[Coco] A little help with DriveWire

[Joel Ewy]

Marcus Vinicius Garrett Chiado wrote:
> 2007/1/29, Joel Ewy <jcewy at swbell.net>:
>   
>> I believe that DriveWire will work with both RS-DOS and OS-9 floppy
>> images on the host PC.  But of course, you will have to boot OS-9 in
>> order to be able to access the contents of the OS-9 disks.  And you'll
>> have to use a utility (available on os9archive.rtsi.com) called 'rsdos'
>> to be able to access the contents of RS-DOS disks from within OS-9.
>>     
>
>
> I see, thank you. Are these images on .DSK format? Are there other formats?
>
>   
Here's where I get a bit fuzzy.  I think there are at least two
different  disk image formats used in different CoCo emulators.  Maybe 1
from the Vavasour emulator and a different one originating with MESS?
>
> I think this depends on whether or not you will have the CoCo side of
>   
>> DriveWire in an EPROM.  If not, you will probably have to load a CoCo DW
>> program from disk or tape first.
>>     
>
> I think my disk drive interface will come with that Eprom. At least, Mark
> (from Cloud-9) has told me so. By using the Eprom, I guess it will
> automatically load the OS-9. Am I right?
>
>   
I don't think it will automatically load OS-9, but I believe it will
contain built-in support for DriveWire, so that; you can boot
(Nitr)OS-9, or Tandy-distributed games that come on OS-9 disks, directly
from the PC over the DriveWire cable.  You still have to type 'DOS' though.

JCE