protek
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I've been going through the available mass media interfaces for the Apple II. The old stuff consists of SCSI controllers and newer stuff are reimplementations of the SCSI interface or designs using either IDE HDDs or CF/SD cards/USB like CFFA3000, Focus IDE, MicroDrive.
The problem with most of the new implementations is that they're pretty expensive or not available or both. Mostly due to the designers being entrepreneurs that design and manufacture this stuff for their living. I can't complain about that but I'm searching for a community driven project like the XT-IDE and its derivatives that you can assemble yourself and save quite a bit. There is one open source project here: http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm but it's pretty old and it's a bit unclear if it actually works in a way you'd expect a mass storage in a computer work nowadays.
Other thing about the modern implementations that most of them handle the mass devices virtually, meaning you have several virtual hard drive and floppy drive images that you can switch and that's all fine. I would just like a no frills no thrills interface that would work as it basically does in your bog standard PC. I currently have a couple of devices with basically can store both floppy and hard drive images and you can use those like a regular hard drive or floppy drive. The first is SD Disk II, which uses SD cards. It's pretty straightforward to set up and is pretty much "plug and play" as a hard drive. The thing is that it has not been originally designed to be used with 16-bit OS as GSOS. The developer was kind enough to make support but the OS loads pretty slowly compared to the traditional SCSI. I have also UnisDisk, which connects to the smartport. It can basically do the same things as the SD Disk II and loads GSOS slightly faster but it's still something sticking on the end of a cable. This applies also for SCSI interface. It doesn't officially support internal mass storages.
To my understanding, an interface that will adapt the 16-bit bus of an IDE device to the 8-bit bus of an Apple shouldn't be very complicated to design. The real issue here is the driver firmware that enables the booting and disk operations. On the other hand it has been done on the examples above and some of them are open source, so this shouldn't be an insurmountable issue either.
I would really like to take on the challenge of designing a simple no thrills, no frills, auto booting IDE/CF interface for the Apple II, which would be at least in par with the old SCSI interface performance wise. It should be possible to create the partition with i.e. CiderPress and then write it on the actual hard drive/CF card, after which you can just connect it to the interface card, plug it into the Apple expansion slot and have it then accessible for installing GSOS or just ready to be used if you have done the OS installation in emulator. The end product would be a PCB that anyone with basic soldering skills could assemble and the necessary firmware on ROM.
I have no electronics education. All that I know I've learned myself. I can solder and assemble electronic equipment. I have a basic understanding, what capacitors, resistors, transistors and diodes do. I can read schematics to some extent and with simple cases apply it in practice.
I suppose my starting point is getting familiar with the Apple II bus and how to connect it to the IDE interface. I need to design the discrete logic to translate the 16-bit data to 8-bit and back. A lot of studying is needed and it probably helps to divide the whole task into smaller ones.
Am I in way over my head with this one or is it doable? Needless to say I'd really appreciate all the advice you can give. I can't guarantee I'll be ready with this any time soon, if at all.
The problem with most of the new implementations is that they're pretty expensive or not available or both. Mostly due to the designers being entrepreneurs that design and manufacture this stuff for their living. I can't complain about that but I'm searching for a community driven project like the XT-IDE and its derivatives that you can assemble yourself and save quite a bit. There is one open source project here: http://s.guillard.free.fr/Apple2IDE/Apple2IDE.htm but it's pretty old and it's a bit unclear if it actually works in a way you'd expect a mass storage in a computer work nowadays.
Other thing about the modern implementations that most of them handle the mass devices virtually, meaning you have several virtual hard drive and floppy drive images that you can switch and that's all fine. I would just like a no frills no thrills interface that would work as it basically does in your bog standard PC. I currently have a couple of devices with basically can store both floppy and hard drive images and you can use those like a regular hard drive or floppy drive. The first is SD Disk II, which uses SD cards. It's pretty straightforward to set up and is pretty much "plug and play" as a hard drive. The thing is that it has not been originally designed to be used with 16-bit OS as GSOS. The developer was kind enough to make support but the OS loads pretty slowly compared to the traditional SCSI. I have also UnisDisk, which connects to the smartport. It can basically do the same things as the SD Disk II and loads GSOS slightly faster but it's still something sticking on the end of a cable. This applies also for SCSI interface. It doesn't officially support internal mass storages.
To my understanding, an interface that will adapt the 16-bit bus of an IDE device to the 8-bit bus of an Apple shouldn't be very complicated to design. The real issue here is the driver firmware that enables the booting and disk operations. On the other hand it has been done on the examples above and some of them are open source, so this shouldn't be an insurmountable issue either.
I would really like to take on the challenge of designing a simple no thrills, no frills, auto booting IDE/CF interface for the Apple II, which would be at least in par with the old SCSI interface performance wise. It should be possible to create the partition with i.e. CiderPress and then write it on the actual hard drive/CF card, after which you can just connect it to the interface card, plug it into the Apple expansion slot and have it then accessible for installing GSOS or just ready to be used if you have done the OS installation in emulator. The end product would be a PCB that anyone with basic soldering skills could assemble and the necessary firmware on ROM.
I have no electronics education. All that I know I've learned myself. I can solder and assemble electronic equipment. I have a basic understanding, what capacitors, resistors, transistors and diodes do. I can read schematics to some extent and with simple cases apply it in practice.
I suppose my starting point is getting familiar with the Apple II bus and how to connect it to the IDE interface. I need to design the discrete logic to translate the 16-bit data to 8-bit and back. A lot of studying is needed and it probably helps to divide the whole task into smaller ones.
Am I in way over my head with this one or is it doable? Needless to say I'd really appreciate all the advice you can give. I can't guarantee I'll be ready with this any time soon, if at all.
