Here are the hardware design files that represent the USB interface
that was shown to San Francisco Bay Area AMICA members on February
11th, 2007.  Like Richard Stibbons did with the Mark3-BT, I am making
this design available to anyone who wants to use it.  Please remember
to give me credit should this alpha prototype code be used for other
projects.

The chips needed to make this are now, as of this week, all available,
in stock at www.Mouser.com.  The board and schematic is in ExpressPCB
format.  The layout will make four small circuit boards: (1) the USB
interface, (2) a transition board which includes a PWM lamp dimmer for
CFL illumination, and the remaining two board sections can be used
after some grinding to connect a ribbon cable to a Dyna CIS array.

The circuit board connects via a ribbon cable to a CIS array as the
data input device, and the board sends the image data via USB cable
to a host computer.  The host computer must accept the image data
(compressed using RLE or packbits algorithm) and store it.  For single
bit mode the board can replace earlier hardware functions.  It can also
be used to provide a USB to serial bridge to the earlier circuit cards
designed by Gene Gerety and Richard Stibbons.

The firmware for the microcontroller requires a program, AVRStudio,
which is available from http://www.atmel.com/ .  Drivers for the USB
chip can be downloaded from http://www.ftdichip.com/.  The scanner will
appear to Windows (or other operating systems) as a comm port.  There
are also *.DLL driver libraries which can be used for faster access to
the USB interface on this converter device.

This is a work in progress, and a hobby entertainment project.  I do
not have the time to make more of these boards.  I would recommend that
those interested in USB scanning pool together as was done for the
Mark3-BT boards and a run of boards made.  The USB interface is a fine
pitch surface mount part and would require some advanced assembly,
which  basically means you need to use a fixed magnifying glass, good
eyesight and a steady hand to solder them.  It is not difficult and
many thousands of electronics hobbyists do this on a regular basis.

This interface does not directly make a MIDI file -- additional
conversion software, such as the tools written by Warren Trachtman, will
be needed to convert the CIS file to a playable MIDI file.  A program is
also needed to convert the raw image data returned from the USB to CIS.

Julie Porter

 [ See http://mmd.foxtail.com/Tech/USBCIS.html  -- Robbie