Re: Mark IV Electronics Design

[Chris Albertson <chris@topdog.pas1.logicon.com>]

Tom Droege wrote:
> 
> This is mostly a reply to Grzegorz Pojmanski who is interested in using the
> Mark IV electronics.  I am posting it to the group as there may be general
> interest.   The status today is that there are rough drawings for everything.
> The connector details have not been worked out. 

If you have not yet worked out the cable that feeds the
memory board would you make it look like a printer
interface.  Modern printer ports are bi-directional
and very fast. (Just look at what a ZIP drive can do.) 
If camera data could look like data comming
back from a printer (or parallel interface ZIP drive)
then at some point down the line
we could just pull the memory card and plug the cable
into an EPP printer port.  You've likely got the required
signals already. Likely just need to get the pinout
correct.  I think it is simple: ready, ack, and data. 
One advantage of dropping the card is cost, but also, the
PC gains access to the pixels quicker by several tens
of seconds.  May help when you are tring to focus.

I think the new ports bypass the ISA buss which should
help, but also you don't need to write software to read
from a standard port.

Any rate if you copy the printer port pinout someone can
experiment later.


--Chris Albertson

  chris@topdog.logicon.com                Voice:  818-351-0089  X127
  Logicon RDA, Pasadena California          Fax:  818-351-0699