[Coco] Re: Coco PC/1000HX/Basil Fitze

[farna at att.net]

I did a few re-packs back in the day! With the HX, unless you plan on using OS-9 the 3.5" drive is pretty useless. You should be able to mod the case and stick a 5.25" drive in the right side like the 1000EX -- which is the same as your HX except for the drive. The single half-height 5.25" drive uses the same space as the two 3.5" drives. The only low profile, compact floppy and hard drive controller I know of is the Disto Super Controller (SC) series. It's a floppy controller with a small expansion header that carried a single small daughter board. One of those boards was a SCSI controller (or a combo board with several items in addition to the SCSI). There were two models, the SC-1 and SC-2. The SC-2 was a no-hault floppy controller IIRC. I used one (I forget which, but think it was an SC-2) in one of my re-packs, a CoCo 3 in a Tandy 2000 case. 

I don't know what Cloud-9 is cooking up, but I do think a modern rendition of The Disto SC-2 would be wonderful! A no-hault floppy controller that would handle 180K-1.44MB floppys with a header for a daughter board with an IDE/realtime clock/USB port. And one with traditional serial and parallel ports. I'm afraid USB would only be useful to OS-9 users -- but that's the majority of people now, I think. By using the header/daughter board the controller can be sold alone to those who just need a new DECB controller. 

The Tandy 1000HX won't work well with one of the emulators, even if it will load and run. It would be abysmally slow!! Of course you could repack it with a micro ATX or ITX board....

--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Independent 
Magazine" (AIM)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html
(free download available!)

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 10:21:57 -0800
> From: Basil Fitze <basilf at shaw.ca>
> Subject: [Coco] Re: Coco Digest, Vol 27, Issue 2
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> 
> Hello,
> 
> I have wanted to make a Coco PC, but I am waiting for a Superboard from 
> Cloud9 before I continue.  However I won a Tandy 1000 HX and I want to 
> remove the guts of the HX and put in a Coco 3 and look for small 
> Circuits boards for the floppy and hard drive controller anyone have any 
> ideas where to look.  I looked at this device on Ebay and it looked like 
> it could of been a Coco 4 if Tandy had gone on with the Coco support.  I 
> am sure this is way to do this maybe even using the Circuits on the HX.  
> Also anyone know where I can get memory upgrades for the HX if my idea 
> dosn't pan out I may use a emulator instead either way its to bad that 
> Tandy didn't do more. 
> 
> -- 
> Basil Fitze
> Computer Consultant
> basilf at shaw.ca