Uploaded November 2015 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
This is the first prototype of my IECHost device: an IEC bus master that can control Commodore drives such as the 1541 and 1541-II, and possibly other Commodore devices interfaced via the IEC bus such as printers and plotters.
Just to make it clear, this is NOT a Commodore disk drive emulator. It acts as an IEC master, i.e. as a Commodore 64 itself. In fact, if I were to add some of the code from my DC2N project, this device would pretty much act like a Commodore 64, i.e. with disk and tape access capabilities.
If I were asked to point to something similar to IECHost that already exists out there in order for people to better understand what IEChost is, I'd mention ZoomFloppy. In fact, the IECHost firmware might be adapted to run on the ZoomFloppy hardware itself, but that's something I will look into at a later time.
My current priority is to enable the upload and execution of drive code for faster disk transfers so that users will be able to control the device and transfer data back and forth from a GUI interface on their PC. At the same time, I'd like to also offer IECHost as a standalone device with a graphic LCD and a control menu to carry our transfers and disk dumping tasks using an SD Card or a USB flash-drive.
Yes, that's been done by other people too before me and it's been brought to a new level by projects like KryoFlux, but if I were merely being a user of such projects I would not get to enjoy the wonders of the hardware that a retro-computing enthusiast like myself gets excited about over and over again when interfacing one of these 30 year old devices. Not to mention the amount of history and knowledge that gets discovered along the way :)
As usual, stay tuned!
WordPress: luigidifraia.wordpress.com
Twitter: twitter.com/difraialuigi
This is the first prototype of my IECHost device: an IEC bus master that can control Commodore drives such as the 1541 and 1541-II, and possibly other Commodore devices interfaced via the IEC bus such as printers and plotters.
Just to make it clear, this is NOT a Commodore disk drive emulator. It acts as an IEC master, i.e. as a Commodore 64 itself. In fact, if I were to add some of the code from my DC2N project, this device would pretty much act like a Commodore 64, i.e. with disk and tape access capabilities.
If I were asked to point to something similar to IECHost that already exists out there in order for people to better understand what IEChost is, I'd mention ZoomFloppy. In fact, the IECHost firmware might be adapted to run on the ZoomFloppy hardware itself, but that's something I will look into at a later time.
My current priority is to enable the upload and execution of drive code for faster disk transfers so that users will be able to control the device and transfer data back and forth from a GUI interface on their PC. At the same time, I'd like to also offer IECHost as a standalone device with a graphic LCD and a control menu to carry our transfers and disk dumping tasks using an SD Card or a USB flash-drive.
Yes, that's been done by other people too before me and it's been brought to a new level by projects like KryoFlux, but if I were merely being a user of such projects I would not get to enjoy the wonders of the hardware that a retro-computing enthusiast like myself gets excited about over and over again when interfacing one of these 30 year old devices. Not to mention the amount of history and knowledge that gets discovered along the way :)
As usual, stay tuned!
WordPress: luigidifraia.wordpress.com
Twitter: twitter.com/difraialuigi
