Re: Vintage Computing Advice

Jason wrote:
On 2009-04-28 19:03:35 +0700, Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@xxxxxxxxx> said:

Jason wrote:

Video: I'd like to use an existing LCD panel display I have (with VGA input). I note that several companies manufacture composite video to VGA converter boxes for $40-$60. Can anyone comment whether this produces an acceptable display? I'd prefer to avoid dealing with an older CRT if I can avoid it.


I do not think you'll be very happy with the picture from a composite-to-VGA converter. This has been discussed to death on earlier threads.


I did a bit of digging with Google and found a few threads that touched on it. I couldn't find any reference to something like this: http://www.ambery.com/vitoxgacoscs.html It seems like the perfect solution to avoid using an old monitor or waiting around for some FPGA jockey to come up with a hack to read the display memory directly and then output a VGA signal. The question is, does it work as well as the manufacturer claims?

That's always the question...

Perhaps you'd like to do the experiment and report back? ;-)

(If it works well, its price is excellent.)

Program storage: I understand some people may enjoy the swishing sound the Disk ][ drive makes when loading programs, but I can live just fine without managing a large stack of floppies and worrying about keeping them away from magnetic fields and wondering when they may go bad on me. I see there is a CFFA adapter for the larger Apple // computers, and there has been some talk of creating one for the //c, but it is still presumably vaporware and some time off, no? Are there any alternatives? I see the 8-bit Atari platform has a nice adapter (SIO2PC I belive it's called) that allows the Atari to connect to a modern PC with the PC emulating many different peripherals simultaneously. Is there anything analagous that will work on a //c?


The SVD is designed to connect directly to a Disk ][ controller. AFAIK, the //c has a different electrical interface that's closer to a SmartPort (is this correct, or am I getting mixed up with something else?)


Folks around here seem to be FPGA-happy. Might it not be faster (from a development standpoint) to use an inexpensive PIC or AVR microcontroller to interface an SD card to the //c or is the added flexibility of an FPGA really necessary?

The slow (1MHz) Apple II bus is much too fast for a microprocessor
to handle in a programmed loop. FPGAs easily interface to the bus as
well as embedding a microcontroller if you wish.

In the meantime, the SVD looks like just the ticket...

Only if you like to do everything with 5.25" disk images...

For anything but games, a virtual hard disk is much more useful.


I have an SIO2PC for my Atari 800XL and agree that something of this sort would be helpful for a //c. It would have been ideal if the //c had a functional LocalTalk interface. There is some stub code in the ROM for LocalTalk support, but I don't think it's complete or functional.

From everything you've said, I suspect you'd be happier with a //e (although that does not solve the video issues).


I always wanted a //c. Given the lack of room in my tiny study, I think I'd be better off with a //c right now, though I suppose if I really get bitten by the vintage computing bug I might pick up a //e as well. The //c+ computers are way overpriced these days and the //gs isn't my cup of tea either.

The IIc+ is costlier because it is natively 4MHz accelerated and
can be trivially "overclocked" to 8MHz.

Whether the additional speed is useful depends on whether you use
it primarily to play games or to run other apps or develop programs.

-michael

NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon

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

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