CFFA and USB

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Moderator: rich

CFFA and USB

Postby gsmcporet » Wed Jul 30, 2008 6:01 am

Good Morning Rich and All,

I have a couple of comments and some questions to kick around.

I have had this idea about being able to use a USB memory stick to download .dsk and image files from my windows platform to my IIe Platinum and my IIgs. I found and bought an IDE to USB adapter, and a gender changer for the USB side so that I can hook up my stick. After thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that I would actually need two CFFA cards to accomplish what I want to do. One CFFA card to send the info into the system and one to receive it.

Rich, I don't know if I'm right or not. lol

I figured I could place the situation up here and get feedback from you and all the rest of the folks.

Any comments / questions / ideas are greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,
Steven (gsmcporet)

"Apple II with CFFA......It's ALIVE !!!"
gsmcporet
 
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2005 9:53 am
Location: Annapolis, Maryland

Re: CFFA and USB

Postby rich » Wed Jul 30, 2008 9:29 pm

Steven,

I am not sure I fully understand what you are getting at....
But I can tell you that USB and IDE devices tend to have special middle-ware software layers that
are needed to realize their functionality. For example, you can't hook a CDROM drive to my CFFA and
get it to work. Well, not unless you are willing to develop the driver code to implement ATAPI, which
is a packet interface layer that sits on the ATA hardware interface. And this is especially true with
USB. That is why you almost always need a driver for every USB device, save mice, keyboards, etc.

The other rub, is that my firmware space in the CFFA is full, hardly a byte to spare. So unless you are willing
to limit driver development to the Apple IIGS where drivers can run from system RAM, there is really no easy way to add more code to the CFFA.

Anyway, if you can elaborate a little more on your idea, I can give more targeted feedback.

Thanks,
Rich
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Posts: 188
Joined: Sat Feb 16, 2002 6:00 pm
Location: Wisconsin

Re: CFFA and USB

Postby gsmcporet » Mon Aug 04, 2008 5:52 am

Rich,

Ok... let me see if I can explain this better. lol

I was trying to figure out how to be able to use a USB memory stick in conjunction with the CFFA card. I figured that I would first need an IDE to USB adapter. I found just that and ordered two. Then, as luck would have it, I found that I would have to use a double Female adapter as the USB end of the IDE to USB was Male. The double females arrived Saturday.

I then was sitting there thinking about what I was trying to accomplish. Receive information via USB to place it on the CFFA
module. I said to myself (lol I do that sometimes), hey; this won't work. You are trying to use the first card as a sending unit and a receiving unit.
You have to use a second CFFA card in Slot 6 as a receiving unit so that the incoming information from the stick can go through the system for processing. This is where I started to get confused with the process. lol I do that alot too.

Thats when I decided to bring my delimma to you... The Master Blaster. :)

I also kinda figured out that I could not use a current memory stick. I would have to find one that held less than 500 Meg.

Ok. Does that help any? :)

Best Regards,
Steven (gsmcporet)

Apple II "It's ALIVE!!!!!!"
gsmcporet
 
Posts: 30
Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2005 9:53 am
Location: Annapolis, Maryland


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