| Author: | Nate (guest: search) |
|---|---|---|
| Date: | Mon, Mar 03rd, 2008 @ 16:07 ( . ) |
Hi DonM. The project I'm doing is probably not for public release. I'm using an FPGA and USB microcontroller and will have to hack nibtools to use this backend. The idea is that all the logic that is currently in nibread for clocking out a track one byte at a time moves into the FPGA. It stores the 8KB track internally. The PC just reads each track from the FPGA. The latency of the USB bus is too slow for the current mnib approach of toggling bits directly to the 1541. However it's plenty fast for actually transferring blocks of data back to the PC. The reason my work won't be generally usable is that it's too complicated and expensive. I'm using a 3.3V printer port converter since the FPGA can't handle 5V. The FPGA board is adapted, not custom so it's like $200 alone. After I've prototyped this and tested it, I may look into doing a cost reduced version. It will still probably be too complicated for "build it yourself" (needing active logic and onboard ram) but is achievable. |
--- 0 Users Online --- 0 Recent Unique Posters |