[Coco] Dumb drive question?

[John E. Malmberg]

jimcox at miba51.com wrote:
> 
> The reason why I asked about the drives, is that I asked Mark Marlette 
> about what format NitrOS-9 would be available in, and he said they would 
> be delievered on DSDD disks.  Now I have several other controllers, so I 
> am wondering if I were starting from scratch (which I am) what do I need 
> to run NitrOS-9?

Most RS controllers should work with the possible exception of the 
original 12 volt floppy controller.

The TANDY supplied OS-9 was the only OS that could not use that 
controller on double sided drives, all others could.

There are some hacks to fix this deficiency in OS-9 and someone sent or 
posted a fixed driver.

I would hope that NitrOS-9 would not have that strange bug.

> I know a CoCo-3, updated MPI is optional, but what 
> controller?

>  JMR?  Disto?

If those are not clones of a Tandy controller, then a driver for them is 
needed.  Since I do not yet run OS-9, I do not know.

> Also, from what I understand from my max 
> drive question, I can have three drives, so how about 2 5.25" drives and 
> 1 3.5 drive?

They work fine.  With the TANDY DECB, you can use any 4 sides at a time 
and up to 35 tracks.  With the other operating systems, you can use the 
full capacity.

With a hard drive, only one floppy drive of each type should be needed, 
otherwise I would consider using 2 3.5 inch drives for the added capacity.

Another question for NitrOS-9.  Does it know how to read 35/40 track 
5.25 disks in an 80 track drive, and can it detect this on boot?

-John
wb8tyw at qsl.net
Personal Opinion Only