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CFFA for Apple II
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Status History
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Here is a chronological summary of the project status:
Nov 2, 2009: We have DOS 3.3 booting and running in read-only mode from a nibblized disk image. I am running Robot War as I type! This is an exciting milestone in the project. Still have floppy write support and USB support to do. Also need to work on the cost estimations. Stay tuned... Oct 18, 2009: An important bit of progress to report. ProDOS 8 is running from the CF card. This proves out about 90% of the hardware on the card and verifies the design approach the card uses. The next area to focus on is the floppy emulation and multi-card mode where both the CFFA and the emulated floppy controller are active at the same time. Note:Extended SmartPort support is working, which means there is no need for a GS/OS loaded driver to achieve high performance. Instead, the automatically "generated" driver asks CFFA3000 to read or write a block directly to any memory address, without having to copy the data through bank 0.
August 19, 2009: It may look almost done, but don't be fooled, it doesn't do anything yet. Still tons of code to write and lots of logic to develop. The AVR micro is working and the SRAMs are mostly working-couple quirks yet to be figured out. I need to start on the CPLD logic to really get to the point where firmware can be developed. So far no surprises! Keep in mind this is just the first prototype PCB and it main still change in significant ways. Please note that I am revising my estimate on when this project will be finished to the middle of 2010. July 14, 2009:
First Prototype PCB files sent to board house!
I have just sent the design files for the first prototype of the new CFFA to the board house. See rendering of PCB below...
June 3, 2009:
I was originally going to sell any boards I fixed on Ebay. But after fixing 6 boards, I decided to
just email the people at the top of my interested list and offer the boards to them at the regular price.
Feb 23, 2009: Run 6 of CFFA cards is sold out. I have no plans to produce any more CFFA's of this design. In a few weeks I will take a look at some of the units that never worked and see if I can repair them. If I can fix them I will throw them up on Ebay. May 5, 2008:
I shipped the first 25 CFFA boards from Run 6 today. One 16MB CF card is included with each order. It will boot into ProDOS 1.9 and should work on any Apple II with at least 64 of memory. ProDOS 2.0.3 is also on the card in a subdirectory. I believe firmware version 2.0 is solid, but I encourage all customers to test the CFFA throughly before depending on it with imporant data. The manual, in PDF format, is on the CDROM included. I am sorry about the additional delays. The next batch of boards should go out next Monday, May 12, 2008.
April 27, 2008:
I have set a tenative ship date for the first 20 units of May 5, 2008. I have been working to be sure that the new firmware is bug
free. My plan is to include a CF card with every order that contains both the new v2.0 firmware and the older v1.2 firmware, along with several useful utilities including davex and the flash update program. This will make it easy for you customers to revert back to the older firmware if any critical problems are discovered with the 2.0 version. Thanks to everyone for your patience.
April 14, 2008:
The 200 assembled PCBs have arrived!! Now begins the task of programming and testing.
April 7, 2008: FlexOne has notified me that my order of 200 assembled PCBs has shipped. I am continuing to work on the testing of new firmware and CPLD logic. Once the boards are back I will begin testing them. There is still a lot of testing to do, but we are getting closer! March 30, 2008: I recently spoke with FlexOne (the PCB assembler) and they told me that April 6 is the new date that my 200 PCB will be finished. This will add at least a two week delay to the CFFA shipment dates. Sorry about that. I am using this extra time to finish testing the new version 2.0 firmware and CPLD v2.1 logic. I hope to deliver a very solid update. March 4, 2008: The CFFA Run6 parts kit finally shipped to assembler!! The assembly house has quoted about a 3 week turn around time for assembly. Add a week for shipping time, and I should have the boards back in house around the end of March. I am still working on the new 2.0 firmware. This will be a big improvement (in my opinion), and will be starting beta testing next week with any luck. Jan 23, 2008:
There will be another run of 200 CFFA cards. Today, Jan 23, I ordered the PCBs and the parts. It will take about 3 weeks
for the parts to arrive and then a week to get them to the assembler. Once there it will be another 3 to 4 weeks to get back
the assembled boards. The cost of run 6 boards will the same $99.95 + shipping as the previous run. Nov 1, 2007:
Run 5 of CFFA for Apple II have sold out. Unfortunately there were a bunch of boards that never worked, mostly due to defects
in the PCBs. I may attempt to try to fix some of them, but it is difficult to find the problems without an X-ray machine.
I have started a run 6 interest list, but I am skeptical that there will ever be another run based on the current demand.
The CFFA has been a fun project and I have been honored to be a small part of the Apple II community that still thrives out there. Thanks for everyone's interest and support!
Feb 16, 2007: I have just ordered a batch of 100 PCBs for the CFFA1 project. I will be ordering all of the other parts next week and in about two more weeks I should have all the part needed. I will then be sending all of the parts and PCBs to FlexOne for assembly. Once I get my order site up and running I will send out an email to announce that I am accepting pre-orders. August 31, 2006: I have run out of boards until I get another batch from the assembler. I am also going to be traveling for the entire month of October, therefore the next orders will ship around November 10, 2006. I have kept the order page open. August 11, 2006: I have finally caught up on all of my order back log. Yes, it took months and months. Thank you to everyone who order a CFFA card. Thank you, also, for your extreme patience! I have 17 boards left in this June 28, 2006: Another batch of 100 assembled boards has arrived yesterday. I will ship the next group of orders around July 5. This should be about 20 boards maybe more. June 8, 2006: I have shipped boards 1 to 97. I am now waiting for another batch of 100 boards from the assembly company. I did have a slight delay in getting parts for the next batch and this will cause an additional two week delay in the next shipment. Sorry about that. All of the future boards built by the assembler will be built completely so that I will have no hand soldering to do. This costs a little more, but the time savings (especially cleaning) is worth it. I would look to the end of the month for the next shipment of CFFA boards. May 21, 2006: Boards are shipping and I have shipped about half of the total orders received. I added a forum topic in the CFFA forum for people to tell others what they are doing with their CFFA cards. Feel free to ramble on about anything that you are doing with your CFFA card in that forum section. April 22, 2006: I have shipped the first 20 or so boards. I hope to ship about 20 to 25 boards per week, but this weekend I came down with the stomach flu and will not be able to get any boards out, Sorry. You may notice that some foreign order shipped a day or two later than they were suppose to. This was a problem with USPS.COM giving useless error messages, which prevented me from printing the postage. March 30, 2006: The first 100 boards arrived today from the assembler. I still have to finish soldering all of the through-hole parts, program the chips, test each board, and finally print the revised manuals, then get my accounting in order. But all in all things are moving along. March 22, 2006: Today I received the first two sample boards from the assembly house. They both worked fine! So the rest of the first 100 board of the 4th run will be assembled. The updated manual should go to the printer late this week or early next. March 11, 2006: I have opened the CFFA order page for pre-orders! All of the parts have been ship to FlexOne the PCB assembly house for the first 100 PCBs. I plan to built up to 400 boards for this run if there is enough demand. So you only need to pre-order/pay if you want to get your CFFA sooner rather than later. I assume it will take until April before I am able to start shipping out boards. The order in which boards will be shipped will be based on the order I receive your payment, not the order in which orders are placed. So if you want to get in the front of the queue, I recommend using Paypal for fast payment. March 6, 2006: Today I receive the first batch of PCB boards for run #4. I assembled one board to be sure everything works and everything did :) I will be packaging up these board and all of the parts and sending them to FlexOne in California on Wednesday. I should be able to open my order page up for pre-orders very soon now. Feb 27, 2006: I have now placed the production PCB order and have ordered all of the parts. This will take two weeks. Then all the parts will be packed up and sent to the board assembly house in California. I am not sure how long that will take but I would guess another two weeks at least. In the mean time, I will be updating the manual and getting my web site ready. Feb 18, 2006: I have completed assembly of 3 new prototype boards from the new revB layout. I am happy to report that these seem to be working fine. I will be sending out two of the boards to other people to test for me in their machines. I am now hoping to place my production order by February 27. Click to see a picture of the new revB board. Note the addition of address line buffers and termination resistors. Also keep in mind that this is just a prototype so it doesn't have gold fingers. Feb 8, 2006: I have completed a new 2 layer PCB prototype that I will be sending out for manufacturing on Feb 6. This will take 7 days to receive. I hope this will be the last prototype board before I order the production run of boards Jan 31, 2006: Well, there is definately a problem with the first prototype design for run #4. The problem was a very bad ringing problem on many of the address lines. The problem was worst when no other cards where in the Apple II+, this problem also affected the IIe but to a much lesser extent. I am now finishing up a new PCB layout, the key change will be address line and control line buffers and series termination resistors. The problem only shows up when I use an EEPROM. Using an EPROM did work fine. Anyway, the bottom line is, there will be more delays before I can ship boards. I think April is going to be the soonest I will be ready at this point.
Jan 4, 2006: Hi All, I have received back the prototype boards, and they are all working fine with one exception: I have a problem booting in the Apple II+ that did not exist on the old board design. I am working on this problem currently and hope to have it fixed soon. Once this problem is solved I think it will take me about 4 weeks to get the first batch of board and begin filling orders. I know many of you have waited a very long time. I appreciate that very much. Please hang in there, the finish line is near... If you would like to see a photo of my first prototype for this run, please click here Nov 22, 2005: I just sent the gerber files to PCB house to build a prototype for the 4th run of boards. I have made some changes to the board including the 3 jumper fix. Functionally the board will be the same as the previous runs, but will include an EEPROM so customers can update the firmware themselves. I was planning for late December as the shipping date for the 4th run, but due some long part lead times, it appears that early February is more likely. April 27, 2005: Today is my last day of work in Rochster, MN. It has been eleven months since I started working there during the weeks. Being home again every day will definately allow me to catch up on CFFA orders. I am just finishing the work on CPLD version 1.4. This has taken much longer than I thought it would. The good news is I think I am nearly done testing. The bad news is that just a CPLD upgrade won't fix the problem with the CFFA when using the 256MB SanDisk card on all Apple II's. To fix this CF card, and to allow most other brands like lexar to work with the CFFA, you will need a hardware modification to the card. That mod is three "re-work" jumpers that go from the back of the board around to the front of the board. If I do another run of boards, I will probably re-layout the board to include this fix. Once I get caught up with orders I will send out an email to everyone letting them know about the fix. I will also post a do-it-yourself guide for those who want to apply the fix themselves. I will also have some kind of return plan for those who would like me to make the fix for them. Stay tuned... April 20, 2005: I have sold out of Run 3 CFFA cards. If you are still interested in buying a CFFA card, let me know and I will add you to a list of people interested in a fourth run. The cost would still be US$105 + shipping. I still have a bunch of CFFA orders to fill, if you have not received your yet, don't worry, you will. Feb 28, 2005: I have found a problem with V1.3 CPLD logic. This problem seems to show itself mostly with larger CF cards like the 256MB SanDisk card. But it could should up with any CF card. I have sent beta samples of v1.4 CPLD to several customers and I am waiting for feedback. So far all feedback has been positive. If all goes well, I will be starting a CPLD trade in program next week. To get everyone updated. Feb 16, 2005: My son, Michael James was born. Weight 8lbs, 12.5 oz. Dec 6, 2004: I have shipped the first 5 boards of the third, and likely final run of CFFA cards. This run uses the original company, Advanced Circuits to make the PCBs. The PCB solder mask is a dark green unlike the light green from the second run. Oct 30, 2004: All of the parts for the next run of 100 CFFA cards has arrived, and enough extra parts for all of the upgrades that have been requested are now in hand. I will be sending out upgrades over the next few weeks, and once I get a test board built and working, I will open up the order form on my website for the third run of CFFA boards! Sept 30, 2004: Sept 30, 2004: I have just placed an order with Arrow Electronics for the parts for another 100 CFFA Boards, and 50 v1.3 upgrades. The lead time for the parts varies from a week to about 5 weeks. As soon as the CPLD and EPROMs come in I will start shipping out upgrade to those who have requested them. The main purpose for the firmware update is to support the Apple ][+ and //e. There are NO code changes for //e enhanced and //gs users, but the CPLD logic update should give better CF timing for all apples. Sorry this has all taken much longer than I originally predicted. Sept 7, 2004: I have sold out of the second run boards, but already have enough interest to do a third run! That's great. But the lead times on some of the parts is up to six weeks or more, so it will probably not be until the winter (Dec. 2004) before more boards are available. Also, I have no forgotten about the people interested in v1.3 Firmware/CPLD upgrades, I will be ordering more parts for those also. The good news is that I will be sending those out free of charge this time around. Aug 5, 2004: Hi All, Well it took awhile but I have finally sold out of CFFA boards. I am keeping a couple for repair/returns just incase. If you are still interested in buying a board, please let me know via email, and I will add your name to a list of interested people. Like before, I will need at least 40 people to express an interest before I could do another run. I fear that there may not be 40 more people who still want one, so this may be the end of the line. I did very much enjoy making and selling these cards, and contributing to the old Apple II community. I will always have a soft spot for my first Apple II+. I still have to get the upgrades out to people and will be doing it free of charge, at least for this upgrade. Please be patient, if you asked for one you will get one. July 10, 2004:
I have sold out of boards being sold at the normal full price. I do still have a
number of boards that will be offered at $75 + shipping, because they have some type of minor physical or costmentic flaw.
When I have had time to go through those boards, I will put up an order form for them. Any boards that I do sell, will be
guarenteed to work and have the same warranty as the full price boards. The cosmetic problems were the result of the board
manufactures poor quality controls. As of July 10, 2004 I have about 12 boards left with cosmetic issues that I need to go
through. I hope to have an order page back up sometime in July for those boards. May 30, 2004: I have sent new CPLDs and EPROMs to a couple people for testing. Vince has reported that, so far, everything has worked fine. Hopefully, I should be able to make this update available soon. If you are interested in getting updated logic and firmware, please drop me an email. May 22, 2004: After revising the firmware, it because apparent that there was a hardware problem with the CFFA in the ][+. After several hours, I found a subtle timing difference between the my ][+ and my //e platinum. That difference pushed already tight timing over the edge into failure. I have revised the logic on the CPLD and greatly improved the timing margins. This will become Logic release v1.3. The 6502 version of firmware will become v1.3 also. How these will be made available, I have not yet determined. Much testing has yet to be done! May 20, 2004: I have started work on revising the CFFA firmware to allow it to work with the 6502 This mean removing all 65C02 specific instruction. My hope is to allow ][+ and //e users to also be able to use my card with ProDOS 1.9. More too come... March 21, 2004: As of today, I have sold 134 boards out of the second run of 200. I should have 66 boards left, but I only have 20 boards left that are fit to sell because 44 units are substandard in one way or another. A few were DOA from the assembly house/PCB manufacturer, and the rest have some cosmetic damage. After the last 20 units are sold, I will carefully review the substandard units, and if there is demand, offer them at a reduced price, yet to be determined. December 31, 2003: As of today, all paid orders have been shipped. The number of boards shipped from both runs is 210 boards. On Dec 19, I updated the web site layout, and began adding information about other projects I have done. Orders still trickle from all over the planet. The last couple boards shipped to Australia, Japan, and the US. Happy New Year to all... October 1 , 2003: Shipped the 100th board today from the second run! Total Shipped so far is about 200 August 27, 2003: Today I just shipped the 89th board out of 200. Currently all orders are filled. Although, not related to the CFFA project, I can't help but indulge in a bit of self promotion... check out most recent Circuit Cellar contest that just finished :) July 9, 2003: Dale Jackson has completed a driver for my CFFA Interface card that lets it work with the Apple ///. Very cool. If you try it, please drop me a note and let me know your experience. The source files and binaries can be download from the downloads section June 17, 2003: Shipped 20 units today. June 14, 2003: The rest of the currenly paid orders (18 units) will ship Tuesday June 17, June 7, 2003: A small batch of boards shipped today. The international packages from that batch will go out Monday June 9th, because USPS.COM is having technical problems and I could not generate postage for Global Express Mail packages. June 2, 2003: The next batch of board will probably go out Friday, June 6th. May 27, 2003: I shipped the first 30 units today to 24 customers. I hope to get the next shipment out on June 2nd. May 21, 2003: Good News... I just received a partial shipment of 40 boards today. I will begin testing tomorrow. If all is well, I should be able to ship about 20 units on May 27th. The rest of the units from the assembler are not far behind. (revised 5/22) May 11, 2003: I have received all 200 Manuals from the printer yesterday. I am still waiting for the boards from the assembler. I expect them to be delivered to me sometime this week. April 27: 2003: All 200 PCBs are now being machine assembled and should be delivered to me in the next week or so. The manual is at the printers, and remains unchanged from the last run. April 15: 2003: Good news! I received 5 test units from Pulsar, Inc. and they all worked fine. So I am going to go ahead and start taking orders for the second run of 200 boards now. I have been led to believe that the rest of the boards can be done in another 1 to 2 weeks. Orders will be filled in the order I receive your payment. So PayPal users have their orders typically filled the quickest. April 4, 2003: The blank test PCB I received had a small manufacturing defect, but it had not been through the standard test procedure which would have caught that problem. The 200 boards have now been through electrical test, the edge connector gold plated, and have been sent over to the assembly house. I have decided to wait before taking orders until the initial assembly test units are sent to me. That should be around Friday, April 11. If those units check out fine, then it will be another week or two befor the rest of the run is assembled. I am still shooting for the end of April to start shipping. March 23: 2003: Yogi from Pulsar, Inc called and told me that a bare PCB for my testing was being sent to me and should be here on March 25th. I will build up this board and if all look right, I will okay the start of assembly on a batch of 200 units and start taking orders for those units. March 15, 2003: All of the parts for second run of boards have been purchased and shipped to the PCB/Assembly company. They will be sending me a test PCB to build up, in a couple weeks, and if all checks out, they will go ahead with assembly of the next run. I will start taking order once I know that the test board works. Feb 25, 2003: Finally, the parts have started to arrive. I talked with Yogi at Pulsar and told him he can now actually go ahead with the board production. Once that is complete the boards will be machine assembled. I figure it will be at least another 4 or 5 weeks to get back the assembled units. I hope to start taking order around that time. Jan 02, 2003: All of the parts have been ordered for the second run. The CF socket made by Molex was out of stock at all of Molex's distributors. I talked with a sales rep at Molex and they could not give me even an approximate lead time. They said just get your order in and it will probably be filled within a month. This could turn out to be a serious problem for the late January delivery date I was hoping for. I will post updates when I know more. Dec 20, 2002: I went to Chicago to meet the folks at Pulsar, Inc. a PCB manufacturer, and place an order for 100 fully assembled CFFA boards. They are very nice people and gave me a tour of their facilities and the Assembler's facility that they sub-contract with. I am hoping that the quality of their boards exceeds the quality of the first run boards I received from Advanced Circiuts (and had to return)! Advanced Circuits has a slick sales staff, but their product quality leaves much to be desired. Not recommended! If you are doing a board of your own, you can contact Yogi at Pulsar to see what they can do for you. I will post follow-up information about the quality of the boards I get from Pulsar in the future. Also Apple II fan Howard Katz met me for lunch where we discussed the future of Kfest, how many more boards I might need to make to meet demand, and the bad weather. Overall everything went well, except for driving in a snow storm, but that didn't last long. Dec 03, 2002: There is enough interest in a second run, so I have begun talking with Pulsar Inc. about building and assembling the boards for me. Sept 30, 2002: Shipped 5 units. If you have placed an order please send your payment, thanks. Sept 18, 2002: I am getting pricing information on doing the second board run. If I can get enough interest, I want to have the boards machine assembled for this run. For the last run, I hand assembled all of the baords. This should reduce the amount of time it take to fill orders significantly. So if you are interested if purchasing a CFFA Interface card please let me know. Once I get about 30 to 35 interested people, I will go ahead with the project. It will take at least 4 weeks from that time to get the boards in hand to start testing. August 27, 2002: Shipped 10 units today. August 24, 2002: My son, Nathan Thomas was born. Weight 9lbs, 7 oz. August 12, 2002: Shipped 7 units today. August 3, 2002: I have stopped taking orders, because I am at (or very near) the end of my board supply. The folks at Kfest have reserved the remaining units. If they don't follow through with actual payments, there may be a few units that free up, which would then be sold to someone else. I have started a list of people who would be interested in having me do a second run of CFFA boards. You can email at rich@dreher.net and let me know. If I do end up with a few extra boards from this first batch, I will contact the people on my list those interested in a second run. NOTE: FedEx Ground has really screwed up the last shipment. No less than 4 packages had mis-entered addresses by FedEx employees. Sorry to those people who have been negatively affected. I will be canceling my FedEx Ground Account. All Remaining packages will be shipped via USPS. July 26, 2002: Shipped 8 units today. As of today, I have about 24 units available.. July 12, 2002: Shipped 12 units today. I have about 28 units left. June 28, 2002: Shipped 10 units today (through unit 48) -includes one to the Woz. Out of the run of 100 boards, about 65 have been ordered. June 18, 2002: Shipped 4 units today. June 14, 2002: Shipped 8 units today. Four more should go out on the 17th. May 31, 2002: Due to unavoidable delays, the next shipment will probably not be until June 15th. I am sorry of the delay. May 29, 2002: Howard Katz reported a problem he was having formatting partitions 3 and 4 on a 128MB Sandisk card. It was not reporting the correct size after format. Dave Lyons was able to discover that both Copy II+ and Apple System Utilities have a bug in them that will cause them to incorrectly determine the size of partition mapped into "other" slots. Please see click here for more specific information. I have been side tracked quite a lot this week and therefore it looks like I will not be able to ship a batch of boards this Friday. I will post my next ship date as soon as I know it. May 28, 2002: I have noticed that a great many CF cards are not currently compatible with the CFFA Interface card. From Emails it looks like many people would like to use the LexarMedia CF card, but are unable. Dave is sending me a Lexar card so I might do some testing with it. Also, I just got off of the phone with Engineer Dan Lee at LexarMedia. He was very interested in helping and ask many good questions. As soon as I get a Lexar card in my hands I should be able to answer the questions posed by Dan. Thanks Dan! May 24, 2002: I shipped 13 units today. Next shipment will probably be May 31st. So far no one has reported any problems with their units. But, many of the CF cards that I just assumed would work, are turning out to be incompatible with the CFFA. Please remember that SanDisk CF cards are the only brand I guarantee will work with my card. Check the compatibility page so see if your card will work. If you have information on a card that is not in the list, please send it to me, thanks. May 20, 2002: I have updated the downloads section with all of the lastest project files I have. You can also download Dave Lyons' GS/OS driver too. If anybody needs Dave's driver in a different file format, please let me know. I am still shooting for May 24th to ship another 15 units. May 17, 2002: Hooray! Today I have finally shipped the first 14 units. Although not as many as I had hoped, I have now gone through the entire process. So it should go smoothly from here. I hope to send the next batch of 15 units out by the 24th of May. I currently have orders for 53 units. May 10, 2002: Things are moving just a little slower than I hoped. I received the shipping boxes today from Canada! That is a relief. I have decided to print the manual myself (due to outrageous printing costs), and send it out for the cutting and binding... the printing is happening today. So that means the cutting and binding will have to be next week. This will push the ship date for the first batch out to the end of next week. Also, I will be cleaning the first batch of boards this weekend. May 1, 2002: I have received orders for 22 units as of today. I am still waiting for shipping boxes and PCB cleaning supplies to arrive. The manual goes to the printer on Friday...it's time to stop tweaking on it. I have 9 units assembled. May10th still looks like the shipping date for the first batch of about 20 units. April 27, 2002: FINALLY! I am now accepting orders for my CFFA Interface card. I have sent an Email to everyone who has contacted me expressing an interest in my project. If you are interested, you can order your CFFA card using my web-based order form. The user's manual will be sent to the printer on April 29th. The shipping boxes should be here in a little over a week. I expect to be able to start shipping the first boards around May 10th or so. April 18, 2002: I have assembled a whopping 4 boards so far. I am getting pretty good at it already and have the assembly time down from 2.5hrs to about 1 hour per board. That doesn't include testing, cleaning, packaging, etc. The first board I assembled did not work, and I still don't know why. So I actually have three working boards so far. April 12, 2002:
After a closer look at all of the board blanks, much to my dismay, I found 25 boards that were unuseable. I sent those board back today.
It is still unclear what the manufacture is going to do for me, but I should know more on Monday or Tuesday next week. In the mean time I am working to finalize the firmware, the user's manual for the board, and a web page to help people place orders.
April 10, 2002: The 100 boards I ordered have arrived today :) From my initial inspection of the boards, I see that the boards look good, but until I build several I will not know for sure. April 2, 2002: Some of the parts arrived today from Arrow Advantage. This branch of Arrow Electronics works with smaller companies and they will deal on the cost of most parts, at least the ones who's manufactures will let them. They can be reached at: 800-833-3557. Two other orders are still coming... March 28, 2002: I have updated the project schematic and PCB layout in the downloads area. These are the source files used to make the PCB I ordered a few days ago. If you have questions or problems with these files let me know. All of the parts for the boards have now been ordered. :) March 25, 2002: I have finally ordered the printed circuit boards! I should receive the boards no later than 2 weeks from today + 2 days for shipping.That puts it on or before April 10th. I will also be ordering all of the other parts for the board tomorrow. Mar 15, 2002: I have uploaded my current version of Altera CPLD design files to the download section and updated relevant links. I am reasonably sure it will not change before the PCB ships so I went ahead and posted it. The schematic and firmware source should be coming soon too. Mar 13, 2002: The firmware now includes Smartport support! (Dave did most of this work. Thanks Dave) I will probably ship the finished version with a couple firmware versions supporting a couple different partition schemes. More on that later. I am waiting for testing feedback and hope to be ordering PCB blanks in a few days. They have a two week lead time. I have also been working on the product manual. Mar 5, 2002: The Rev B boards seem to be working fine. Today I am sending one to Dave for further testing with his GS/OS driver. Someone asked me what SlotScan said about my cards, I ran it, and it reports: Semi-intelligent disk Card, followed by the drive sizes of 32meg each. Mar 1, 2002: The first CFFA Rev B board "seems" to be working fine. It is too early to make any conclusions, but so far so good. Feb 28, 2002: The two new prototype PCBs arrived yesterday, and the parts for them arrived today. I will be assembling today and should know if they work by tomorrow. Feb 20, 2002: Just sent the design files for the second round of two prototype boards. No significant changes from the previous board, just bug fixes and a little design layout cleanup. The new boards should be back on the 27th or the 28th. Dave Lyons has been working on a GS/OS driver for my hardware and has been making excellent progress. He told me he was impressed with the speed he is getting, as it is comparable to his DMA based SCSI hard drive controller (he has only tested with CF cards). Feb 19, 2002: Added a discussion forum for this project. I am hoping that people interested in this project who have questions or want to contribute ideas will use the forum to communicate with others and myself. The forum software runs under Linux and is free, if you experience problems, please let me know and I will attempt to solve them. I have not used this forum software before either, but it seems to be working well. Feb 15, 2002: Testing on the Apple IIgs has begun!! (Although it is being done by someone else... More info in a couple days.) Feb 13, 2002: Here are a few pictures with a 2.5" hard drive attached to the card.
Feb 12, 2002: Here are a few pictures of CFFA Rev A prototype. Although I am able to complete my testing with this board it has a few layout mistakes, so it's on to Rev B...
Feb 11, 2002: I have been working feverishly on version 1.1 driver firmware. At the same time I am testing my first prototype PCB that I assembled on 2/07/02. A much improved version 1.1 will ship with the boards when they are finished. Dave Lyons has been making numerous suggestions relating to my driver code. I am implementing most of them, which is improving stability and speed. Thanks Dave. Feb 8, 2002: After my initial success yesterday, I tried using my new prototype PCB and my original wire-wrapped prototype both in the same system, resulting in a CRASH during boot every time. After hours of debugging, I found a small bug in the PLD logic (Versions 1.0 & 1.1) that controls the data bus buffer enable line. This is now fixed and I can now use both boards in the system at once. The fix will be release as PLD logic Version 1.2 soon. So, although the PCB errors are relatively minor, I am going to do another round of 2 PCB prototypes before my production batch. This will take about another 2 week. Feb 7, 2002: Success! It would appear that the only problem was with the data bus buffer. I have only done some very basic testing, but everything appears to be working. The first PCB prototype seems to be working. Feb 7, 2002: I just complete assembling the first PCB prototype and have found a nasty problem. The 245 data bus buffer is hooked up backwards, requiring an inverted version of R/W to function correctly as it is. (Note:This bug is in the Schematic for Version 1.1 also). I will use re-work jumpers to get this board working so I can find any other problems, but another round of two prototype boards will have to be done. The debugging continues... Feb 4, 2002: I received the two prototype boards I ordered on 1/28! Over the next few days I will assemble the boards and begin testing. So far, all I know is that, the Vcc and GND nets are not shorted! That is a good start. Jan 28, 2002: I have just sent the Gerber PCB output files to the board house to have 2 prototype boards made. The lead time for this order is 5 days + 2 days shipping. So I should have the samples back around Feb 6th. Then I can build up the boards and test them. By the way...the Molex CompactFlash connector sample arrived and fit perfectly. Here is a 3D rendering of the PCB prototype being made. The large gray area is where the CompactFlash connector would be. Jan 23, 2002: I am nearing the end of the PCB layout. I am also waiting for a sample of the Molex CompactFlash connector to show up so I can verify the mechanical layout dimensions I took from the manufactures' prints. Once that arrives, I can send the layout in and get a pbatch of 10 test boards made... |
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