[Coco] CF/SD/MMC devices

[Gene Heskett]

On Thursday 26 April 2007, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote:
>Steve.Lancaster at Moorestephens.com wrote:
>> Dear Coco Nuts
>>
>> Going off at a tangent on the Coco theme a little here.
>>
>> Does anybody know if there are any CF / SD / MMC devices or card readers
>> available for other computers.
>>
>> I own two - a GoMMC for the BBC Master and a MMC 64 for the Commodore 64.
>>
>> Does anybody know if there are any more?
>
>Welll.....one of the projects that I have planned is some sort of Dragon
>  /CoCo interface to MMC, using an AVR chip as a media controler, as it
>can nativley talk SPI to the card, also with a suitable size AVR, it can
>have filesystem code on there that could say deal with disk images, and
>use an extended Drivewire like protocol to talk to the CoCo. This would
>require some protocol extensions as the CoCo would need to be able to
>tell the AVR to mount/unmount images, and get listings of them, create
>new images etc.
>
>I've been doing some preliminary work (on extending the protocol) with,
>a USB->CoCo link using an FTDI245, which is a like an IO port at the
>CoCo end and serial at the PC end, again using an extended drivewire
>protocol. At the moment this is only working using Dragon SuperDos, and
>only read-only, but it sure beats disks for speed.
>
>BTW what exactly is the status of the Drivewire Protocol, I know it has
>been published on the Cloud 9 site, and that there is an open source
>server for it but is it ok to use if for this, especially as some day
>I'd like to make the designs and source public ?
>
>Cheers.
>
>Phill.

We've been using an adaptor that costs about 3 dollars from most any of the 
computer parts peddlers that has a socket for a CF card facing one end, and a 
std 40 pin IDE socket on the other end that a std IDE cable plugs into.  The 
CF card then looks like a smallish hard drive to the IDE controller.  On x86 
hardware, its 100% bootable from the CF card, which is how we are running 
that best kept secret called dd-wrt on a stripped x86 box, with 2 or more 
NIC's in it but no other drives.  If it wasn't for the onboard vga video on 
that particular mobo, we wouldn't need a monitor on it as the whole thing can 
and will run headless.  The ones I have say "HX-2108" on them, and need a 
spare 3.5" floppy drive power cable to steal a few milliamps from.  One 
jumper, sets master or slave address, and an led for an activity light.

So if you have the IDE adaptor from mark, or the Glenside IDE adaptor, you 
should be good to go.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Confidence is simply that quiet, assured feeling you have before you
fall flat on your face.
		-- Dr. L. Binder