[Coco] Drivewire for dummies?

[William Schaub]

On 12/22/09 15:28, Robert Gault wrote:
> Jeremy Michea wrote:
>> Ok, I'll admit when I read the threads and posts here they're all 
>> pretty much way over my head :)
>>
>> So basically what I want to do is play games on my coco and am trying 
>> to find the easiest cheapest solution. Disk drives are about 
>> impossible to find so I tried cocotape which works fine for some 
>> games but not others.
>>
>> Will drivewire be that cheap easy solution to just transfer disk 
>> images or .bin files over to play the games? I tried reading the 
>> manual online at the cloud9 site and sadly, it seems too complicated 
>> for my feeble old brain to grasp. Can someone dumb it down for me and 
>> let me know if this isn't the best solution for what I'm looking to 
>> do, what is?
>>
>> Thanks from the technically challenged :)
>>
>
> Drivewire or other similar programs will require a disk controller 
> because the software is a patched Disk ROM. If you already have a disk 
> system, you could load Drivewire from disk, but if you had a disk 
> system you would not need Drivewire.
> It is kind of a Catch-22 situation as disk controllers are harder to 
> find than drives.
>
> So, if Drivewire is what you want, just buy a disk controller with 
> Drivewire from Cloud-9. You will then be able to use your PC's hard 
> drive as a platform for Coco disk images. Drivwire permits each disk 
> image on the PC to be used by the Coco as if it were a real Coco drive.
>
> You can't "transfer" disk images "over" to the Coco unless you 
> actually have a Coco disk system with drives. You imply you don't.
> What you do is load programs from the disk image on the PC into the 
> Coco memory and run the programs.
>
That is not 100% true no disk controller is necessary. I have a 
DriveWire ROM Pak that I plug into my coco3. it only contains an EPROM 
chip just like any cart program for the coco.  I'm pretty sure it is 
just the ROM image of drivewire 3.
I think drivewire 2 is more like what you describe.