[Coco] Introducing the next generation of Color Computer, the CoCo-X

[Bill Pierce]

The only problem with large software storage on the Coco is the same problem that exists with HDBDOS, RGBDOS, SuperIDE, DrivePak, DriveWrie and others. Most RSDOS software is hard coded to use drive 0-3 if not just drive 0. You can't run a LOT of that software from higher drive numbers without modification.

Take Lyra for instance. Run Lyra ver 2.6.2 under HDBDOS or RGBDOS. It will seem to run until you try to load or access a disk. It then hangs up and you have to reset.
Thanks to Robert Gault, we now have a version that will not only run, it will load from up to 255 drives for HD and emulator use. Mr. Gault was fortunate enough to have the sources to Lyra so that it could be converted. Now we have version 288 that will even access Drivewire Midi and my version 289 that will even access the Becker port on emulators and singleboard homebrews.

We don't have the sources to all the software to make it run from various drives on multitudes of systems. To run this old software, we would need something that is/or emulates a standard floppy drive and runs from Disk Extended Color Basic. All of the emulators do this. Mount a disk in drive 0-3 and it's just like a drive. Very few incompatibilities have to do with the drives. Most are because of running HDBDOS or RGBDOS and the software either over-writing it or switching rom/ram in and out. This problem existed with RGBDOS running a real SCSI drive even back in the 80s. A good friend of mine had a Kenton system running RGBDOS and had his RSDOS disk archive on the 255 virtual drives. If he wanted to run something (in most cases), he had to copy it to his floppy drive and switch to RSDOS for compatibility. Coco Max III and ColorMax3 Deluxe are good examples of this. HDBDOS is more compatible now than it's ever been but there's still things that have to be done in RSDOS. It's something to think about when thinking of what storage formats will be implemented. RSDOS floppy (or emulation) rules No. 1 till someone comes up with something better.

Just an opinion, based on facts that I saw on the TV that they downloaded from the internet that my neighbor posted :-)
Bill P

Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Mark McDougall <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Fri, Mar 22, 2013 7:59 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] Introducing the next generation of Color Computer, the CoCo-X


On 23/03/2013 10:03 AM, Bill Pierce wrote:

> John, then add in all the sources, pdf scans of the manuals and books,
> etc...

I think the point of John's question was; how feasible would it be to store 
the entire Coco software library on a single device.

That would not include software and documents that couldn't be run or 
otherwise utilised on the Coco itself.

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"

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