[Coco] CoCoNet status

Sun Nov 8 19:50:52 EST 2009

The schematic for a replacement MPI is on coco3.com. 

Sent from Brian's iPhone

On Nov 8, 2009, at 7:34 PM, mike delyea <mdelyea at gmail.com> wrote:

I don't have a multipak.  In addition, I want to keep using my
floppies for RSDOS and booting my floppies for NitrosO9.  How can I
use my floppies and use Roger's pak at the same time?  There seems to
be many talented hardware guys in our community, why don't we have a
replacement for the multipak?  I'd like to have a hard drive (for
NitrosO9 AND my floppies AND Roger's pak and a real serial  port and a
parallel port (I've got a mint HP Laserjet 4 I'm dying to get working
with my coco and a serial modem I'd like to hook up and run a REAL
coco BBS).  I am really hankering after Roy's VGA converter too.  I'm
looking at the prices of these things (pak, hd, vga) and I'm looking
at $300+ (and that's not counting the serial/parallel pak (which
doesn't exist either)).  I want to buy things from Cloud Nine and Roy
and Roger but I just don't have the cash right now.  And even if I had
the cash, I wouldn't have a multipak to plug the stuff into.  I don't
even think you can buy a fracking Y cable these days. Hardware people
- build the MP replacement so I can plug the hardware in.

On Sun, Nov 8, 2009 at 2:30 PM, Roger Taylor <operator at coco3.com> wrote:

Hey dudes and dudettes, how about a little update on that "thing" called
CoCoNet and the progress of the MicroSD drive pak, etc.  I have been getting
e-mails asking about these things but it's hard to get into lengthy
discussions with each person or I would have no time for anything else.
 Sometimes a good update will answer a lot of questions at once.

First, I can only produce these things efficiently and deliver pending
orders on-time, if I get new orders.  I'm sure this is exactly how any
business works, and I'm being bold to say that I feel like Cloud-9 works
this way as well.  That's my 2 cents on the Cloud-9 topic.  Nobody's doing
anybody wrong or looking down on anybody.  People are simply GOING THROUGH
ROUGH TIMES since a certain date back in 2008.  Anybody else who's
successful enough at something to admit they're not having problems, is
Lucky For Now.  They're coming to get ya, that's for sure.  The middle class
picks up the tab, folks, one way or another.  Enough of that.

I'm asking that every die-hard CoCo user out there who wants the ultimate
experience to consider three people in your next purchase of a CoCo gadget.
 All 3 people make items that are designed to KEEP THE COCO ALIVE.
These people are: Roger Taylor (myself), Mark Marlette, and Roy Justus (VGA
Adaptor box). If I left anybody out, please step forward and tell us what
you've been working your ass off for years to develop for the CoCo community
and you are instantly a hit in my book.

About CoCoNet.  It's not Ghostware.  I've been running it for over a year as
I write it and CONTINUOUSLY reburn EPROMs in my tests.

CoCoNet is a collection of features added to Disk BASIC 1.1 and is burned to
an EPROM that can be used in the Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak or the upcoming
1GB drive pak, or your own floppy controller.
It's a 16K ROM that works in any CoCo with Extended BASIC, or any CoCo 3 of
course.   In other words, "CoCoNet works with any CoCo that has Extended
BASIC".

You can take one of my serial paks (with the TTL header) and plug in either
an EB301 bluetooth module or MicroSD drive module, plug in the CoCoNet
EPROM, and you get as many features possible Automatically.
Btw, my Deluxe Wireless Pak and drive pak both are just the serial pak with
the right module plugged in and the address configured for either $FF68 or
$FF6C.

As complicated as all of this may sound, it really is plug and play, plug
and go, or whatever you want to call an out of the box ready pak.

I've got a few more days, maybe a week, of fine tuning before I release the
16K CoCoNet 1.0 ROM image for those who have their own burners and want to
give it a try.  I will burn EPROMs for a few bucks plus postage, but the
client ROM is free since people are going to share it anyway.  The CoCoNet
server applet for Windows will be free as well for the same reason.

Since the client (CoCo) ROM and the PC server software will be free, it's a
free "product".  You can boot to the ROM and with the right cartridges
plugged into your MPI you can customize your own setup.

What I make and sell to help clear off your desk of bulky power hungry
gadgets is the Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak (bluetooth to PC) which pretty
much clones the Tandy RS-232 Pak but over the air and has an EPROM socket
which I will put the CoCoNet in to give the CoCo an instant wireless virtual
drive system.

I'm also wrapping up on a "drive pak" which will have a built in 1GB MicroSD
drive, also uses the CoCoNet ROM, and gives AT LEAST 256 virtual floppies,
huge hard drives, and any other kinds of partitions you want to add.  Disk
BASIC will use up to 256 720K disks in one partition at a time, OS-9 can
have mass drives of any size and also use the floppies... a NitrOS-9 boot
disk is already on my own pak and fires up with all the drivers and module
directories so you can build other disks or mass drives that boot using the
pak, etc.  You know the drill.

I think this answers the question of "how can I get disks onto my drive
pak?", although the distro pak will be prestocked with lots of goodies.
With CoCoNet, you can mix and match 4 or 5 different TYPES of floppy disks
on DRIVES 0-3, and copy between them if you like.

115200 bps bitbanger virtual floppy disks (remote PC pathname or web URL)
       DRIVE 0,!"http://www.coco3.com/nitros9boot.dsk"
       DRIVE 1,!"http://www.coco3.com/games.dsk"
       DRIVE 2,!"c:\program filers\rainbow ide\projects\disks\mynewgame.dsk"
115200 bps RS-232 Pak virtual floppy disks (remote PC pathname or web URL)
       DRIVE 0,"http://www.coco3.com/nitros9boot.dsk"
       DRIVE 1,"http://www.coco3.com/games.dsk"
       DRIVE 2,"c:\program filers\rainbow ide\projects\disks\mynewgame.dsk"
MicroSD virtual disks (using a "drive pak")
       DRIVE 0;100  mounts disk #100 on drive 0
MicroSD LSN-based disks
       DRIVE 0;0,11,65   mounts a floppy starting at any LSN you want
Real 1793 controller floppy disks
       DRIVE 0,ON      turns ON REAL DRIVE #0
       DRIVE 0,OFF     returns to virtual drive prior

With a totally bare CoCo 1, 2, or 3 you can plug in the pak, turn the CoCo
on, type DOS and within 5 seconds you're sitting at a NitrOS-9 prompt.  You
don't HAVE to do that.  You can make it where drive 0 has a game disk
mounted automatically on power-up, or the system disk, etc.

Right now only the NitrOS-9 L2 6809 version is on the pak.  In a few days
I'll have an L1 version and depending on what CoCo you have the pak in, the
compatible boot disk will be used automatically when the DOS command is
used.  I haven't included the details of some of my schemes because it'll
get me off on a serious tangent, but I'm making the pak as plug-and-play as
possible so it can be used to "save a CoCo", so to speak, bring 'er back
from the dead with thousands of games and apps without needing anything else
but the little pak.  Btw, it's the size of a game pak.

Back to work!

Roger Taylor

--
~ Roger Taylor

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