Vote for your preferred Floppy Emu daisy chain design option! I’ve been working on this concept for several weeks, and wrote about it here, here, here, and here. I’ve now realized there are two different paths I could follow, with different feature sets and likely costs. For those who are potentially interested in the daisy chain adapter, I’d like to know which option you’d prefer.
Option 1 is what I’ve been discussing all along. It’s an intelligent adapter based on a microcontroller or CPLD, that allows for pretty much any valid combination of Floppy Emu mode and daisy chained drive types. It auto-detects the modes and types, so there’s nothing to configure. It has some LEDs to show the detected types or other debug info. And it also fixes some other minor problems with Floppy Emu daisy chaining like this one. I’m about 90% sure it will work, but there may be weird rare bugs. Retail price will likely be somewhere in the 30’s (very rough guess).
Option 2 is a “dumb” adapter, somewhat similar to the retired Universal Adapter for Floppy Emu Model A. It’s a fixed configuration of a few 7400-series logic chips. It supports the most useful combinations of Floppy Emu mode and daisy chained drive types, but does not support all combinations. Drive types are not auto-detected, and must be manually chosen with a switch. There are no status or debug LED’s. It doesn’t fix the other minor problems. I’m 100% sure it will work. Retail price will likely be somewhere in the 20’s (very rough guess).
| Option 1 | Option 2 | |
| Design | Smart | Dumb |
| Disk Type Detection | Automatic | Manual Switch |
| Configurations | Emu 3.5 with chained 3.5 Emu 3.5 with chained Smartport Emu 3.5 with chained 5.25 Emu Smartport with chained 5.25 Emu 5.25 with chained 5.25 |
Emu 3.5 with chained 3.5 Emu Smartport with chained 5.25 Emu 5.25 with chained 5.25 |
| Status LEDs | Yes | No |
| Minor Fixes | Yes | No |
| Development Time | Slower | Fast |
| Confidence | 90% | 100% |
| Cost | $30’s | $20’s |
For the sake of this discussion, Unidisk 3.5 emulation mode counts as Smartport. Note that neither option 1 nor 2 supports Emu Smartport with chained Smartport.
Option 1 is certainly the most flexible, and has the best cool factor. With a change of firmware, it could even do other cool disk-related things I haven’t dreamed of yet. And I’ve already sunk a lot of time into designing it.
But I can’t escape the feeling that I’ve lost sight of the core purpose and over-engineered a solution. There’s a lot to be said for a keeping-it-simple design, and that’s what option 2 is. Auto-detection is very nice, but is flipping a switch really so bad? Would anybody really miss the two disk configurations this option lacks? Option 2 could be built easily, but option 1 would have to be programmed and tested after assembly, adding time and cost.
What do you think? Despite how much time I’ve spent working towards option 1, I’m leaning towards option 2. Because it’s probably more important that this thing works rock-solid in the common use cases, and is as affordable as possible, than that it has every whiz-bang feature that only 1% of people will care about.