[sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?

[phillip m gallo]

A floppy solution based upon a unique solution (not based in patent art) is
certainly publishable.

The flash-floppy seems like it could be quite generic if it was rigorous in
its impersonation of a physical drive.

Apple II, or CLV drive interfaces being (by def) not generic, but not
undoable.

You will have to accept motor rotation and head stepper commands for 1 or
two sides of the faux disk. You will accept data read/write of Data store or
companion format and synchronization and sector CRC. You will fake motor
"spin-up" and track index marks (1 or more soft/hard sectoring) back to the
control chip.

The upside of all this is that the rotation is fake and as such can be
adjusted to favor the host.  With some computers of vintage this could
breath some new life into them.

regards,
p




-----Original Message-----
From: synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl
[mailto:synth-diy-bounces at dropmix.xs4all.nl]On Behalf Of Magnus
Danielson
Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2007 4:13 PM
To: pfperry at melbpc.org.au
Cc: synth-diy at dropmix.xs4all.nl
Subject: Re: [sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?


From: "Paul Perry" <pfperry at melbpc.org.au>
Subject: RE: Re: [sdiy] Flash Drive with Floppy Interface?
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2007 09:07:18 +1000
Message-ID: <002801c7a6fd$1950a240$8501a8c0 at ice9>

> This is a myth.
>
> But in any case I'm sure there is a ton of prior art
> represented by ruggidized computers from years ago.

Intel thought they had a patent on re-loadable microcode. They sued UMC
for including it in their processors. They should not have done that.
The prior art was published in an awarded paper in 1975 by DataSAAB engineer
Harold Lawson that had that feature in their D23 machine introduced in 1972.
The Intel patent was from 1978, so the paper was certainly prior art and UMC
had been using it. Intel droped their charges. I beleive I have read that
UMC
even had Lawson come to court as a witness, but I can't find a reference to
it.
UMC argued that Intel should not have been given the patent in the first
place.

The DataSAAB machines was to much amusement, hear it play:
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/datasaab/musik-eng.html

This is how happy you are when working with a DataSAAB machine:
http://www.ctrl-c.liu.se/misc/datasaab/operatriser.jpg
(Yes, that's Swedish girls!!!)

Finally, I'd like to point out that different countries have different
philosofy in how patents is granted. Some countries have very strict
investigations and fairly indepth research. Some countries make some
investigations but assumes that a patent which is not worthy will be
challenged
in court eventually or just droped. Some countries is even worse out and you
basically pay a stamping fee. Some countries have a "smoother" path for
patent
applications from their own country than from abroad, but few will confess
to
it (for obvious reasons). When a patent application hits the EC patent
office
in Münich, they look at the original country and depending on which country
it
is, their work effort varies depending on how well the originating patent
country do their investigations. Some countries have so thorrow
investigations
that they can more or less reach conclusion with that as basis and a small
search where as for other countries they have to do the process from
scratch.
So the quality of the patent approval process varies and so do the means to
overrule them. I'm not saying that one or the other is the best, but
personally
I preferr a good investigation of the patent approvability. Having also had
my
bit of figth with those approving foreign patents I think I have some
experience, but not always in their favour I might say. Some referred
patents
was fairly clearly not in a related field.

Cheers,
Magnus
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