Jim Brain wrote:
I just tested and it appears to work fine, but I would still discourage it. Although the 1541 and other CBM drives do the same thing, they backfeed through the 6522 VIA, which I think it better equipped to handle such things. Givne that there are other options (and there is no reason to turn a uIEC off to save energy, I still recommend the other options. Note that one can also put a switch on the RESET line to prevent the device from resetting when the 64 resets (when it resets, it goes back the root directory, which may not be what you want if you're in a D64 playing a bunch of games)I thought I'd help out with some questions here: * I would not try connecting the uIEC to the serial port without power. Without proper power, the unit essentially backfeeds and pulls power from ATN, SRQ, DATA, CLK, and RESET through the pullup resistors on the VIC/64/128. But, the power is very unstable, not sent to the VCC of the uC, and is not 5V. That is why many devices appears to partially work with no power connected. If the goal is to enable/disable, You could installa single switch on the ATN line into the uIEC to "mute" it. But, if you bring out the "FWD/BACK" buttons from the connector(pin 8 and 9), you can press them at the same time to silence the device (press and hold, as I recall)
Still, it looks to handle it OK, and I could indeed by underestimating the uC's abilities.
Jim -- Jim Brain, Brain Innovations (X)brain@xxxxxxxxxx Dabbling in WWW, Embedded Systems, Old CBM computers, and Good Times! Home: http://www.jbrain.com
