Posted By
MMS
on 2016-05-08
07:22:28
 |  Re: FPGATED
Fantastic project!
Actually I would like more the plug-in FPGA implementation of the TED itself as it will instantly cure MASSIVE amount of defective Plus/4, C16, C116 currently lay defective on the market, and available "for part", cheap.
I have three Plus/4 with suspected TED defect too. So I may buy three of them, when ready... (for the standalone device I am less interested, while very much respect the efforts. Emulators are a little convenient for me).
In case, please make sure it is well protected against:
-overheat in the small C116, Plus/4 housing
-Short circuited joystick inputs by advanced joysticks with autofire, those killed massive amount of TEDs
OFF
Actually, User port is rarely used by any hardware officially, and later projects also hardly rely on this, maybe that parallel printer port of OS96 (especially as C16s and C116s are automatically closed out from USer Port projects...)
Actually there are three projects I (slowly) working on, and two is related to User port and one to IEC 
-Connect a PC RS232 mouse via a MAX232 converter to User Port, able to use from BASIC and hack some drawing programs. (the SID Card with the analog port implementation would make it possible to connect a C= mouse and use it in eg. GEOS with a driver, but that project also do not progress)
-The 8bit Covox Sound card to support MOD playback via ZN428E-8 on User port, although it seems everything was already worked out 20 years ago by C64/C128 guys (actually Plus/4 has much more raw power playing MODs than the C64, not to mention the possible significant speedups by partially switching off the screen, closing out bad lines)
-Also, there is a project I am just testing, to connect IEE488 drives to IEC via an external HW. SFD1001 is a fantastic drive with 1MB/disc capacity, though IEC speed is there, and there is no Jiffy of fastloader possiblity there (my SFD drive not performing well with my current discs, maybe a head cleaning will solve this issue)
ON
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