[Coco] coco 3 prototype

[Steven Hirsch]

On Thu, 2 Apr 2009, Allen Huffman wrote:

> I should find the CoCoNutz newsletter with the story. These were protypes 
> Microware used to do Basic and OS-9 Level 2 for Tandy.

That's supporting evidence for the existance of Corvus drivers and 
utilities for the CoCo.  It would be terrific if they turn up.

> Are there specs on the Corvus chip on them?

I'd be interested in this also, since the custom logic (gate array) chips 
on the CoCo Transporter cards appear to be the same ones used on their IBM 
PC interface.  Best guess says that only the programming API was made 
public, since 3rd-party developers wouldn't have a need to know about 
proprietary hardware.

If it follows the pattern of their other Transporter cards (Apple 2, etc.) 
there's a small amount of static ram used as a sector buffer between the 
drive unit and the host memory.  I have a pile of the OEM developer docs 
here and I think they are general enough to apply to all hosts if you 
squint a bit.

Steve


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