512K Flash memory = RAM disk?

[airship]

I was reading up on this Atmel chip and wondered if it couldn't be implemented relatively easily in a cartridge as a RAMdisk for CBM computers? It's 512kx8 bits of flash RAM, organized as 256k-byte pages. If you were evil, you could even make it do GCR.

What do you hardware gurus think?

Atmel site:
http://www.atmel.com/dyn/products/product_card.asp?part_id=1806

The chip is available in a 32-pin DIP for just $3.50 here:
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/item/AT29C040A/search/FLASH_MEMORY_.html

Mouser, Digi-Key and others have it for not much more.

[Mark Smith]

The chip by itself I'd say no.  But put a CPLD or FPGA in front of it then you could make it useful.
I've my CPLD development kit on it's way, and already have  an 8bit Baby board, so give me oooh 2 years and I might be able to do something :-)

[airship]

Then there's this thing, which sounds like it would make a nice RAM disk, too. Or even a ROM replacement: 320178219335

[Mangelore]

Then there's this thing, which sounds like it would make a nice RAM disk, too. Or even a ROM replacement: 320178219335

Very nice. Shame he only ships to the U.S.

[Golan Klinger]

Very nice. Shame he only ships to the U.S.

You want 'em? I can buy them and ship them to you along with the other stuff I'm going to be sending you.

[Mangelore]

Very nice. Shame he only ships to the U.S.

You want 'em? I can buy them and ship them to you along with the other stuff I'm going to be sending you.

Sounds great, but only if you pick them up for a good price. I'm sure they'll come in handy for some kind of project.
Did you get my last PM? I notice that the forum Inbox only stores a max of 5 PMs.

[Golan Klinger]

The latest message in my inbox is from you so I think so. If you sent two, I only got one. I'll have to keep that inbox trimmed down.

[airship]

The 28C256 EEPROM also looks interesting. 28-pin, 32k x 8, no special circuitry required. I'm not sure how the 64-byte write buffer works, but it would be interesting to see if one or more of these would make a good Quick Brown Box type cartridge. There's also a 64K version but it's a 32-pin chip.

Note: Those 4 Dallas chips didn't sell. I just emailed the guy an offer of $10 for them, shipping included. I can't afford any toys right now, but these were just too cool. Hope he takes it! If I get them, I'll send you one or two to play with , Fotios.

[Mangelore]

The latest message in my inbox is from you so I think so. If you sent two, I only got one. I'll have to keep that inbox trimmed down.

Hi Golan,

It was only one PM from me. I received your e-mail and sent two replies as the first one bounced.

[Mangelore]

Note: Those 4 Dallas chips didn't sell. I just emailed the guy an offer of $10 for them, shipping included. I can't afford any toys right now, but these were just too cool. Hope he takes it! If I get them, I'll send you one or two to play with , Fotios.

Cool. Thanks!

[Golan Klinger]

My email is causing me grief lately. Today I got a report of emails I've sent not being received and now this. I do have a message from you in my inbox and I'll respond tonight in the hope that it will get through. I do wish 'they' would ratify the RFC regarding email receipts so we'll all know when email doesn't get through. RBLs and such are making life very difficult. Anyway...

[smf]

I was reading up on this Atmel chip and wondered if it couldn't be implemented relatively easily in a cartridge as a RAMdisk for CBM computers? It's 512kx8 bits of flash RAM, organized as 256k-byte pages. If you were evil, you could even make it do GCR.

You could hook it up to a cartridge, but you'd need a way of banking it and the software would have to run on the main processor.
There would be no point in making it use GCR.

I'm thinking of a fpga with an embedded 6502 core, ram, rom and via's plus an sdcard port. It's a big job & writing the dos for it would be interesting. You'd want it to be at least jiffy & dolphin dos compatible. Ideally it would have a command to mount a d64/g64 which could cope with gcr, although games on more than one disk ( or side ) would be a pain.