[Coco] Tandy Coco hard drive controller

[L. Curtis Boyle]

Oh, it existed all right. It was a $129 adaptor for a "real" hard drive controller board, compatible with the huge (and hugely expensive) hard drives that Radio Shack sold for their other TRS-80's. The descriptors for it were included on the OS-9 Config disk, I believe, and supported up to a 70MB drive (going from memory here), with smaller options as well. I don't know anybody that used them, though, except I think Steve Bjork did early on, as these were very primitive and expensive drives at the time.

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



On Jun 24, 2013, at 8:56 AM, billg999 at cs.uofs.edu wrote:
>>> 
>>> I have seen this comment a few times recently.  To be honest, I don't
>>> think Tandy ever expected the COCO to be anything but a cartridge based
>>> game console like the Atari 2600 (thus the reason they never did a hard
>>> disk for it even though they did for every one of the Z80 based
>>> systems). Given that, I can't see them investing that much effort.
>>> 
>>> bill
>> 
>> Ahh, but they did do a hard drive interface for it, they had one at one of
>> the local shacks that I've had in my hot, sweaty hands several times.  But
>> it was in the late 80's, and $129.95 when child support and the IRS
>> garnishments because she was playing with the returns was eating my lunch.
>> 
>> Not exactly sure how it worked, was full of small scale ic's, 14 & 16 pin
>> dips, and was I believe intended to function as an interface for some sort
>> of SAS to MFM controller adapter.  IOW to get to the drive itself took yet
>> another card between it and the drive.  The shack folks could not tell me
>> what else was needed, no clue, I could pay the money and take it home &
>> figure it out for myself.  I do know that os9 had 2 drivers for it, sized
>> for a 5 meg drive, or a 15 meg drive.  Again, zero docs, you figure it
>> out.
>> It had a place in the display case for several years, but I assume it was
>> recycled when they left the coco business.  I never saw it on the tent
>> sale
>> tables at the end either.
> 
> 
> Got a part number?  I have had dozens of catalogs including
> Computer only and European and I never saw that or remember
> seeing it advertised in any of the rags that talked about
> the COCO.  Are you sure it wasn't a non-Tandy product being
> sold by a computer enthusiast who happened to work at Radio
> Shack?
> 
> Time to try some web searching.......
> 
> bill
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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