[Coco] CoCoNet status

[Roger Taylor]

At 09:59 AM 12/7/2008, you wrote:
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Roger Taylor"
>
>>As of 12/6/08, the CoCoNet project is moving forward quickly:
>>
>>CoCoNet is a base system patched into Disk BASIC 1.1 that allows 
>>you to mount virtual disks from your PC or the web (through the 
>>PC's connection), and also copy files from the PC or the web and 
>>put them on currently-mounted virtual disks.  There's no need to 
>>move back and forth between the CoCo and PC.  The PC server 
>>software gives what the CoCo asks for.
>
>
>I'm wondering if something like this could be made to handle OS-9 
>and use a PC to be the drive for the OS.
>This would be very nice to eliminate the need for a floppy or hard 
>drive. Of course, I understand that OS-9 would  need a driver to 
>deal with this.
>It wouldn't bother me a bit to make a coco a slave to a PC if the PC 
>could act as a mass storage device with OS-9 as the OS for the coco.
>Of course, a new ROM would be in order to make the boot happen.
>  Since my PC is almost always on, this could work for me.
>It would seem that even a CC One (64K) could benefit from this even 
>if it did work a little slower. No disk drives at all !
>George, dreaming.


The OS-9 software clock would fall behind since IRQ and FIRQ are 
disabled periodically and frequently based on the serial port 
traffic, but other than that I see no reason why my protocol couldn't 
be used.  I'm not sure what would be involved in putting the minimal 
sector reader in the OS-9 boot code.

As for having no disk drives, there's going to be a small percentage 
of software out there that will always be incompatible with systems 
like these because they contain their own hardware floppy drive 
code.  If you keep your real drives connected, you can still run real 
disk software as usual.


-- 
Roger Taylor

http://www.wordofthedayonline.com