Exegete writes: >David Wilson wrote: >> Exegete writes: >> >>>There are, at present, no >>>USB adapters for any model of the II, and I've heard of none under >>>development (I wonder if any II could even handle the high rate of data >>>that USB can kick around). So your "goal" has, at present no Apple II >>>application, does it? >>> >> >> Just because USB can run at 12Mb/s does not mean that the Apple // would have >> to pump data at that rate (which is only 1.5MB/s). USB also has a 1.5Mb/s >> rate used by keyboards and mice (187.5kB/s) that an Apple // would have >> no trouble keeping up with. Besides, any sensible design would use an on board >> uP to handle the USB protocol rather than trying to get the 65x02 to handle it. >> >> Making an Apple // into a USB target would probably be easier than making >> it into a host. >So it would be possible to do a USB card for the II, is that what you >are saying? Granted that that is the case, since there aren't any yet, >of what use is his idea of working on getting MFM drives to talk to the >nonexistant USB card on a II? Or is this a case of doing the hard part >(MFM to USB) first, since a USB card would be a snap for the II? I think we need to restate the problem. A user has either a new Mac with no inbuilt floppy drive or a PC. These systems cannot read or write 800KB floppy disks. He has an Apple // with and 800KB drive and would like to transfer data from one to the other. The obvious methods are: 1) Serial transfer (although new iMacs don't have serial ports) using ADT. 2) Ethernet (provided Apple // is a //gs the ethernet card is available) 3) Get an 800KB drive to work on the PC/Mac. This would have to be either a USB drive (PC/Mac) or Parallel port (PC). 4) USB from Mac/PC to Apple //. If a USB card were designed for the Apple // it could either be a host or a target. If a host it could run a standard USB floppy drive and read/write 1.44MB disks. If a target it could emulate a disk for the Mac/PC and read/write from/to the 800KB drive (given the appropriate software. 5) There are cards like Catweasel that can read/write Apple // disks on a PC. There are probably many other methods as well. -- David Wilson School of IT & CS, Uni of Wollongong, Australia