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Modern update of the CE-158 for the TRS-80 PC-2

Fantastic opportunity to work together - I was surprised to see the CE-158X project as well! I'm hoping for a simplified sort of model that serves a low cost need for interfacing. Fewer bells and whistles. Hell, even just using the serial interface as a flash cart, a conduit to saving/loading *.IMG (pocket-tools) images on an SD card, would be amazing and probably low-cost to implement (imagine the highest cost would be that connector to the PC). Virtualize the whole thing, have a microcontroller act like a UART on the data bus. SD<->microcontroller<->PC-1500. And if that micro supports a USB bus, it could virtualize a UART-over-USB interface as well for an alternate mode to connect a serial terminal.

(Yeah, I know that involves a ton of firmware development that's a long ways off, I'm sure. Not expecting it tomorrow or any time soon really ;) Just dreaming out loud.)

Definitely seems like both of you are on a parallel path, and might be super beneficial to work together. Whichever comes first, I would love to try it! :) 15 minutes to download a 6K program is torture. haha
 
I think we have related but differing visions. I think the idea of DMA is interesting but not what I was after, I wanted a more direct replacement for the CE-158 with all of the CE-158 functionality. We have boards on hand and parts arriving next week. I'll start a new thread though.
 
Yeah, the DMA idea was just a thought. I'm looking at building a CE-158 drop in as far as the PC2 is concerned with extra functionality. Would have been done by now if it weren't for catching covid in December! I'm glad I got my 24K RAM expanders done before that else I would have been quite unhappy :-(.
 
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