In message <[email protected]>, Adrian Ives
<[email protected]> writes
Hi Adrian,
I have been refreshing my memory, with a look through the USBwiz Manual
as a PDF.
It is based on an ARM chip.
If anyone is interested, just do an online search on "USBwiz".
Good luck with the driver software.
It must be fun, just finding out what it can do.
I made a Velleman kit for a PIC Programmer and Experimental Board, sold
through Maplins, some time ago; which uses the Serial Port.
I could definitely make up/solder up from supplied parts, and am sure
many other QL users will have hardware skills.
So, maybe you could also consider a Kit Version.
Dave,
Bill of Materials: Yes
Schematics: Yes
Plan: This will depend upon the likely demand. My initial question was
intended to gauge this ... because, honestly, I don't know how many QLs
remain in circulation and, of them, how many owners would consider buying
this kind of hardware. Maybe they would like to wait and see if a
microdrive-emulating SD card slot comes along ... I know I would buy one of
_them_ if they were available today!
Anyway, if the demand is only there for a handful of units, I will likely
build them myself on an as-needed basis and then, obviously, it won't be
possible to pass on the advantage of bulk pricing for the components - the
most expensive of which is the USBWiz module.
It's worth remembering that the single most important component of this
project is the driver. Until that is completed there is really nothing
viable to market.
Regarding the driver, several I/O traps are still not fully implemented and
proper performance and resilience testing cannot begin until that is done,
but I'm making good progress.
Adrian
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Plastic
Sent: 07 February 2011 10:15
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] USBWiz Driver Update
Do you have a BOM for the hardware? A schematic? Or is it only ready-made
boards, and if so, what is the bulk cost? How do you plan to make this into
a product? Is that your plan?
Dave
On Mon, Feb 7, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Lee Privett <[email protected]> wrote:
Well I am definately interested in purchasing such a device, have you
considered putting this forward to the Quanta Commitee to get it off
the ground commercially?
Lee Privett
-------------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my Laptop running XP
but emulating the QL using QPC2
----- Original Message ----- From: "Malcolm Cadman"
<[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, February 06, 2011 8:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Ql-Users] USBWiz Driver Update
In message <[email protected]>, Adrian
Ives
<[email protected]> writes
Hi Adrian,
Yes, using the USBWiz is a good idea.
A new hardware project always creates interest.
PS - This list is getting very busy, too.
Just catching up on over 100 emails ... :-)
I have no idea if anyone is remotely interested in this project to
attach
USB devices to a QL using a small card called a USBWiz. This device
presents a serial interface and accepts AT style commands to
communicate with many classes of USB device. I started working on
this last year, but was delayed by some family problems and a move
to another part of the country. My prototype hardware is a little
black block that connects via a serial lead to a QL or Hermes serial
port. The box has an SD card slot and two USB ports.
In the past two weeks I have turned my original prototype driver
inside out (not a trivial task, no wonder I missed an errant "me equ
0" statement).
The
first version suffered from problems encountered when trying to do
serial I/O while in supervisor mode (in effect, a driver on top of a
driver).
Today I successfully completed a test which involved writing a text
file to a native QDOS format SD card, then reading it back again.
The new driver switches to user mode to do asynchronous I/O over the
standard serial port driver through an I/O queue which is managed by
a Queue Manager job. In this it is very different from other device
drivers and so will need a lot more testing. Not the least of which
under QDOS as the driver has been developed under SMSQ. The
framework is also in place to support real time communication with
the driver core through a pipe mechanism. This is intended to allow
queries to be sent to the driver, as opposed to its devices; a
variation on a paper that I read about the possibility of
implementing meta devices on the QL. Some time in the future I
envisage a USB "thing" to act as the interface to this feature.
Anyway, that's where I am.
The new device driver has the name USB; USB1 is the SD card slot,
USB2 and
USB3 are the ports which can mount standard external hard drives or
memory sticks. It reads and writes, but the format routine still
needs completing (formatting is currently done with a S*BASIC
utility)
As well as the native QL driver I also have a File Manager which
needs no driver (only a free serial port) and can read and write FAT
format SD cards and USB hard drives. This software also supports the
automatic saving and retrieving of the QDOS 64 byte header. This
program currently runs in menu-driven character mode, but it is my
intention to migrate it to a GD2 compliant pointer app in the very
near future.
So, my question is this: Is anyone actually interested in me
devoting more time to finish this project? If (and it is still an
if) the driver can be brought to a release-stable state, is there
interest in a commercial product based around this?
--
Malcolm Cadman
_______________________________________________
--
Malcolm Cadman
_______________________________________________
QL-Users Mailing List
http://www.q-v-d.demon.co.uk/smsqe.htm
