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Unidisk 3.5 Daisy Chain, Sad Trombone
The Unidisk 3.5 is an 800K floppy drive for Apple II computers, using the Smartport protocol to communicate with the Apple II. The BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator is also capable of emulating a...
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Unidisk Firmware Update for Floppy Emu
I’ve updated the BMOW Floppy Emu disk emulator firmware, adding new Unidisk and Smartport features for the Apple II family. After some quality hacking time with a Unidisk 3.5 drive and a logic...
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Floppy Emu and the Apple Pippin
Remember the Pippin, Apple’s ill-fated attempt to enter the video game market? The hardware was effectively a modified Macintosh, running a customized version of System 7.5. The Pippin lacks any...
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FPGA-Based Disk Controller for Apple II
Apple II disk controller cards are weird, there are a crazy number of different types, and many are rare and expensive. Can an FPGA-based solution save the day for retro collectors? You bet! Nearly...
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Yellowstone JTAG Debugging
After a month of inactivity, I finally returned to my unfinished Yellowstone disk controller project to investigate the JTAG programming problems. Yellowstone is an FPGA-based disk controller card for...
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Floppy Emu Back in Stock
BMOW’s Floppy Emu disk emulator for vintage Apple computers is back in stock. Get yours now at the BMOW store.
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Quest for a Decent LCD
Floppy Emu uses an 84×48 graphical LCD display. It’s just a low-resolution 1-bit display, but it’s fast and easy to use, and has a nice built-in backlight. The display is actually a clone of the old...
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Floppy Emu Display Experiments
Last week I wrote about my troubles with the Nokia 5110 LCD used by Floppy Emu, with a discussion of possible replacements. There was no clearly obvious alternative, as most of the options were too...
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Floppy Emu OLED Prototype
Displays, displays! I’ve built a prototype Floppy Emu board that uses a 1.3-inch 128×64 OLED display, instead of the existing 1.4-inch 84×48 LCD. It works, and it looks very nice. So is this the...
View ArticleGarbage In, Garbage Out
I’m beginning to suspect there’s something subtly wrong with my Apple IIe, which might explain a lot of strange intermittent errors I’ve recently observed with Yellowstone and Floppy Emu development....
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Thoughts on Floppy Emu Redesign
I’ve been pondering what a redesigned Floppy Emu might look like – what ICs might be involved. So why mess with success? The current design combines a microcontroller with a CPLD, which has proven to...
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Atmel-ICE + Floppy Emu. The Taste of Sadness
In all the time I’ve been developing Floppy Emu, can you believe I’ve never had a debugger? I use the Atmel AVRISP mkII to program the Emu’s ATMEGA1284 microcontroller, but the mkII only supports...
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Thoughts on Low Latency Interrupt Handling
How quickly can a modern microcontroller respond to an external interrupt? Is it possible to achieve consistent sub-microsecond response times, so that external glue logic like muxes could be replaced...
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More on Fast Interrupt Handling with Cortex M4
Can a fast microcontroller replace external glue logic, while also continuing to run application code? This is the third in a series of posts considering the question. It’s part of a potential...
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Apple IIc Internal/External Drive Switcher
If you’re using a Floppy Emu disk emulator with an Apple IIc, you’ll want to see this: a switched adapter that can reassign the external 5.25 inch drive as internal, and the internal 5.25 inch drive...
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10000 More DB-19 Connectors
Oops, I did it again: another 10000 DB-19 connectors fresh from the factory! After helping to resurrect this rare retro-connector from the dead in 2016, and organizing a group of people to share the...
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Apple IIc Drive Switcher Version 2
Version 2 of the Apple IIc Internal/External Drive Switcher is here, and is working nicely. It’s mostly the same as version 1, except for a few tweaks to the piece that goes inside the IIc case....
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Limiting SD Card Inrush Current
I’m experimenting with methods to limit the inrush current when an SD card is inserted, and beginning to wonder whether my solutions are worse than nothing. When an SD card is inserted into a board...
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Apple IIc Drive Switcher Back in Stock
The Internal/External Drive Switcher for Apple IIc is once again available in the BMOW Store. The Switcher is a convenience option for Floppy Emu owners with a IIc, and makes everything easier when...
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Get 10 Give 10 – Floppy Emu and Samaritan House
Looking for a discount on a Floppy Emu Deluxe Bundle, and want to spread some holiday cheer at the same time? BMOW is running a holiday promotion called Get 10 Give 10. Use the coupon code...
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