[Coco] DriveWire

[Boisy Pitre]

On Mar 5, 2009, at 9:33 PM, Ryan Pritchard wrote:

> Hi Boisy,
> I don't know much about how often you sold DriveWire 2 to people  
> with only a
> CoCo 1.  But might I suggest you keep DriveWire 2 listed by possibly
> renaming it to DriveWire for CoCo 1.  There are people out here like  
> myself
> that have been evaluating which direction we are headed, but only  
> have a
> CoCo 1.
>
> My personal concern right now is that I really would love to get an  
> IDE
> interface, but then I lose my Floppy Controller, since I don't  
> currently
> have a Multi-Pak Interface.  The thing is no matter which direction  
> I choose
> without a MPI or a Y Cable (much more limited I hear) I will only  
> have one
> slot and the bit banger seems to be my only choice.
>
> Perhaps you can clear something up for me.  It is my understanding  
> that Disk
> Basic did not support Hard Drives, and that Cloud9's HDB-DOS allows  
> a person
> to simulate up to 256 single sided 35 track floppy images on a  
> physical hard
> drive.  I also understood that if one bought DriveWire 2 they  
> received a
> special HDB-DOS that allowed access of up to 1024 floppy images (256  
> per
> each of the 4 drive numbers).

That is correct.

> Now where I get lost is that with DriveWire 2 you indicate I could  
> boot
> strap NitrOS-9 from a DriveWire virtual drive.  Isn't the NitrOS-9  
> Level 1
> boot diskette either 2 5.25" disks or 1 3.5" disk, since you only  
> include
> one disk image for NitrOS-9 I presume you are loading the larger  
> disk image.
> Does NitroOS-9 support for DriveWire allow for larger disk images?   
> whereby
> the virtual drives look like larger Hard Drives?

Yes, that is correct. Under NitrOS-9, you can format a DriveWire disk  
as large as RBF will allow (4GB)

> Basically without an MPI I think I have to consider your DriveWire  
> product
> over your IDE or SCSI product so that I can have continued floppy  
> access.

Thanks for your input Ryan.  I'll mull over the CoCo 1 suggestions  
you've made.

Regards,
Boisy G. Pitre
--
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Email: boisy at tee-boy.com
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