Posted By
TLC
on 2011-01-11
15:11:51
|  Re: ZoomFloppy
This is AFAIK an evolution (...better said: production (...purists like me might possibly call it "production level hw with some commercial-ish fluff on top")) version of Nate Lawson' s XUM1541-project (see http://www.root.org/~nate/c64/xum1541 ). You can classify it as an USB<-->Commodore IEC interface (most probably the best one today). From all I'd highlight three of its capabilities that make it the single best one amongst all those X*1541 interfaces. 1.) USB is "everything". USB is even supported by Mac's and probably even very esoteric hw's; USB communication doesn't also need any tricks, (un)like parallel port bit-banging did, it's all "standard", no need to write kernel-level drivers for them for multitasking OSes. 2.) The interface hw is based on a microcontroller with true USB capability (no bit-banging), thus, operation is pretty quick and efficient. 3.) AFAIK the hw supports burst IEC transfers, parallel 1541 drives, and IEEE-488 devices... with that, basically all major CBM drive families (...except for the 1551) are supported; it's very universal.
If you'd ask whether it emulates an USB mass-storage device (USB floppy or disk) class just by itself, ie. if it acts like an USB floppy drive, AFAIK the answer would be no  . PC-side is implemented by OpenCBM that you need to install first.
(...Whilst you may find OpenCBM a little bit tough to use at first sight -- as it only has commandline interface --, AFAIK there are some GUIs for it (for Windows) that make it pretty simple to use.)
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