[Coco] floppy set up

[Stephen Adolph]

There are quite a few little gotchas in floppy set up.  I realize most
of you guys have moved on, but for newbies this is "interesting"-

* you've got the difference in pinout wiring at the controller
* cable wiring differences (twist/notwist/missing pins etc)
* the changing standards in how drives have used the drive selects
* matching motor on, drive selects and side selects to the drive you wish to use
* compatibility issues - number of tracks, rotation speed, sectors/track

So far, it seems like the verdict has to be that 3.5 inch 1.44
floppies are just fine to use with the coco.  Yes they are a bit
different than the 720k cousins, but close enough.  Yes, all you get
in coco mode is 40 tracks.  You should use 720k floppies.  Yes you
will need to mess around with your cables, maybe make a new one, maybe
modify your existing one.

I found the pinout/schematic/service manual  for the TEC FB-501 - it
is buried in the Model 100 DVI service manual.  I also have the
service manual for the old Tandon 5.25 floppy.

As I said, all the info is out there but it is seriously spread out!

The nice thing is, that 720k format is still possible to be used on an
XP machine, so it is possible therefore to make real disks from .DSKs
on the PC.

At least this can be made to work -  unlike the situation for the
Model 100, which has a whole different approach to things.

Thanks for the help.
I feel like I could write a document on the subject now, but it should
be on a wiki somewhere.

In M100 land, one of the guys started a pretty useful wiki.  Why don't
one of you long time keeners do one like this, and then we can all
contribute our little pieces.

see
www.bitchin100.com/wiki


Steve