[Coco] .BIN to .ROM

[Chad H]

It's just the simplicity and zero-wait of turning on the CoCo and it already
being in your program, whatever it is.  As it is, I can only really achieve
this through EPROM cartridges.  Setting it to load up off of floppy
automatically speeds up the process.  By the time my DriveWire server
machine boots and is ready I could have done loaded it from other  means.
Of course if I start the DriveWire service machine up first and come back in
a few minutes everything's on nearly level ground.   Still, there's nothing
quicker or easier than the original feature of the CoCo being able to load
programs instantly off of cartridges.

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Tuesday, December 24, 2013 4:06 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] .BIN to .ROM

The reason why we say the ROM can't be over 16K is the rompak eprom on a
Coco 1/2 can't be over 16K. ($C000 to $FEFF)  On the CoCo 3, a rompak can be
32k ($8000 to $FEFF) with the first 16K ($8000-$BFFF) not active till the
program switches to 32K mode.

There are some rompaks will more than 32K, but they use bank switching to
move ROM data in/out of the 32K address window of $8000 to $FEFF.  A regular
eprom does not have bank switching built in.

I'm still having a problem wrapping my head around the reason of trying to
put these files on a rompak?

Is it just about easy loading, DriveWire sure helps with that.

Or is it about replacing the Floppy Disk Controller (FDC) and Floppy drives
with something that's small and faster?  Well, there are a number of FDCs
emulators in for works for the CoCo.  They use SD Cards for storage and load
faster than a SCSI hard drive on a CoCo.  Best of all, they work with all
versions of DECB ROMs since the are hardware emulated and needs no software
modifications.

Steve

On 12/24/2013 1:23 PM, Chad H wrote:
> That's my thinking, but I don't know enough assembly to decipher the 
> code from the Unravelled series and make the loader.  I was thinking 
> just any .BIN in general, like games, utilities, etc.  If the combined 
> loader + BIN was larger than my EPROM, just move to a larger capacity
EPROM.
>
>


--
Coco mailing list
Coco at maltedmedia.com
http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco