[Coco] MCC-216

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 5:52 PM, Darren A <mechacoco at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 3:31 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 7:05 AM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> DriveWire is great, but ideally we still need something with full compatibility.
>>> RGB-DOS/HDB-DOS/B&B etc. cannot work with all software. Emulation of an
>>> FD1773 (or whatever it is) floppy controller that then turns in to SD storage
>>> would still be best.
>>
>> FWIW, Drivewire on Gary's CoCo3FPGA does provide full compatibility
>> with regular old DECB.  The CoCo does not "know" it's using DW at all.
>>  Gary implemented a standard FDC/1773 for the CoCo to talk to and the
>> translation of requests to DW is behind the scenes.
>>
>> I'd imagine the same approach could be used with the SD card.
>>
>
> Aaron,
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe the DW / CoCo3FPGA WD1773
> emulation does not support disk images having unusual formats (sector
> sizes other than 256 bytes, non-standard sector IDAMs, tracks with
> sector counts other than 18, etc.).  This would mean many
> copy-protected games still won't work.
>

This is true, although it would be possible to support a full 1773
with software changes.  I can only speak for the server side, where we
already have support for formats containing the extra info (like DMK)
and only need to add protocol elements to communicate them, but I'd
assume Gary could extend the FPGA side FDC further as well.  Same with
SD or other storage too of course.  This is an area that hasn't gotten
a lot of attention as my own interest is primarily in OS9 where things
all behave nicely.. well nicer than in DECB.  I'd be happy to extend
the server with any needed functionality though, if there was a target
for it.