[Coco] PCs pretending to be drive boxes wasRe: Drivewire question

[Joel Ewy]

Steven Hirsch wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2009, Willard Goosey wrote:
>
>> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 08:19:08PM -0700, Derek wrote:
>>
>>> I have both C64 and Atari 8 Bit set ups to use my PC as a disk
>>> server like drivewire.
>>
>> Cool.  My housemate has a C64, and recently I ended up with one, so at
>> some point I'm going to have to make those cables.
>
> You can purchase a fully-assembled C64 interface
>
> http://www.nkcelectronics.com/commodore-xexm1541-ada1541.html
>
> or
>
> http://www.nkcelectronics.com/commodore-xa1541-ada1541.html
>
> for about $15.
>
> Building one is a huge PITA, since it involves surface-mount devices. 
> Before anyone asks:  There are some very picky electrical 
> characteristics required to support the interface and no leaded 
> component equivalent exists.  This has been beaten to death in the C64 
> community and interested parties can Google for insight.  It didn't 
> sound right to me either, but one of the developers sent me a bunch of 
> logic analyzer and scope captures to prove the point.
>
> The Atari SIO2PC interface is probably more practical to build, but is 
> of medium complexity and far from "..a cable".
>
> Steve
>
>
Really?  Can you be more specific?  I built my own parallel bit-banger 
cable for the C=64 and it works just fine for me.  It cost me $0 to 
build, since I had the parts lying around.  I don't remember all the 
details ATM, but I think I can find the info I used.  Maybe when you say 
"building one" you are referring to that specific interface.  I'll buy 
that.  But you can build a working cable for cheap to nothing with no 
surface mount components and no PC board.

[Thinking... remembering...]

Maybe the cable I have only interfaces a 1541-compatible disk drive to 
the PC and not the PC to the C64.  I know I used it to get disk images 
onto real floppy disks.  Now that I think about it, I don't remember 
whether or not it can be used to serve disk images directly to the C64 
without a disk drive.

Maybe I'd better hook it up again and refresh my memory...

JCE