[Coco] CoCo SDC and others

Wed Mar 1 12:58:42 EST 2017

Hi Pete,
When the CoCoSDC was first being offered as a kit by Zippster - Ed Snider - I jumped at the chance to have SD Storage available for all of my Cocos - 1, 2, & 3.  At that time I bought 3 CoCoSDC kits - one for each model.  The builds went well.  I had no problems.  I have thoroughly enjoyed each CoCoSDC on each of my Cocos!  
My experience with the CoCoSDC has shown me that with the correct understanding of the commands Darren Atkinson has programmed into SDC-DOS, which comes with the CoCoSDC, I have been able to do everything I ever could with floppy drives, hard drives & CF cards on the CoCo.  
I especially enjoy running NitrOS-9 on the CoCoSDC!!!  All my MultiPak Interfaces have ceased to function so the CoCoSDC is all I have left to use that is so versatile on my CoCos.  The CoCoSDC can run Disk Extended Color Basic disk image files as well as large partitioned files for NitrOS-9!  I love it!
Sure, I have floppy controllers from the good ol' days, but since 2011 when I reentered the Wide Wonderful World of the Great and Mighty Color Computer with the Motorola MC68B09EP microprocessor and its sister processor the Hitachi HD63C09EP,  I have managed to obtain several mass storage solutions for the CoCo having a whole bunch of fun in the process.  
The Glenside IDE Controller gave me the ability to run Real IDE Hard Drives and IDE to Compact Flash Card interfaces with the Coco thus I set out to transfer NitrOS-9 to that platform.  I have also run NitrOS-9 on Mark Marlette's SuperIDE Controller as well that also can interface to IDE Hard Drives and Compact Flash cards. 
I have also experimented with IDE to SD Card interfaces on the Glenside IDE Controller which also works quite well.   
I also have NitrOS-9 running via Drivewire 4.  In fact, when I first got back into CoCos, I did not have a CoCo anymore.  I had a 128KB CoCo 3 in storage, but I could not find it so I restarted building my CoCo collection on a very modest budget and initially used Drivewire for all my storage needs.  At that time with just floppy drives, I interface 3 - 1.44MB floppy drives to my Coco new again CoCo.  Now I have NiteOS-9 running on a bunch of platforms.
With the many versions of HDB-DOS, many more things have been interfaced to the CoCo.
YA-DOS is another very interesting CoCo addition.  YA-DOS sports the ability to interface to every one of the storage solutions I have mentioned.  Brett Gordon has done a fine job on YA-DOS!  I highly recommend it.  It is very configurable and quite versatile.  With the correct understanding of all the additional commands available in YA-DOS anything is possible.
Let me see, is there anything else I have not mentioned.  Oh yes, then there is what I would consider to be the best of the CoCo Original hardware coupled with the abilities of modern programmable FPGAs.  The CoCo3FPGA Platform!   This is a Terasic DE-1 FPGA Development platform that Gary Backer has used to creat a CoCo 3 in Verilog which is a Hardware Description language or HDL.  Several types of FPGA Development boards have The CoCo3FPGA Verilog code ported to them.  
The CoCo 3 is literally defined in new hardware, NOT software emulations AND runs at 25MHZ!  The CoCo3FPGA has many additional features such as a built in MultiPak Interface.  Drives 0 - 3 in Disk Extended Color Basic are rerouted via a 6502 created in Verilog to the 9-pin Serial Port on the DE-1 using the Drivewire 4 protocol.  Brett Gordon created a boot rom image that will directly boot NitrOS-9 from the SD Card.  With Ed Snider's updates to Gary Becker's original Analog Add-on board for the CoCo3FPGA, the Coco3FPGA now has real joystick ports, a second 9-pin serial port for a serial mouse, a hardware Real Time Clock and 4MBs of Static Ram.  Yes, that's right!  The CoCo3FPGA has 512KBs or 1MB of static ram available PLUS the 4MBs of Static Ram on ED's Analog board which I have on my CoCo3FPGA.  NitrOS-9 recognizes 2MBs of the Static Ram as real memory plus a recently released Ram Drive driver takes advantage of the rest of the static ram.   Now I have a 4.5MB CoCo 3 running at 25 MHZ!  This is a very sweet system!  I understand work is being done to interface Disk Extended Color Basic to the SD Card.  I don't know the current status of that project.  Once that is completed though, we will then be able to have everything running on the CoCo3FPGA that the real Coco can do!  
I hope I have been able to enlighten you a little bit on the various storage solutions that have been used on the CoCos as well as show what current technology has been able to do to upgrade our beloved CoCos' original abilities.  If you would like further information on anything I have mentioned, feel free to contact me and browse my Wiki Page.  You might find something interesting.  The Wide Wonderful World of the Great and Mighty Color Computer is Still Alive and Well!  Have Fun CoCoing!

Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/User:Computerdoc

-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Peter Cetinski
Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2017 7:05 AM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Subject: [Coco] CoCo SDC and others

What's the current status on the solid state storage options for the CoCo?  Are they available as a kit, parts list or assembled?

Thanks

Pete

-- 
Coco mailing list
Coco at maltedmedia.com
https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco