[Coco] communicating to the outside world

[Anthony Revelle]

> Far as I know, there is no way to do that in MESS, whatever flavor.  
> None
> of the emulators I've seen emulator the RS-232 pack which would be
> needed for your application.
>
> The latest JV / Collyer Coco3 emulator has, I think, the capability to
> include PC assembly code. Theoretically, you could write your own
> program in Intel assembly to interface with the JV emulator gaining
> access to the PC modem.
>
>

 From what I've been following on this list, it appears that to  
exchange files from one source to the other is by loading disk images  
and then physically transferring them to a CoCo's drive and vise- 
versa. This, unfortunately, won't work in my setup as Macs have no  
floppy drives, only cd burners. They do, however have USB and  
Firewire ports and I have used USB to RS-232 and USB to parallel  
adapters successfully to communicate with other devices, namely PLCs  
and engravers.
I can obtain a USB based 3.5 floppy, but I don't know if I could  
format it so that a CoCo could read it. I understand that the PC  
based emulators can read and write CoCo formated disks, and I can  
emulate Windows on the Mac, but whether an emulation of an emulation  
of an emulation can format a USB based floppy, I don't know. But  
enough rambling, I appreciate any help can get.
Thanks in advance,
Tony