[Coco] CoCoNet status

[Roger Taylor]

At 07:03 PM 11/11/2009, you wrote:
>Hmm.... well, now that you have the CoNect wireless pack you need to 
>work on a Linux (or some other OS) live CD that will boot on a 
>monitor and keyboardless PC with Bluetooth enabled (of course a 
>Bluetooth device would be needed). Then one could fire up the CoCo 
>beside it and use the PC as a simple slave storage system. Instead 
>of a live CD a bootable USB drive might be better --just run from 
>it. Get a small ITX board with Bluetooth and drives and that's all 
>you'd need for a drive sub-system for the CoCo. Some of the Mini ITX 
>boards, especially older ones, are rather cheap, like these:
>http://www.surplusgizmos.com/Single-Board-Computers-SBC_c_41.html
>Six for $130 = $21.67 each (your cost... sell them with a CoCoNet pack....)
>Not 100% sure, but I think they are these: 
>http://www.axiontech.com/prdt.php?item=34631
>Of course you'd have to contact SurplusGizmos and find out for sure 
>what the little boards have. Should be a USB Bluetooth transmitter available...


I don't know... a MicroDrive module gives up to 2gb to the CoCo using 
the current firmware they have on it.

A MicroSD card is pretty damn small.  In fact, it's small enough to 
lose if you're not careful.  I'm impressed by the size vs. capacity 
of those things.  We could very well see massive CoCo apps or games 
distributed on MicroSD for Drive Pak owners.  Not only that, but CoCo 
"video", music, raw pictures that load quickly, and all sorts of 
"limitless" ideas.

Remember the Dragon's Lair game that was pretty much based on 
prearranged cartoon sequences?  Something like that would be easier 
to write than you'd think.  Think of it as a book where you choose 
which chapter to go to next to make your own story ending.  Anyway, 
I'm just throwing a random idea out there.

With the CoCoNet ROM in the pak, AUTOBOOT.BAS is run automatically on 
power-up, from virtual floppy #0.  From there you can launch or do 
anything, including ML.  Any BASIC programmer can have a field 
day.  ML programmers would just need to call the DSKCON hook in Disk 
BASIC to access the disks and raw sectors.

Tonight I simply made by AUTOBOOT.BAS program switch to disk #254 and 
boot OS-9 over the pak:
10 DRIVE 0,#254
20 DOS

Done.  NitrOS-9 L2 prompt in 15 seconds, no moving parts, pure 
silence, and Boisy's DriveWire 3 drivers are even in the boot 
file.  In fact, I want to thank Boisy for having the original 
NitrOS-9 boot floppies with all the drivers and scripts to simplify 
making new boot disks with other drivers.  I took it from there and 
ended up with my own Drive Pak bootable disk but left the DW3 stuff 
in there.  Users can choose between the CoCoNet server or DW3 server, 
although they use totally different schemes.  From BASIC you can 
mount floppies by pathname/web URL from the CoCo and there is no 
GUI.  It's a console window.  I do have a GUI version but there's no 
time to finish it this year.  It has vertically arranged 5.25" style 
floppy drives that open and close with the lever and have the 
red/green LEDs, and a scrolling log window.  The console version 
shows the log as well.  Both are in VB.NET and could be expanded on 
or ported by users over time if we like.

The CoCoNet server behaves like a modem.  You can send AT commands to 
it to do everything, including Telnet, but that requires a terminal 
program, as CoCoNet doesn't deal with Telnet.

If the pak boot file is not there, a search will be made on the 
server disk #0, then the real drives.

Does anybody have an OS-9 VHD they'd like to distribute on the 
pak?  Zip it and e-mail it to me and I'll get it on there.  I don't 
have time to get any of the game floppies to boot and run from the 
pak on a per disk basis, but a fully loaded VHD with all the cool 
stuff on it would be easy to integrate.




-- 
~ Roger Taylor