MFM Emulator in a 3.5" FDD/HDD Format

[Jefferey Wilson]

Hi Dave,

I have been considering putting your MFM Emulator design into a 3.5" FDD/HDD format.  This is to fit some ATX cases that I and some of the S100Computers Forum members are building S-100 Card Cages in.

Please let me know if you consider this effort out-of-bounds for your MFM Emulator developments (please see below).

The background details for my effort so far are:

I have been using your MFM Emulator (Rev. C) project for a few years now on my CompuPro 8-16, where I built the MFM Emulator into an external 5-1/4" drive bay:

https://github.com/s100projects/CompuPro_816

The performance has been great (thank you!), but I'm having a form-factor issue on some of the new projects I have designed.  Specifically on the S-100 ATX Motherboard I designed for PC ATX Cases (which has been popular among the S100Computers google group members that I am a part of).

See:

https://github.com/s100projects/S100_ATX_MB

The form factor issue I am running into is on modern ATX Mid-Tower PC cases as they typically have no provision for 5-1/4" drive mounts.

So, using your Rev. C schematics, I created a schematic to reconfigure the MFM Emulator to fit into a 3.5" HDD bay (schematic also attached):

The design has a few changes from your original schematics:

• I added a small 400mAH LiPo battery, since the BBG supports various power modes including standby, shutdown, auto-shutdown, and charging via its on-board battery management PMIC.  This is to replace the Super-Caps as those are too large to fit the 3.5" HDD form-factor.
• I switched to 0.05" pitch SOICs instead of DIP packages, again for form-factor considerations.
• I added an external reset function to the board (software support yet to be determined) to hold the S-100 ATX Motherboard in reset until the MFM Emulator has booted and is ready to emulate the HDD.
• I also added an external Write Protect switch (since I found this feature helpful during the original bring-up of my CompuPro), a BBG power mode button (to force a clean shutdown when needed), a BBG reset button for those rare occasions when I have locked up the BBG due to a mis-configuration on my part, and Drive-1 and Drive-2 LED indicators (including an external pin header for these LEDs to route to the HDD LEDs on Mid-Tower cases).
• I added cutouts in the PCB to enable connections to the Ethernet and USB ports on the back of the PCB.  I use the Ethernet connectivity with WinSCP on my network to do regular HDD Image backups, so I find Ethernet access to be a very useful feature.

My questions/proposals for you are:

1. Since this is based on your design, I don't want to proceed with producing it without your approval.  I want you to receive credit and either royalties on the bare PCB sales, or offer the PCB gerbers to you to sell as your own without any compensation for my efforts.  I am also happy to produce finished boards as a completely built up solution (there have already been a few requests among S100Computer Google Group Members for such a finished product).
2. If I have your permission to move this project forward, do you have any design changes or feature-set changes you would like to see?
3. If I produce finished and completely built products, how would you like the product to be branded and how you would like your attribution labeled and detailed on it?

Please let me know if you're willing for me to move this project forward.

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Best Regards,

Jeff Wilson

[d...@pdp8online.com]

Did you see my reply on April 5th to your email?

[Jefferey Wilson]

Did you see my reply on April 5th to your email?

Odd.  No, I didn't.  I've done a search of my spam and trash folders, et al, and I see no responses from you in reference to what I sent.  

Do you have a copy you could resend?  All I can think of is that it got stripped by a false positive virus filter on Google's side.

Sorry, for the inconvenience.

Thanks and Best Regards,

Jeff

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