[Coco] Maximum CoCo Drives

[Alex Evans]

Yes, exactly. The CoCo only had 4 drive select lines, one of which is
also the side select line, so normally, it is either 4 SS or 3 DS
drives. I believe for 4 SS drives, you may also have to reroute a line
for the last drive or use the special Tandy cables with missing teeth.

On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 2:21 PM Arthur Flexser <flexser at fiu.edu> wrote:
>
> I think the problem with having 4 double-sided drives is that the side
> select bit is the same bit as the Drive 3 (4th drive) select.  How do you
> get around that?
>
> Art
>
> On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 2:09 PM David Gettle <david17361 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > All you need to do is attach all 4 drives to the floppy card with a cable
> > made with 5 card edge connectors, Then use dmode and modpatch or another
> > hexidecimal editor to modify the drivers for the additional floppy drives
> > and include them in the new file list for when you create your new boot
> > disk. when done you should have drives with the drive ID's of 0, 1, 2, and
> > 3. if you are using the same type drive for all of them the drive ID is all
> > you need to change. use the save command to save the files from memory
> > after you modify the descriptors in memory with dmode ie dmode /d0 drv=2
> > then use modpatch to change the name of the descriptor inside memory (I
> > forget the exact address of the byte that needs to be changed it's been 25
> > years since I did this.)
> >
> > On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 1:17 PM Michael Kline via Coco <
> > coco at maltedmedia.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > Do you still have the instructions on how to do it? I would love to play
> > > with that idea.
> > > Michael
> > >
> > > Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android
> > >
> > >   On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 11:42, David Gettle<david17361 at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:   Back in my college days I was running a CoCo3 with 4 DSDD
> > drives,
> > > 2 5.25's
> > > and 2 3.5's and even did a demo in front of my networking class where I
> > > connected a IBMPC to the CoCo3 as a terminal, just to prove that an 8 bit
> > > computer could multi-task, Then blew the instructor's mind when I
> > formatted
> > > 4 floppy drives at the same time with OS-9, while running the bouncing
> > ball
> > > demo from a hard drive I had connected to the CoCo on the IBM terminal. I
> > > also had the CoCo running with the Tandy RGB monitor, and a TV as dual
> > > monitors..on the CoCo.
> > >
> > > On Thu, Jan 23, 2020 at 8:09 PM RETRO Innovations <go4retro at go4retro.com
> > >
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > > On 1/23/2020 10:20 AM, Alex Evans wrote:
> > > > > There were people who did hacks to address as many as 15 sides using
> > > > > the standard controller. There are also ways to modify some disk
> > > > > controllers for the CoCo to allow for more than one controller. All
> > of
> > > > > this requires some custom software for dealing with the drives, but
> > if
> > > > > you use OS-9 this isn't really that big an issue.
> > > >
> > > > Well, if someone wants to play with the idea:
> > > >
> > > > https://github.com/go4retro/DrivePlexer
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Coco mailing list
> > > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Coco mailing list
> > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Coco mailing list
> > > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> > >
> >
> > --
> > Coco mailing list
> > Coco at maltedmedia.com
> > https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco