[Coco] Your stock CoCo is DriveWire-ready out-of-the-box (was:DriveWire for dummies?)

[Jeremy Michea]

Boisy, so you think this would be the best approach for my needs? I have the 
cassette cable so if I get the drivewire cable, hardware wise I should be 
set? If you think so I'll contact Mark (probably after Christmas) and order 
the cable. I just want to make sure I order everything at once so if its 
only the drivewire cable I need then thats great for me :)
Thanks
Jeremy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Boisy G. Pitre" <boisy at tee-boy.com>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2009 11:51 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Your stock CoCo is DriveWire-ready out-of-the-box 
(was:DriveWire for dummies?)


> Christian,
>
> This is an interesting approach, but it has some caveats as you mentioned. 
> And the fact that it must be typed every time you power up the CoCo.  You 
> could save it to cassette, but then, why not use the DriveWire cassette 
> loader in that case?
>
> The goal is to maximize the number of people who can get a real CoCo 
> connected to their computers in a usable fashion, while minimizing the 
> number of steps and the additional hardware necessary to do it (which 
> minimizes hassle too).
>
> If all CoCos had FLASH instead of ROM, this wouldn't even be an issue :) 
> But we have to deal with the designs that are baked in.  And even the 
> DLOAD approach would require additional steps on the CoCo 3 because of the 
> munged code in the BASIC ROM.
>
> So far, it's either with a cassette cable and drivewire cable, or a ROM 
> pak and drivewire cable. The lack of availability of ROM paks (and the 
> necessity of burning ROMs) makes the cassette cable and drivewire cable 
> approach the most universal one, in my opinion.
>
> Boisy
>
> On Dec 23, 2009, at 10:34 AM, Christian Lesage wrote:
>
>> Here is a short program that lets a CoCo 3 accept input from the bit 
>> banger port instead of the keyboard:
>>
>> 1 READ N,AH$,AL$:IF N=0 THEN 5
>> 2 A=VAL("&H"+AH$+AL$)
>> 3 FOR I=A TO A+N-1:READ D$:POKE I,VAL("&H"+D$):NEXT I
>> 4 GOTO 1
>> 5 DATA 
>> 2,,F6,2C,2,1,8D,C2,F7,1,8D,FC,F6,1,A1,C1,39,1,A1,99,39,5,A1,CB,86,1,7E,8D,BD,,,
>>
>> It is under 200 characters if you remove the spaces. It allows you to 
>> remote-control the CoCo 3.
>>
>> Speed is 1200 baud. The cursor is disabled because of the delay it would 
>> impose between two characters. There is one catch: you lose input 
>> characters when the screen scrolls. Just don't let that happen, i.e., 
>> send a CLS, wait a little bit, send a BASIC line, wait for the 
>> interpreter to crunch it, and then repeat that sequence until your 
>> program has been uploaded completely. Then RUN it.
>>
>> The idea is that the DriveWire server could send a BASIC program that 
>> would restore the DLOAD command. (In fact, the first four lines of the 
>> previous program could be reused for that purpose, only the DATA portion 
>> needs to be updated.) I do have a DLOAD patch somewhere for the CoCo 3; 
>> just let me find it and I will post it.
>>
>> Christian
>>
>>
>> Boisy G. Pitre wrote:
>>> I don't know if it's acceptable to type a 200 character BASIC program 
>>> each time you power on the computer, but hey, i'll listen :)
>>>
>>> It sounds interesting enough... provide some details...
>>>
>>> On Dec 23, 2009, at 8:59 AM, Christian Lesage wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
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>
> --
> Boisy G. Pitre
> http://www.tee-boy.com/
>
>
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