[Coco] Retro-momentum and disk image servers (Was: Re: MESS needs a C++ programmer dedicated to the Coco)

[Joel Ewy]

On 05/01/2011 03:31 PM, Nick Marentes wrote:
> > 'Significant'? I had a coco myself back in the day and am as fond of it
> > as anyone but claiming a 'significant' contribution is a looking back
> > with rose-coloured glasses IMHO. Now Apple & Commodore - significant.
>
> I have to agree with Mark on this one.
>
> Yes, back in it's heyday, there were a lot of CoCo users which can be 
> attributed to Radio Shack/Tandy's wide reaching number of stores.
...
> But this compared to what the Apples and Commodores had was small, not 
> insignificant but we paled by comparison.
>
> I would always look at the products, especially games, coming out for 
> these machines and wished the CoCo had this kind of momentum. Anytime 
> computers were mentioned in the media, it was always the other brands 
> that had the limelight. The CoCo rarely got a mention. Even today, 
> when "retro computers" are the topic, no CoCo. 
...
> It's the same today. We have some fine hardware projects, utilities 
> and the occassional game coming out from the remaining small but loyal 
> community but one only needs to do a web crawl and you will find that 
> there is more of these coming out for the Amstrads, Spectrums and 
> Commodore 64's from their loyal fanbase.

However, we still have one thing we always had -- an attitude of 
developing within the community of users that which the 'powers that be' 
didn't have the good sense to provide for us or fully develop from the 
outset.  It was the CoCo's relative lack of commercial support that 
spawned a cottage industry at one time, and that still results in cool 
innovations today.

And, honestly, my recent experience trying to find a workable floppy 
disk image server for a Commodore 64 has shown me how great Drivewire 
and CoCoNet are.  You would think there would be half a dozen programs 
to serve up floppy images to a Commie from modern PCs -- especially 
given that the C=64 disk drive already communicates with the computer 
over a serial interface.  You don't even need to modify the C=64 ROM!  
There are a bunch of programs to attach a 1541 (or compatible) drive to 
a (more or less) modern PC.  And I actually got one of those to work at 
one time.  But I'm trying to minimize my reliance on floppy disks at 
this point.  I could find a grand total of 2 programs that are meant to 
perform the same role as Drivewire or CoCoNet -- just mimicing the 
floppy drive hardware, mind you, not even considering all the networking 
stuff -- and development of these seems to have halted around a decade 
ago.  And so far I have been unable to get either one to work.  They 
both only run under MS-DOS (real-time constraints is the excuse they 
give -- probably valid in 1999), while DW4 runs on all major modern 
platforms, plus Java-based appliances, and runs much faster than the 
C=64's notoriously slow disk interface.  (To be fair, if you can afford 
to shell out more cash than I can justify throwing at the Commie, you 
can buy hardware to speed up the transfers for 64HDD.  But DW4 works 
great with a cable I can solder up from my parts bins.)

My presumption was that since, as Nick says, the C=64 originally had 
such a huge user base, and especially considering the 64's built-in 
serial disk protocol, there should certainly be a good, easy, current 
floppy image server like what we've got on the CoCo.  I haven't given up 
on EMU1541 and 64HDD yet, but so far, I'm not impressed.

Likewise, I did some Googling to find such a thing for the Apple ][ and 
found even less, though it looks like maybe ADTPro is something comparable.

I've seen the projects to add flash-based storage to the Commodores and 
Apples, but we've got that too.  And frankly, some of those projects on 
the other retro-platforms are looking kind of stale by now.  Somebody 
did it at one time, but can you actually get one at present?  Even as a 
kit?  A PC board?  (It does look like there are some currently 
available, and rather inexpensive SD interfaces boards for the C=64.  
This matches, but in no way trumps what you can get from Roger or 
Cloud-9, IMO.)

One thing the other guys have (or have had at some time in the past 12 
years or so) that I haven't seen at all for the CoCo is an Ethernet 
interface.  On the other hand, DW4 or CoCoNet _almost_ make that a moot 
point.

Again, my presumption would be that you're right, Nick:  that the 
Commodore and Apple retro-scene should have all kinds of great things 
going on that we ought to be jealous of.  Maybe I'm missing something 
super cool, but I've done a little looking around and so far I haven't 
seen much evidence of it.  I wouldn't doubt that there are more new 
games being developed for the other platforms.  That may well be the 
case.  But until I can more easily get that software running on the old 
hardware without spending more than a few bucks per computer (or at 
least platform) on the cabling, it doesn't mean much to me.  At the very 
least, I think the CoCo makes a pretty good showing, considering the 
relative size of our user base.

> I don't see this changing unless we can get new people interested in 
> our computer. If we can promote the things we do to the world via the 
> net, maybe we can get a few new people into our small community.  I 
> get the impression that there is a bit of a resurgence in "retro 
> computing" and this would be a good time to try and make the CoCo grow.
>
Hey, who could argue with that?

JCE

> (getting off my sandbox now )    :)
> Nick Marentes
>
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