[Coco] High density drives with the CoCo

[Francis Swygert]

Created a new topic for this!  There is a mod to the old 12V disk controller that will allow high density drives. Requires a  good bit of work, and you need to find a good working old controller. Then you need to supply it with 12V. Easiest way is to use a Multi-Pak, but you could hack it for a wall-wart (make sure it's well regulated though!) or other external power supply. The CoCo1 had 12V on the cartridge port, no others did though. 

The easiest way to get a good 360K (double sided 5.25") drive is to peruse thrift shops and e-bay for old computer systems. Tandy 1000 models almost all have 360K drives. Hard to tell on generic PCs -- most of them will have HD drives unless they are really old XT compatibles, and even some of them will. I've seen some Tandy 1000SX computers on e-bay reasonably priced that aren't working. As long as the drives are good they would be a good buy. The case is similar to a Tandy 2000 case -- you could mount the CoCo motherboard in it. I had one in a T2000 case years ago. Tight, but fits. Getting hard to find 80s computers in thrift shops though. 

Note that many 3.5" drives have a jumper so you can use as 720K. Don't know how to tell without pulling the drive and looking at it. 

The other problem is disks. Try finding good quality 5.25" blank disks! 3.5" are a bit easier, but you really need true 720K disks, not 1.44M used as 720K. The media is made differently (different magnetic coefficients) and won't work as reliably if not made specifically for the correct capacity. They will work for a while, so okay for transferring files, but anything from a couple weeks to a few months later (depends on the quality of the disk and the drive) you may not be able to read anything. Same with 5.25" HD/360K disks.  Frank Swygert
 Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
 803-604-6548