If that's the case, why bother with the onboard DB-19 at all?
Yeah, that's a definite possibility. I still haven't yet received the Apple II cable from IEC to confirm that it actually works. Their cable is also $12 + $10 shipping, and I'm not sure how many they have in stock, so I don't really want to rely on it as the only solution.
Question, What about the use of just RAM alone for read/writing?
That's an interesting thought. You'd need an external RAM, since no microcontroller has anything near 800K of RAM, and you'd need a lot of microcontroller pins to drive the RAM's address and data lines. But on the other hand, it would be a little faster, and a little simpler to design. Hmm. I still think I can get it working with my current approach, but if that doesn't work out, I'll definitely look at using an external RAM.
