Re: TI-H: Re: Possible Floppy Drive Project
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Re: TI-H: Re: Possible Floppy Drive Project
There are few (if any) USB Host interfaces which work well on an 8 bit bus. You
would either end up writing code to emulate a slow host controller on a higher
end 8-bit micro, or you would need to use a 16 or 32 bit micro to interface to a
USB host chip.
It REALLY is not worth it except as a learning experience.
At the very least you can get 256k flash from jameco for $7. 6 of those ($42)
and you have more space than a standard floppy drive.
This, of course, is still not very efficient. You can go one stop better by
making a compactflash adaptor for the calculator. 8M flash memories are very
inexpensive. If you plan ahead with the adaptor and interface software, you can
format the compact flash such that any compactflash device that supports a FAT16
file system (MSDOS, Linux, BSD's, cameras, etc) can also read and write to it.
Furthermore you can build it so that other flash devices can be adapted (ie,
support the full flash spec in hardware, worry about the software later).
Ethernet, modems, gps, mp3, etc. A lot of compact flash peripherals are being
designed right now.
But, at the very least, you can take a cheap $10 micro and interface an 8M
compact flash to the TI fairly easily. MUCH more easily than trying to deal
with USB.
-Adam
Philip Pesek wrote:
>
> Actually, what I have in mind is to maybe get a usb controller and hack one
> of those usb floppy drives they sell for imac's. From the usb controller to
> a cheap microcontroller and that would hook up to the calc much in the way
> the par. link does. Comments? (preferably from the knowledgable since this
> is a bit bigger then anything I've ever attempted, although reasonably)
>
> -Phil
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