Dec 7
2012

Cross-platform epiphany

I just finished coaxing the HxC USB Floppy Emulator code to run on my Mac. It was a bit annoying, and in the middle of it I was going through my usual Linux guilt complex about how much easier this would be on Linux and how annoying it was that the Mac was so incompatible with Linux.

But then I got over it and realised that it was going to work. This code base written for an entirely different operating system was going to work, and all it took was a bit of build system tweaking. That's amazing. The hardest part was understanding the HxC code base. *

Now it's all working and I'm listening to music disks on my Amiga 1200, using an emulated floppy disk drive consisting of an FPGA connected via an FTDI chip to my Mac's USB port.

That it worked at all is really cool. Thanks to HxC, LibUSB, and FTDI. Your stuff works perfectly.

* It's mostly great, but, hey, HxC people, if you get an error opening the chip, how about reporting it? I'd even settle for you not reporting it but not saying "Device OK!" in a cheery but totally bullshit fashion on startup. Put it this way: if the device is unplugged, it's not OK. Yes, I'll send a patch.