[vcf-midatlantic] Geeks, retro-geeks and curmudgeons - a reply to Dr. S100

[Jack Rubin]

Hi Herb -

Hard to reply directly to your post since I only get the vcf digest, but a couple of points re new modes of disc (I'm an HP fan) imaging.

1) The flavor-of-the-day MCU or whatever isn't as important as maintaining accessible disk images and metadata. Flux level transcriptions weren't really practical when Dave Dunfield was building his ImageDisk system, so we should be thankful for all the extra CPU cycles available to us today, especially in a $15 package.

2) The approach is a little different but the philosophy is the same - for ImageDisk stuff, I still have a Dell 486 with all the right stuff, including an FDADAP and a Thinker Toys 8" floppy, but I also have a couple virtual machines with the proper toolchains installed to control a few Arduinos and PSoCs for the new stuff that demands a full software ecosystem beyond the hardware. More important, today's cutting edge developers can still read (and write?) .imd files.

I was thinking about this last night as I was installing and configuring all the stuff necessary to start working on my first Verilog project. It took me a lot longer to get the point where I could blink a light on the demo board than it would have to reconfigure a CP/M bios for a new serial card and sysgen a new system.

Be well and stay safe,
Jack