[Color Computer] [Coco] Re: CoCo USB

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 31 July 2005 16:44, George Ramsower wrote:
>From: "Vern Burke" <vburke at skow.net>
>To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>Sent: Sunday, July 31, 2005 3:07 PM
>Subject: Re: [Color Computer] [Coco] Re: CoCo USB
>
>> Ok, coming out of the lurker closet :)
>>
>> George Ramsower wrote:
>>>  If I had this proposed USB interface and a driver to operate it,
>>> wouldn't I need software to operate anything that connects to it?
>>
>> Um, no, not neccessarily. Presumably any USB storage devices would
>> use RBF just exactly like any other CoCo storage device, USB HID
>> devices and stuff like USB-serial port converters will use SCF,
>> just like any CoCo serial device. These things would all work just
>> dandy with existing applications without any special requirement
>> for extra application software. (I'm not aware at this time of any
>> USB storage devices or HID/serial devices that require any extra
>> application software to make them work).
>
>I hope I'm not the only person here that is learning about this sort
> of thing.
>
> Can OS-9 LII be a likely candidate for this type of hardware?
>
I'd expect that once a driver is done, that it would be much more 
usefull there, than in rs-basic.

The thing that seems to bother me about it is that basicly its flow of 
data is many times faster than the coco can gobble it up.  That means 
there must be a buffer in this kit that can hold at least 1 usb 
packet, and some means to throttle the source until the coco has put 
that packet away someplace. And all of that handshaking must operate 
at the usb chipsets native speed.

OTOH, if a disk was writing thru this usb, the disk is going to need 
some sort of a translation to convert from the coco's 256 byte sector 
to the disks 512 byte sector, and some means of dealing with the 
interleave in the disks format.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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