[Coco] CoCo3 questions / Cloud 9 Super IDE interface

[Mark Marlette]

Boisy is on vacation so I'll attempt this.

The new Drivewire will allow you to boot from the PC.

The EPROM is a patch version of RSDOS 1.1.

CoCo Proto is sitting ready to go to the board house. I also have 
cartridge cases. Over three hundred.

Mark
http://www/cloud9tech.com

At 12/6/2006 09:02 PM, you wrote:


>Steve.Lancaster at Moorestephens.com wrote:

> > Hello all

> >

>Hey there,

> > I am a UK based Dragon 32 owner. I have found out more and more about the

> > CoCos (partially Dragon compatible) and am looking to get a CoCo 3 (a 512k

> > model from Cloud 9 appears to be a good starting point).

> > ...

> > As regards the CoCo itself:

> >

> > 1) Is a floppy drive necessary for a CoCo? - I ask because 5.25 inch disks

> > are hard to source and although I have a 5.25 floppy drive (that I use on

> > a BBC Master computer) I'm not sure if it is CoCo compatible.

> >

>Most people categorize 3.5" drives as floppies, even though the housing

>for the floppy disk inside is rigid.  I use 1.44M drives with 720K disks

>on CoCos.  I suppose one could also use 1.44M floppy disks as well, but

>the result will be even more wasted space.  OS-9 can format floppy disks

>to 720K using unmodified CoCo disk controllers.  Stock RS-DOS (Disk

>Extended Color BASIC) can format a floppy to ~176K at 35 tracks on a

>single side.  Patches are available on the Internet to allow BASIC to

>use the second side of a floppy as drive 2 or 4, resulting in a single

>disk having two separate ~176K file systems.  Some patches and alternate

>DOSes allow the user to format more than 35 tracks as well.  So you

>really aren't limited to the 5.25" disks or drives.

> > ...

> > Going back to the Super IDE does anybody know if it is possible to

> > transfer .dsk images to the CF card by drag and drop (on a PC with a card

> > reader) or does the transfer have to be done using a CoCo emulator or a

> > utility like Omniflop.

> >

> >

>I don't think the former would work.  The CoCo would have to be able to

>read an MS-DOS FAT filesystem as a first prerequisite.  There is an

>MS-DOS file manager available for NitrOS-9, and I believe there are

>utilities for reading/writing DOS floppy disks under RS-DOS, but I doubt

>these latter would work with a hard drive / CF card, as the drive

>geometry and capacity is likely hard coded for 360K floppies.  Assuming

>you could read the FAT filesystem, you would next need to be able to

>mount the disk image, or at least copy the contents to a local file

>system or disk.  I guess there are some utilities for reading disk

>images on the CoCo, but I doubt they would be as seamless as one would want.

>

>If you have a PC running MS-Windows, you could use Cloud-9's DriveWire.

>This isn't quite the same of course, but it does get data from the PC to

>the CoCo quickly, and allows you to access the contents of disk images

>directly over the wire.  Then you could just copy the files to your CF

>card for quicker local storage.

>

>In fact, it looks as if you could get away without using a floppy

>entirely using DriveWire, with one caveat.  You need a floppy to load

>the DriveWire software onto the CoCo, at least initially.  However,

>DriveWire does include ROM images that could allow you to keep the CoCo

>DriveWire software in an EPROM so that you don't need to load it from

>floppy.  Since Cloud-9 has an EPROM burning service, I'm sure they would

>be able to send it to you in that form, so you wouldn't need to have a

>CoCo floppy drive or controller at all.

>

>I don't (yet) have DriveWire, but the documentation on Cloud-9's web

>site says you can put the EPROM in the CoCo's BASIC ROM socket, or in a

>disk controller's ROM socket.  It's not entirely clear to me whether the

>DriveWire ROM replaces or augments (Disk) BASIC -- ie, is it a patched

>version of BASIC, or does it need to coexist somehow with your existing

>BASIC ROMs?  If you have an old game cartridge you don't play (or which

>you can convert to a disk file) you might be able to remove the ROM and

>use that as a housing for your DriveWire EPROM.  You'd either need to

>find a 24-pin EPROM, which isn't so common anymore, or hack together a

>socket converter (which you can probably find instructions for on the

>Web or in mail list archives) to use a 28-pin EPROM in the cartridge PC

>board, which is intended for a 24-pin chip.  Or you might be able to

>find a project board from (the UK equivalent of) Radio Shack that could

>be cut down to make your own cartridge board.  A little scrap ribbon

>cable, a 28-pin socket, and a .1uf capacitor should do the trick.  Heck,

>maybe Cloud-9 even has cartridge boards to sell?

>

>JCE

> > Obviously I don't want to buy something and then find I don't have the

> > knowledge or skills to use it.

> >

> >

> > Any general advice or comments will be greatly appreciated.

> >

> > Best wishes

> >

> > Steve

> >

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