Tim's own version of the Catweasel/Compaticard/whatever

From: Eric J. Korpela <korpela_at_ellie.ssl.berkeley.edu>
Date: Tue Jul 4 14:51:00 2000

> > 8 MHz crystal clock.
> > 1 62C1024 128K*8 SRAM.
> 1 Xilinx CPLD (XC9572 should more than handle it)
>
> The CPLD comes in a PLCC (44 pin) and thus is "hacker friendly" If you send
> me a schematic I can generate a bit file for the PLD. Digikey sells these
> for $5.53 in single quantities, if we can get by with fewer logic cells
> then the cheaper one is $3.30 each in single quantities.

I've actually been thinking about doing something like this. The advantage
of the FPGA is you could program it in situ. If you know the controller that
was really supposed to read the disk, you could probably just emulate that
controller in the gate array. Of course, this is more complexity, but it
is optional complexity. The default configuration would be the sample
everything and sort it all out later version.

Eric
Received on Tue Jul 04 2000 - 14:51:00 BST