[Coco] [Color Computer] FYI: USB Modules & Add-Ons

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 02 September 2006 21:39, jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
>Neil
>
>The U421 would be anteresting module to experiment. I was looking at some
> of the Cypress PSOC chips that have USB also. They are relatively cheap
> and with little development can make nice peripheral add ons.
>
>
>james
>
>On 2 Sep 2006 at 13:01, Neil Morrison wrote:
>> http://www.dontronics-shop.com/home.php?cat=313
>>
>> The U401 and U421 USB interface
>>
>> The U4x1 is a USB solution that is pre-built, pre-programmed, and
>> pre-tested and will get you interfacing your PC to various devices in
>> very little time! There is no USB device assembly, no driver
>> development, and no firmware to write. In many cases the U401 or U421
>> can be plugged into an experimenter's breadboard and circuit
>> interfacing can begin immediately. Demo software applications can be
>> used "right out of the box".
>>
>> The U4x1 can be used with projects that were previously constructed by
>> wiring to the parallel port of the PC.
>>
>> Neil
>>
And this is the major advantage over the FTDI devices shown on the same web 
page as it appears these might be usable with nothing more than chip 
select logic, and possibly a byte wide fifo for rx buffering.  The cheaper 
FTDI devices would also need an rs232 type uart, raising the 
implementation cost considerably.

One of these, buried in an otherwise occupied rs-232 pack, and using its 
decodeing logic, would make a great mouse interface but I haven't worked 
out the IRQ portion yet.  However, because of the limited os9 I/O space, I 
think I'd be more inclined to see what it would take to make it use the 
top half of the $20 bytes one of the 6821's uses now.  In fact, properly 
done, there is I/O room, in 4 byte wide chunks, for 14 of these in the 
$FF00-$FF3F range.

Now, if some chip maker would just give us an ethernet device with a 
builtin tcp stack, we should be all over that.  BUT the offering on this 
web page is a $150 item.

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-- 
Cheers, Gene
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