4 ms·

I did a lot of google searches to see if there was anything else out there, but this one never showed up. Your design is even simpler, using just an FT245 chip

• Brian_K_White 4y ago
  In fact I kind of like the pico (or any mcu) idea better in the long run. The only reason I made this is because I wanted there to be a more generic (not tied to a particular sbc, not tied to any particular software) and open source option for the key hardware part of retroprinter. Well for future-proofing and open sourceness, code that runs on an mcu or hdl to configure an fpga is better than this because in this all the magic is inaccessable and immutable inside that chip, while code or hdl can be shared, modified, iterated, used 20 years later regardless if FTDI or myself are still around or not, and by a 12 year old kid with no money or permission. Even if the pico goes away, and even if the code is making full use of the pico's special pio features, the code is still useful, while if this chip goes away, there's essentially nothing left here that's useful. And of course obviously the pico (or any mcu or fpga) is infinitely more flexible than whatever's hardcoded in the ftdi chip. And no worries that FTDI will release a driver that bricks your chip some day.
  • tverbeure 4y ago
    You're right about moving the code to a different MCU: mine is pretty much a straight copy of the Rue's Atmega version. :-)