[Coco] HBD-DOS FD Controller

[gene heskett]

On Friday, 10 June 2022 22:55:46 EDT rcrislip wrote:
> On Mon, 6 Jun 2022 13:54:50 -0500
> 
> David Ladd via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> > On Sun, Jun 5, 2022 at 11:09 PM rcrislip <rcrislip at neo.rr.com> wrote:
> > > Hi All
> > > 
> > > I could really use a HDB-DOS FD controller. Mine went the way of
> > > the
> > > world. Pretty sure I need it for Drive Wire. IF any are for sale,
> > > I'd love to buy one. TIA
> > 
> > 1) What is the controller doing or not doing?
> > 
> > 2) Do you use it for accessing real floppy drives?
> > 2)a) If you do you can probably build your own:
> > https://www.ebay.com/itm/165475769359
> > or assembled:
> > https://www.ebay.com/itm/154990584792
> > 
> > 
> > 3) Do you use it for accessing DriveWire only?
> > 3)a) If you use it for DriveWire only you can just get a ROM cart
> > with a copy of the specific version HDBDOS you were using to access
> > DriveWire.
> 
> <snip>
> 
> I get IO Error messages when DIR'ing the FDDs. Unable to access DW.
> Have a 510FDC with plain jane RSDOS and can access the FDDs, but not
> DW. Need HBD-DOS for that. The controller I was using was a DISTO II
> controller.
> 
> Cheers

The Disto controller can't do that, or at least I couldn't make it work. 
It lacks the wiriing in the center of the 50 pin scsi interface that 
allows handling more than 1 drive. Mark made a scsi drive that did all 
that correctly with hdbdos, but needs to make some more, or redesign it 
for sata. In any event, the coco is the speed limit, with a coco3 
limiting out at about 11 seconds to move a megabyte, even that needs a 
hd6309 cpu, the 6809 is slower. So is drivewire, but its faster than a 
floppy, and thats most welcome.

Take care and stay well folks.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
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