As of today, the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator now offers two different firmware versions for Apple II users: a normal version and a Smartport daisy chain version. You’ll find them both in the Firmware Downloads section of the Floppy…
I’m working on the hardware design for version 2.0 of Yellowstone, my FPGA-based universal Apple II disk controller. Most of it is going well, but I’m facing two major challenges I’m unsure how to solve: how to support user reprogramming,…
Last week I wrote about some test results from Yellowstone, my FPGA-based universal Apple II disk controller based on the Laser UDC design. I described two especially worrisome problems: one with 5.25 inch disks on an Apple IIGS at “fast”…
Work continues on Yellowstone, my FPGA-based universal Apple II disk controller based on the UDC design. I’ve finished some initial testing, and while the results were mostly positive, a few problems may spell trouble. First the good news: I’ve tested…
Success! My Yellowstone disk controller card for the Apple II now works with 3.5 inch floppy drives! Along with the previously-implemented 5.25 inch floppy and Smartport HD support, this completes the triumvirate of Apple II disk drives. While it’s still…
Way back in 2017, I began development of Yellowstone, an FPGA-based disk controller card for the Apple II. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost four years. Sometimes I feel like I’m moving inch by inch along a journey of…
I’m still working on development of an FPGA-based disk controller card for the Apple II – Yellowstone. Over the past couple of months, I spent a long while analyzing the design of the UDC disk controller. The UDC supports all…
Today I’m excited to introduce a major new feature update for the BMOW Floppy Emu Disk Emulator. The latest firmware for use with Apple II computers adds the three most frequently requested new features: writeable WOZ and NIB disk images,…
In an earlier blog post, I was lamenting how one-ninth of an FPGA block RAM was wasted when storing 8-bit ROM data, because there’s no simple way to make use of the 9th parity bit in each word of a…
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