[Coco] Coco to PC cable

[Boisy Pitre]

On Mar 10, 2009, at 11:25 AM, Roger Taylor wrote:

> At 09:57 AM 3/10/2009, you wrote:
>> Depends on how you want to do it.
>> If you can burn an EPROM or buy a ROM pak from Cloud 9, you can use  
>> DriveWire.  The documentation for how to build a DriveWire cable is  
>> in the DriveWire 3  Specification document in the "Support" section  
>> of the Cloud 9 web site.  Or you could buy a cable from them.  I've  
>> just downloaded DriveWire 3, burned it onto an EPROM, soldered up a  
>> cable, and got it running.  It's very cool.  There are servers for  
>> MS-Windows, Linux, and MacOS X.
>>
>> Roger Taylor has a program that will convert a file to an audio  
>> file which can be CLOADed into the CoCo's cassette port.  I think  
>> you can also produce such a file using a CoCo emulator running on a  
>> modern PC.
>> Then you just need a CoCo cassette cable.  Roger also sells a ROM  
>> pak that contains a program similar to DriveWire, as well as a  
>> bluetooth wireless serial interface.
>
> CoCoNet hasn't been released yet, but it will be free as a download  
> and I'll sell EPROM copies of the client for a small fee.  The ROM  
> can drop in the bluetooth pak and give the CoCo a wireless virtual  
> floppy drive system on powerup, not to mention HTTP requests and  
> remote printing support.


Roger,

This message is not intended to start a flame war or be anything  
negative.  It is a call to openness.

I highly suggest that you make your product compatible with the open  
and published DriveWire 3 protocol.

There are several good reasons for this:

1. Interoperability: Existing DriveWire customers would be able to  
take advantage of your server software.
2. Compatibility: You wouldn't have to write NitrOS-9 drivers to talk  
to your server -- they're already written and are now freely  
available.  HDB-DOS for DriveWire would also just "work."

The obvious downside to not adopting the DriveWire 3 protocol would be  
that there would be two different standards for information  
interchange between the CoCo and a server.  CoCo users would be forced  
to choose one or the other in many cases.

Since there is a great deal of commonality between DriveWire 3 and  
your product, I think the CoCo community would really embrace this  
opportunity for interoperability and compatibility.  It certainly  
would make their world easier.

If you're concerned about some features that you implemented in your  
protocol that aren't in DriveWire 3, I'll be happy to review them with  
you and extend the DriveWire 3 protocol specification to accommodate  
them.

Boisy