tested. If
you decide to build this project, you might want to check with me for any changes first. Also if you find any mistakes
please let me know. Project Schematic: ORCAD Capture Format
If you just want a quick look at the schematic click here to view a 640k jpeg of the schematic. Modem users: sorry about
the size, but I wanted it to be clear and readable as possible.
Prototype Parts List:
1 - SanDisk CompactFlash 64Meg or 32Meg
1 - CompactFlash to IDE conversion board - Adtron SDDA-03 available from EMJ Embedded
1 - ISA bus prototype board (trimmed to fit into the apple bus) Jameco part #21531
1 - 44pin PLCC socket. Jameco part #71618
1 - 44pin PLCC wire-wrap socket. (http://smt-adapter.com/ - part #44PG-W or similar)
1 - Altera EPM7064SLC44-10F
1 - 27128 EPROM
2 - 74HCT373 transparent latch
2 - 74HCT245 bus transceiver
7 - 22ohm 1/8w resistors
5 - 0.1uf capacitors non-polarized (used for power supply bypass)
3 - 1.0uf capacitors non-polarized (used for power supply bypass)
10 - 30 pin wire wrap SIPP sockets. Jameco part #104053 (there were some leftover)
misc wire wrap tools and wire
Perhaps because the question is so obvious it hardly needs to be stated.
The IDE controller/emulator in the CF card is almost certainly many times faster and more powerful than the Apple II.
Still I can see a reason for building a device like that. The Apple ][ disk drives were 5 1/4" and sloooooow. Maintaining them is tricky and the media is rapidly reaching its sell by date. The interface would be worth it simply to be able to take a library of Apple ][ floppies and read them onto a modern media.
The apple II might be somewhat defunct, but there are still important bits of data stored on Apple II disks, like experimental results, audit reports and the like. The kind of information that you simply don't want to lose. Unless perhaps your accountants are you know who and your tax strategy consists of forming 861 shell companies and making large campaign contributions...
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Serial interfaces are especially nice on the Apple because you don't have to build an expansion card to talk to them---you can use the game port. There are four outputs and three inputs there. You'd need a level shifter to get the voltages down to the 3.3v range those flash cards want.
I just wrote out a little 6502 assembly bitbanger to talk to a purported SPI device on an Apple game port, and it looks like it's around 40 cycles per bit. So that's around 3kBytes/sec, raw. Not too bad for a 1 chip interface that doesn't take up a slot!
I don't remember if the analog electronics on the gameport inputs let you pump bits that fast. But it sure would be cool to have a single module plugged into the gameport, with 64M of storage---on a package smaller than the 6502.
I'm guessing the easiest thing to do is build a small FPGA that lives on the 6502 bus that has a shift register and a one-shot 8-clock SPI clock generator. (FPGA clocked from the pin 36 7MHz signal?) I'm already way past my knowledge of design, but it seems like this would be very easy to build, and should deliver bytes as fast as the 6502 could digest them---reading from a slot address takes 4 cycles, and writing somewhere takes at least 4 more. Likely this kind of system would end up blocking on the flash device itself some of the time.
Anyway, I think it's possible you could have a two chip design: FPGA and level shifter. Amazing what might be possible with just a few chips these days!