[Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on MaltedMedia FTP

Sun Feb 8 20:44:03 EST 2015

P.S.  I think the real reason I get into a lot of the "reapair" and "reproduction" aspects with CoCos asmuch as I do is BECAUSE they are not being reproduced.  Thanks to people like you and Darren and others we have ongoing storage format solutions and I like others am grateful for that.  But I can't help thinking abot sometimes how these 30+ year old systems and peripherals are aging every day just as we are and like us, they won't last forever.  It saddens me when I find out some of this stuff was abused or trashed...kinda the way my original drives and peripherals were when I packaged them up at my parents house before going off in the military.  When oI got to them a few years later I discovered my little brothers had got to them and damaged them so they were no longer functional.  At that time I was still moving around in the service and didn’t have much time or room to devote to trying to restore them so the %0502 drives got tossed in the trash.  If the world runs out of CoCo enthusiasts I think it will because there are no more CoCo's to go around, not because we have ourselves died out, or atleast I hope that’s the case.  I can't imagine why a person would enjoy a emulator of a computer he or she has never enjoyed as the real thing previously.  What's there to bring back memories from?  I would be relieved if someday someone FINALLY started reproducing CoCo's, MPI's, Drive Controllers, etc. to help keep the whole ecosystem rejuvenated.  While we enjoy and embrace the enhancements and improvements brought on by new products, when these same products eliminate old 'Tandy/TRS-80' era technology, I can't help feel that the CoCo is losing a bit of it's soul little bits at a time.  Years from now, assuming they are still being used to any extent, people may talk about a time when these things used to use floppies, how they used to use tapes and they will say, "can you imagine how that must have sucked?!"  They will never know the CoCo experience we did growing up.  Heck, even today I wonder how many people that frequent this list have spent much time searching cassette tapes for files or programs with the flashing "S" in the top left of their screen just waiting for that "F" to finally show up?  It's just not the same anymore, and the changes are not stopping.   I am all FOR the change, don't get me wrong, but I wan't to keep the original stuff going too.

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Zippster
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 6:48 PM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on MaltedMedia FTP

Don’t get me wrong. I like floppies too.  :)

I have tons of them for Apple II’s Commodores, pcs, etc, etc….

Then again I’m cursed with an affinity for just about any piece of tech, a terrible affliction, really…. lol

- Ed

> On Feb 8, 2015, at 5:48 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> True but floppies are embedded into my CoCo experience now and still serve my storage needs well.  Some people  talk about their unreliable nature but in my experience the only unreliable disks seemed to be those 3.5" disks that were in abundance right towards the final few years before they all started disappearing from the shelves.  Its like the quality went down.  I remember there used to be "limetime warranty" printed on the boxes before this.  Now as for my CoCo 5 1/4" disks, not a sing one has gone bad since I started rebuilding my collection in 2002.  I have a single 10-disk box of "primaries" that get used almost all of the time, in fact the only time I use others is when I have on rare occasion pulled out the tandy authentic masters to make a copy.
> (Hurrys up to desk to knock)
> 
> Sent from my Galaxy S4
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Zippster <zippster278 at gmail.com>
> Sent: Sunday, February 8, 2015 04:42 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on 
> MaltedMedia FTP
> 
> They wouldn’t be difficult to reproduce, but you’re probably right 
> that there wouldn’t be the interest to support a production run.  Floppy disks will be an interesting relic one day, if they aren’t already.
> I’ll bet there’s a lot of younger people that have never even handled 
> one in “real life” and only know them from pictures…
> 
> The enig finish looks good when new, but you really want hard-plated 
> gold contacts for edge connectors if you can get them (holds up much 
> better)
> 
> - Ed
> 
> 
>> On Feb 8, 2015, at 4:03 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> I gues with it being a deviation away from the standard controllers it would not be the best choice for trying to reproduce floppy controllers based around this chip.  I have been off and on investigating if such controllers could be reproduced for a reasonable cost.  I know I can get the WD1773 chips but they are a bit costly.  The MD8877A chips like was used in some of the FD-500 controllers is cheap.  I also found scans of what appears to be Tandy's own schematics for some controllers but they appear to be hand-written and somewhat difficult to make out.  Also, not every component is clearly identified.
>> 
>> I now have a total of 3 Floppy controllers, 2 FD-502s and 1 FD-500. I'm good with this for now but with them seemingly becoming more scarce and most of them with the non-gold contacts suffering from increased oxidation I thought it would be nice to reproduce some with the nice gold ENIG contact finish we have been seeing on some of these new projects.  We could even take the opportunity to upgrade the EPROM IC to support up to 27512's or maybe even something like the 256K EEPROM I'm working on that may be programmable from the CoCo itself.
>> 
>> Of course, I have no idea how much interest there would be out there in this sort of thing as a lot of people seem to have abandoned floppies altogether.  If I invested the time and money trying to cobble up some prototypes it's very possible it may just be a one on one off deal.
>> 
>> - Chad
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Darren 
>> A
>> Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2015 3:46 PM
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Mystery "FDC (EAGLE FORMAT)" Schematic on 
>> MaltedMedia FTP
>> 
>> On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Chad H <chadbh74 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> From comparing the board view, yep that's definitely the same board.
>>> Was a version of Disk Basic ever made?  I'm guessing NitrOS9 
>>> compatibility is out of the question.
>>> 
> 
> 
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