Daisy Chainer Testing
Good news: the Daisy Chainer for Floppy Emu is finished, and working nicely in all my tests. With the Daisy Chainer, a mix of real and emulated disk drives can be combined into a single Apple II daisy chain for…
Floppy Emu Firmware Update: Smartport Unit 2 Mode
Celebrate Friday with a firmware update for the Floppy Emu disk emulator! This firmware adds a handy new disk emulation mode for Apple IIGS computers called Smartport Unit 2 mode. It’s what I called “chameleon mode” in an earlier post,…
Floppy Emu Chameleon Firmware
Here’s a fun party trick: firmware for the Floppy Emu disk emulator that emulates a 5.25 inch floppy drive, but then reconfigures on the fly as a Smartport hard disk emulator. Why is this useful? It’s not obvious at first,…
Daisy Chainer Update
Picking up after a month hiatus, I’ve assembled one unit of the Daisy Chainer for the Floppy Emu disk emulator, and it seems to be working. I’ve only had time to do brief testing, but so far so good, and…
PCB Autorouting
The Apple II Daisy Chainer for Floppy Emu is done, and I’ve ordered a few PCBs made for testing. This proved to be a surprisingly challenging board to lay out and route the traces. It’s a simple two-layer board, and…
Simulating Disk Sounds
If you’ve ever used an Apple II computer, then you’ll remember the click-clack-whack sounds of a 5 1/4 inch floppy drive. The internal stepper motor moves between tracks on the disk, and every step makes an audible sound. When the…
Jumbo OLED Fun
A few days back, a discussion on the Apple II Facebook group asked about large format Floppy Emu displays for people with vision difficulties. Here’s a 2.42 inch OLED that’s a simple drop-in replacement for the OLED in Floppy Emu…
Daisy Chain Design Vote
Vote for your preferred Floppy Emu daisy chain design option! I’ve been working on this concept for several weeks, and wrote about it in Daisy Chain Adapter Progress, Circuit Fixes and Pulldown Problems, Part Selection and Schmitt Trigger Oscillator, and…
Daisy Chain Adapter Progress
I’m still working away on the daisy chain adapter concept for Floppy Emu, and I’ve prototyped something that mostly works. It’s a real mess on the breadboard. There’s an AVR microcontroller in there somewhere, plus some open drain buffers, some…
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