On 2/1/21 3:24 PM, Al Kossow via cctalk wrote: > Eric Schlaepfer built a version with buffering and 5" and 8" connectors. > There is a fair amount of churn as what they want the hardware to be > and the project is siloed because of their insistence on using farcebook > for communications.
Early on, I built one with buffering and played with it (I already had the parts in my hellbox), but I prefer to use a more capable MCU to to my work (i.e. not an STM32F1, but STM32F407). More memory, faster clocks; I could probably do hard disks with it, by just adding the differential buffers and writing some firmware. Not a whole lot of difference in cost, either--$10 for a 407 board with clock/calendar, SDHC SDIO,etc. There's also a similar implementation using a very inexpensive Cypress PSOC 6 ARM card that mounts on a 3.5" floppy connector (no cable). It's what I've been saying for years--just about any moderately capable modern MCU can do the job. After all the Gotek emulator uses a nearly obsolescent STM32F107 or 105 MCU. The "blue pill" STM32F103 is quite a bit more capable. Glad people finally tumbled to this. --Chuck
