[Coco] Turbo DriveWire

[Aaron Wolfe]

You are correct about the cabling, bitbanger pin 1 + 2 connected.
Also,before everyone heats up the soldering irons, I should have said
that support for this is not yet available in the premade DriveWire 4
packages.  It is still being tested (though most of the tests so far
have involved me figuring out various things that I have done wrong..
Darren's code seems quite solid).  There are still some implementation
issues to be sorted out so we can make the 230k mode available as
easily as possible to existing DW users.  Besides the cable
modification, there is no new hardware needed.  While the new mode can
be used with existing DW3 roms, it will probably require an extra
step.  If you have a SuperIDE controller with flash ROM slots, or a
way to burn a rom, it would probably be worth the effort, but I think
we can also make it fairly painless for people who have DW3 roms and
don't want to replace them.

-Aaron


On Sat, Apr 30, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Boisy G. Pitre <boisy at tee-boy.com> wrote:
> Aaron/Darren,
>
> This is fantastic.  I understand Darren had to work some trickery to get this going, but the results are amazing.  Once again, DriveWire has set the standard.
>
> It should also be noted that existing DriveWire cables will need a modification to work with Turbo DriveWire.  I believe pins 1 and 2 must be connected.  Darren, can you confirm?
>
> Currently, DriveWire cables ship with pin 1 unconnected.
>
> On Apr 30, 2011, at 3:48 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>
>> A few days back I asked for help with the DriveWire project, and boy
>> did I get some :)
>>
>> In addition to suggestions, advice and offers of future assistance
>> from several coconuts, Darren Atkinson has tweaked the bitbanger I/O
>> routines to work at a blazing 230Kbps.  If I understand it correctly,
>> this will also allow 115k operation on CoCo 2s, up from 57.6k.   I've
>> been testing it this weekend and it's a substantial improvement in
>> performance, in fact in the "Donkey Load" test being discussed over on
>> Brian's forum, it beats all other systems tested by a good measure.
>>
>> I want to publicly thank Darren not only for this contribution but
>> also for doing so much for so many projects in the CoCo realm, often
>> behind the scenes.  The MCX128 expander for the MC-10 is very cool,
>> and I can't wait to see the upcoming drive emulator.   Awesome stuff
>> all around.
>>
>> -Aaron
>>
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>
> --
> Boisy G. Pitre
> http://www.tee-boy.com/
>
>
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