[Coco] A little help with DriveWire

[Boisy Pitre]

Hi

On Jan 29, 2007, at 8:00 AM, Marcus Vinicius Garrett Chiado wrote:

> Dear CoCo friends,
>
> I´m gonna receive my first CoCo 3 computer ever in about two weeks,  
> so I am
> a complete newbie in terms of any CoCo machine.
>
> I also bought the DriveWire with that EPROM installed into the disk  
> drive
> interface. I´ve got the following questions so far (I am sure there  
> wil be
> more coming!):
>
>
> 1) What kind of image files could I make available with DriveWire  
> to my
> CoCo?

Any CoCo disk image with a .DSK extension should work.

> 2) Would I just need to load the image under DriveWire and then  
> power on my
> CoCo in order to load it?

I think you will be getting a ROM-based cartridge, so no loading will  
be necessary.

>
> 3) Are there games that run "directly", I mean, without the need of  
> typing
> DOS command lines? Like, for instance, Karateka (Apple II) and The  
> Goonies
> (Atari)? - not these games, only the way they run.

At the very least, CoCo games will require you to type DOS to start.   
Some games will not work with DriveWire since they talk directly to  
disk controller hardware.  Sundog games are famous for this.  All  
BASIC games and most M/L games do work with DriveWire though.

> 4) Does the "file" games (more than 1 game per disk side) run  
> mostly under
> DOS or OS-9?

OS-9.  Now there is a very important caveat here.  OS-9 based games  
will only work with DriveWire IF the boot disk contains a DriveWire  
device driver and descriptor by default.  This isn't the case with  
OS-9 disk images out there.  They all assume the main device is a  
floppy disk drive.  Patching these disks would require making a new  
bootfile (a bit of work).

For now, I would say try the Disk BASIC games and get comfortable  
using them with DriveWire.

> 5) I´d like to copy games to actual floppies. Are there special  
> copiers to
> copy protected games? Are there proteced games?

There are.  Carl England sells one, but I don't remember the name,  
nor how to get in touch with him.

>
> Sorry for these "dumb" questions, but the case is I´m a little lost  
> here.
>
> :-D