[Color Computer] [Coco]Re: Transfer utilities

[Robert Gault]

Yes, the drive3 (fourth drive) select is used as a side select switch 
with double sided drives. So if all the drives are double sided, the 
limit is three (which can be used as 6 single sided drives.) If all 
drives are single sided than 4 can be used.

Combinations of double and single drives lead to interesting results. At 
one time I had two double sided, one single sided, and two hard drives 
on my system. Each of the floppy sides could be addressed directly 
effectively giving 5 floppy drives.

I had modified cc3disk so that the number of possible drives were 
increased over four and could POKE the DB ROM; thus could select any of 
five sides separately under both OS-9 and Disk Basic.

Roger Merchberger wrote:


> Rumor has it that Robert Gault may have mentioned these words:

> 

>> A single controller will handle 4 drives in the normal fashion or more 

>> if you do some tricky poking of the drive access values.

> 

> 

> Depends.

> 

> If you're talking single-sided drives, that's true. However, for Side 

> Select, didn't they use one of the drive number lines? I *thought* (yea, 

> that could be a bad thing) that if you had double-sided drives, you 

> could only have 3 drives....

> 

> Notes:

> 

> 1) 3 DS drives is still a lot more data storage than 4 single-sided 

> drives, so that's not that big of a deal...

> 

> 2) I've only ever had a maximum of 3 drives hooked up to my CoCo at once 

> (1 external HH 5.25 drive made by IBM, and 2 3.5" 720K Drives) so I've 

> never actually *tested* the 4-drive concept.

> 

> 3) As long as you have the room to add 3 or 4 connectors to your ribbon 

> cable (or are able to make your own, like I can) a "special" cable is 

> not needed.

> 

> =-=-=-=

> 

> Just to throw a monkey-wrench in the works... How about 2" Drives???

> 

> ;^>

> 

> [[ Yes, they made 'em, yes, they're electrically compatible as they're 

> DSDD 80-track 250KHz data rate 720K storage devices, but they *do* need 

> a special cable that I've yet had a chance to make. Search ePay for a 

> Zenith "Minisport" and you'll see they used 2" drives. Cute little 

> suckers... ;-) ]]

> 

> Laterz,

> Roger "Merch" Merchberger

> 

> -- 

> Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Profile, don't speculate."

> SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers |     Daniel J. Bernstein

> zmerch at 30below.com          |

> 

>