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USB-Pen drive on Speccy

piterspiters
edited May 2006 in Hardware
Is someone interested for it?
Probably more promising for future data storage than CF cards, drives are cheaper, but making software will be much harder. I found some good sites with documentations, chips which could be used...
I know about 1 project for Speccy with USBN9603 - just schematic, no any software.
Post edited by piters on

Comments

  • KeepGoodKeepGood
    edited May 2006
    Yes SD Cards are cheaper than CF. But the idea of being able to use a USB pen drive is better than any other storage medium so far. They are super cheap, lots of devices use the same standard (other then pen drives themselvesie. MP3 players, digi-cams, etc).

    This is something I would definitely use! Providing the interface was completely standard (meaning I could chuck it in the PC to transfer goodies onto it).

    I'm loving the sound of this! :D

    OT: Andrew, could you check your PM's.
  • Philip KendallPhilip Kendall
    edited May 2006
    SD is a proprietary protocol which means you're going to have a lot of trouble implementing it. MMC may well be a better choice if you're going down that route.
  • piterspiters
    edited May 2006
    aowen wrote:
    Aren't SD cards cheaper than CF? There are CF to SD adaptors so maybe that's the way forwards.

    Don't know exact current prices. SD, MMC, SM etc aren't so wide used as USB. Of course, buying card reader is not big deal now...
    In any case Pen-drives are cheapest.

    CF's main problem is that it is getting out of stores. And adapter is not cheap.
  • KeepGoodKeepGood
    edited May 2006
    I dont know why, I just hate CF. lol

    EDIT:
    Philip Kendall wrote:
    SD is a proprietary protocol which means you're going to have a lot of trouble implementing it. MMC may well be a better choice if you're going down that route.

    That may not be the case, if a device like a PIC or an AVR was used, they have routines for accessing many storage mediums built in, including SD. :)
  • piterspiters
    edited May 2006
    aowen wrote:
    I like CF. It may be a clunky old technology now, but it's robust.

    Define 'robust' .
    - that was not me... :D

    CF is pretty good, indeed. However I see problems with new, high speed drives attaching on slow CPU-s like Z80.
    But connector I wouldn't call robust, although it is well designed, and hard to break pins. Even hot-plug works. It costs not little, while I can get much robuster USB connector practically free.
  • piterspiters
    edited May 2006
    I found pretty interesting chip, which can handle couple things mentioned here, and even something not mentioned:

    http://www.alfat.co.uk/usbwiz-chip.html

    Beside USB, it can work with SD and MMC cards - see board version:
    http://www.alfat.co.uk/usbwiz-oem.html

    Maybe nicest thing is FAT filesystem support - it will spare lot of work and ROM space...

    I think that it is worth of some 40/50 GBP.
    To connect it to Speccy I see SIO as solution at moment...
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