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Project: CFFA for Apple II, II+, IIe, IIe enh, IIgs

Welcome to the CFFA home page running on a new server. The server is based on the Jetway J8F9 nanoITX motherboard. Here are a small and large picture of the board. It is based on the 500MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor and draw 9 watts at idle and 12 watts at full load. It is obviously not a very fast server, but for my light loads it seems to be working well.

I am currently accepting orders for run6 of the CFFA for Apple II. Run6 is a batch of 200 boards.
Run 6 CFFA cards will ship with new firmware version 2.0, a major improvement over the current 1.2 (for 65C02) and 1.0 (for 6502). This firmware will be USER CONFIGURABLE, so there is no need to select specific firmware features at order time. The 2.0 firmware includes jumper-selectable 6502 and 65C02 variants.
If you have a CFFA 2.0 card from run 4 or run 5, you will be able to upgrade to firmware 2.0.
Version 2.0 firmware new features list:

Abour 25% faster read/write performance. This is basically the improvements Dave Schmenk found.

User configurable number of volumes supported. From 1 to 13 volumes can be selected.

Master/Slave support. Now two drives can be used simultaneously. This feature is not really designed to provide more storage, but mainly to allow copying files from one device to another with a single CFFA card.

Boot from any volume, via boot time keypress or permanent user configuration option.

User configuration menu, built into on-card firmware.

Project Introduction:

This page describes a project to create a CompactFlash / IDE Interface card for Apple II computers (][+, //e, //e enh or //gs). The card is ProDOS 8 and GS/OS compatible. With an additional driver, GS/OS users get additional partitions and speed. I did the original wire-wrap prototype over the span of several months. This project is very much a case of old technology (the Apple II computer) meets new (CompactFlash cards and Altera CPLDs). My reasoning for this project is described in detail in the Background section, but suffice it to say, I wanted to be able to pull out my old Apple II and use it from time to time to reminisce about the early days of personal computers. I wanted a reliable way to store my Apple II programs and data files for many years to come. Due to the long term reliability prospects of floppy drives, and my general laziness, I decided a mass storage device is what I needed. The Apple II was an excellent example of an open system, with unheard-of-today documentation like system schematics, firmware listings, and peripheral design tips. In the spirit of the Apple II this project is also an open project. You can download all of the software and hardware schematics for the project in the downloads section. Also the manual, in PDF format, is available.

Looking for the CF for Apple1 Project? Click Here!

Great tool for CFFA users:
All CFFA owners who use Windows... Andy McFadden has come out with an excellent tool called: CiderPress. This tool will allow you to read and write your CFFA formatted CF cards right on your PC. It will make an excellent backup tool. Check it out at Andy's Site

Information about the "3 jumper" fix for CFFA V1.2 cards: (Runs 1, 2, and 3) A problem as been found that explains why many CompactFlash cards have never worked with the older CFFA cards. I was motivated to find this problem when I realized that SanDisk 256MB cards were not working properly. To summarize, the address lines were changing near the end of the ATA bus cycle seen by the CF card. This seemed to be tolerated by the smaller SanDisk cards, but not the 256MB card or many other brands, like Lexar. So after much debugging I found the problem and was able to fix the problem with a new release of the CPLD logic (V1.4), and the addition of 3 "rework" jumper wires to the board. Click here to see the front of the board, and here to the back.