[Coco] CoCo3 questions / Cloud 9 Super IDE interface

[Joel Ewy]

Cool!

Mark Marlette wrote:

>

> 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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>>

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