[Coco] [Color Computer] Dumb drive question?

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 10/14/03 9:34:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time, wb8tyw at qsl.net 
writes:

> > Any half-height drives are pretty sure to be double sided.
>  Unfortunately not. :-)
>  I have not found one yet with a double sided drive, but they were 40 
tracks.

OK, sorry.  You may be referring to Tandy half-height drives.  I never bought 
a drive from the Shack after my first full-height, SS35 clunker (though it 
was very reliable).  I don't recall any "real world" half-height drives being 
single sided.
 
>  > Tandy's stock OS9-L1 driver (CCDisk) was hard coded to SS also, no 
matter 
>  > what you put in the device descriptors.
>  
>  When they came out with a newer controller, they put out a patch that 
>  allowed it and it's successors to use double sided drives.  They never 
>  put out a patch for the older controllers.

You may be right, but ISTR it wasn't a controller issue.  The old 12V 
controller had the side-select line just fine -- it was the OS-9 driver that was 
brain-damaged (deliberately, by Microware, at Tandy's request).
  
>  This was strange because the same patch to use the second side of the 
>  drive from Disk Basic works on all the Tandy controllers, and Flex-09 
>  also works double sided with all the Tandy controllers.

I don't recall any Tandy-issued patch, but you are probably right about that. 
 The "proper" OS-9 driver, NewDisk, was from an independent Coco hacker.
  
>  > OS9-L2 for the Coco3 respected DS descriptors from the beginning.
>  
>  I never tried it with the older controller.

Not sure that I did either -- I wasn't using the original Tandy controller by 
the time I got Level Two (though could have, with the MPI) -- but I would bet 
a 6-pack of Mugs Root Beer that it would work.  --Mike K.