[Coco] DRAGON TANO Arrived

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

On 01/10/2012 15:34, Retro Canada wrote:
> Except TANO is NTSC and 110v ;)

And that deffo makes a difference when you are trying to repair a board 
that you think is a UK D64, but it in fact a Tano, the video output 
schematic is markedly different. Once I twigged it was a Tano board I 
got it sorted in no time :)

The other thing to be aware of is that the cable that connects the Power 
and CPU boards is wired differently in the UK and Tano models.

I've often wondered about making a rom adapter that allowed you to 
switch between Dragon and CoCo ROMS, as the D64 and Tano machines both 
have standard 27128 compatible ROM sockets, so you could use a 27256 
compatible and switch the upper address line to select Dragon or CoCo 
mode. You'd just need some circuitry to ramap the keyboard sitting in 
between the keyboard matrix and the PIA.

Hint the Dragon and CoCo keyboards just have the rows of keys swapped 
around, the position of the key within the rows is the same, so it 
should be possible to do the remapping with some analogue muxes, but 
have never tried this.....

The other main point of difference is that the CoCo has the bit-banger 
and the Dragon has a Parallel printer, however all the lines used by the 
bit banger are available from the printer port so it should be possible 
to build a converter circuit.....

Cheers.

Phill.