FPGA-Based Disk Controller for the Apple II (2017) | Hacker News Reader

FPGA-Based Disk Controller for the Apple II (2017)

bigmessowires.com

105 pointsjdblair14 comments

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(2017). Perhaps this is a better link since the controller is in fact available commercially since that post:

https://www.bigmessowires.com/yellowstone/

Here's a link to all the blog posts discussing its development:

https://www.bigmessowires.com/category/yellowstone/?order=as...

Thanks that was a useful clarification/update.

Fun to see that the board did gain more chips compared to the image in the posted article, that it gained the ability for "in the field" firmware updates without JTAG hardware, and (most impressively, in a way) that it made it to market after all!

Agreed. Better to link to the current info, as the Yellowstone was commercially released a little more than two years ago.

I own a Yellowstone (as well as two BMOW Floppy Emus), and it's a pretty impressive controller. It will operate essentially every type of floppy drive that was available for the Apple II, and even some models of Mac floppy drives including bare drive mechanisms if you connect them up properly. It supports as many as five drive mechanisms at one time, and can control "smart" drives and "dumb" drives at the same time. The only thing it won't do is handle HD 1.44M/1.6M media. It can use an HD drive mechanism, but will operate it as a basic 800K drive.

Note this is Open Source Hardware proper[0].

0. https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/01/28/yellowstone-goes-op...

Highly recommend BMoW projects / products.

I've got a Yellowstone and a Floppy Emu. They are great. The Floppy Emu is particularly noteworthy because of the functionality Steve has added since its release (WOZ image support, for example).

I’d love to have a reason to pick up an 80’s microcomputer. I had a TI-99/4A but could never afford the peripheral expansion box. I could now though, but what would I do with it?

I had the TI but what I really wanted was an Atari 800 or Apple II. I really wish I could think of something to do with one of these. I’ve thought about getting one and writing some journaling software for it to give me a reason to sit down at the console every day or two, but then I remember how awful those old keyboards were and generally how unpleasant these machines were.

Probably best to leave my nostalgia intact and stick to modern computers.

There will never be a good reason besides you wanting it. That’s the best it’ll ever be.

A couple years back I promised I’d add Tektronix graphics to VTE (and, therefore, Gnome Terminal), and have, since, been looking for a VT230/240/330 to use as a reference implementation, but never found one. Not even a WYSE with graphics (their model numbering was a mess - I’m not sure I have have a list of the models I could use).

If I ever get a real DEC VT, I’ll even throw ReGIS in into the mix.

That’s not really a good reason. At best, it’s an excuse.

I had to use a DEC VT100 when I was in school and about the only thing I remember about it is how awful those keyboards were.

I remember the keyboard being a nice mechanical one. The 2xx and later were those silicon dome ones. I think the 125 had the graphic capabilities I need, but the later ones are much more common.

They were definitely mechanical. The ones in the lab I worked in were not nice though.

Fair enough. I've seen many excellent keyboards beaten into unusable states in university labs. The only ones that can resist that kind of environment are the IBM Model M and F's (few universities were rich enough for beam spring ones, even fewer for Hall-effect ones)

It's an itch I scratch when I come across something that seems interesting, and is priced right (usually, this means "free").

For instance: I've got a teletype. It's not as impressive as it sounds; it's a little TI SilentWriter that prints on rolled fax paper with a thermal head and talks RS-232. I recycled it from an equipment cabinet we were replacing in 2008, where it looked like it'd been sitting there untouched -- and switched on -- for the past 20 years. It was fun getting that working correctly with a modern Linux box (no, 3-wire serial is Not Good Enough), and one of these days I'd like to put a Linux box inside of it. (I've even got some proper MAX323 chips here...somewhere...to do it "right", but I haven't decided yet what other hardware to use for it. But I'm not dead yet -- there's still time!)

Or: I once scored an 8088 clone machine with two low-density 5.25" floppy drives, Hercules graphics, no hard drive or evidence that it ever had one, and 10base2 Ethernet built into the motherboard. That was a fun thing to get online with on the post-dotbomb Internet. I even had a graphical web browser working and an FTP server -- at the same time -- and I also got it booting over the network as was probably always its intent. I got to spend some quality time at the local computer shop (RIP) buying stuff from their junk bin in the back corner to get it to happen, which was a hoot.

Someone gave me a trash-picked 24" G4 iMac nearly a decade ago. That was a very strange and beautiful machine, and it seemed like it would be quick enough to use in the garage for reading manuals and playing music from Spotify. It failed miserably at both tasks; it seemed like a bad combination of being too old to run current software, and too new to be interesting enough for people smarter than me to do clever things with. I spent more time on that box than I should have, since a freebie x86 closet laptop did both of those things easily, so utility won.

(I remember playing games on the Atari 800 back in the day. If I had one today, I'd probably try to find a CRT TV and do that again.)

Does the existence of this project imply that it's harder to find a drive controller than it is to find actual drives ?

Sort of? For slotted classic Apple II's - the original ][, ][+ and //e - there was always the ubiquitous "Disk II" controller, which came in a couple of variants (2x20-pin connectors or single DB-19). These were made in enormous quantities back in the day and are fairly common and mostly affordable, but they will also only operate one or two of the original "dumb" 5.25" floppy drives.

The later, more advanced slot-based controllers like the "Liron" and UDC cards that can operate 3.5" floppies as well as certain large-capacity "SmartPort" HDD's (with up to a whopping 32M per device!) are MUCH MUCH harder to find and have price tags to match, easily exceeding the US$150 mark when they do appear. The "Liron" card also ONLY operates one or two of the "smart" UniDisk 3.5" floppy drives or SmartPort HDDs - no 5.25" drive capability - and those smart drives tend to command some pretty hefty prices as well. The VTech UDC, which can operate the cheaper "dumb" 3.5" floppy drives and legacy 5.25" drives and is the closest vintage product to the Yellowstone, borders on unobtainium. My UDC cost me well over US$200.

The Yellowstone will happily operate ANY of these device types, including 5.25" and 3.5" floppies - in both "dumb" and "smart" versions - as well as the compatible SmartPort HDDs. It will also handle multiple drives as long as they're attached in certain specific orders and combinations, with as many as five different drives being able to run from a single Yellowstone. So the Yellowstone does a pretty good job of providing a modern, robust, available, and flexible solution to attaching drives to a slotted classic 8-bit Apple. For its price it easily competes with or beats the genuine vintage options.

Anecdotally, I expect that the controller situation is part of the reason that the Apple //c is in such high demand. The //c is more or less 100% compatible with a //e and its disk controller port includes pretty much the same capabilities as both a "Disk II" controller AND a "Liron" interface card built into it, out-of-the-box.

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