[Coco] DriveWire bootstrapped off MP3 player!!! No floppy or controller required!

[John R. Hogerhuis]

Thanks to all who offered suggestions relating to bootstrapping
DriveWire via cassette.

*IT WORKS!*

Boisy created a LOADMable version of DWDOSCC3. Then he CSAVEM'd it out
to his Mac and made a .WAV file DWDOSCC3.wav of it and sent it to me.

I converted it to a high bitrate DWDOSCC3.MP3 file using lame (I don't
know how high it needs to be, I set it to highest, like 300 some kbps)
and loaded it via Linux as a track on my Diamond Rio PMP 300. The player
is a little smaller than the size of a cigarette pack.

Then as a quick test I hooked my cassette cable to CoCo3, and plugged
the black connector into the Rio. I typed CLOADM:EXEC on the coco 3 and
pressed play on the Rio. In about 4 seconds it was showing the DriveWire
boot screen! It failed of course, since the PC DriveWire server wasn't
connected yet.

So I launched DriveWire on my wife's Windows XP laptop, selected the OS9
Level II virtual disk into virtual drive 0, and connected the DriveWire
cable between the laptop and Coco3.

I typed CLOADM:EXEC and then hit play on the Rio... with the server
running this time it booted into OS-9 Level II, no problem! Totally
silent other than the relay click when I hit enter after CLOADM:EXEC

No more clunky disk drive! Lots of space available on the PC for storage
of coco virtual disk files. More importantly, lots of space available on
my rack with no disk drive and no floppy connector sticking out coco's
port

Anyway, thanks to Boisy for fantastic support on a terrific product. 



-----

BTW the sound file could have as easily been connected straight to the
PC's sound card if coco was close enough. Or for that matter, I could
have made a cassette tape. But the MP3 player was handy so I used it.

This Diamond Rio player (it's an old  parallel port connected model)
goes for about $5 on ebay last time I checked. The Rio has no microphone
jack so you can't save anything direct from Coco, but some other ones
can record, but it does have an external flash card slot.

Note that aside from this method, it is possible to boot DriveWire
without a floppy drive, but the only other way is to desolder the Coco's
ROM and install a DWDOS ROM in place of it. The cassette strategy allows
floppyless booting without any surgery.

-- John.