[Coco] Where to get CoCo parts -- floppy drive, etc.

[Steve Bjork]

For the past six months, I've been working on a hybrid hardware 
emulation of the CoCo floppy drive system.  Rather than trying to patch 
the software to get SD cards to work with the CoCo, the idea is to make 
a device thinks it's a Western Digital floppy disk controller and talks 
to the CoCo the way software wants to.

The current design uses two cheap micro controllers.  (Under $9 for 
both.) The first chip talk to the CoCo by responding as if it's a WD 
controller and handles all the signal lines to the CoCo.  The second 
talks to both the SD card and PC for the data needed for the first 
chip.  I'm using USB as the interface to the PC but that may change to 
Ethernet in the final design.

You will be able to setup different configurations of "Floppies" and 
select between them via a "POKE"

In addition to the default WD floppy disk mode, the device will also 
have direct communication mode to even faster speed transfers with extra 
capabilities.  Playing sound files stored on the SD is one idea being 
looked into. (Remember, there is a "Sound In" line on the cartridge 
connector.)

As for many, the Recession has hit hard and time is very limited.  (I 
can only spend a few hours a month on the project.)  So please, don't 
look for this project anytime soon.

Since I have no desire to manufacture and sell the device, I will turn 
the completed design over to someone else in the coco community to get 
the project out on the market.

Steve Bjork

On 3/2/2011 5:11 AM, Brian Blake wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 2, 2011 at 7:56 AM, Jeremy Michea<jmichea at cogeco.ca>  wrote:
>
> In theory, DriveWire and CoCoNet are great. In reality, they truly are a
> Godsend for most instances. However, there are circumstances where real
> hardware is necessary. Try playing Gold Runner 2000 or virtually any Diecom
> CoCo3 games via DriveWire or CoCoNet. It just doesn't work. I know there are
> at least two CoCoNutz working on hardware floppy controller emulators that
> would alleviate this problem, but, those are still a little ways off.
>
> If you're not interested in playing games, this may not be a problem; I do
> not know for sure. There's a lot of software for the CoCo and I haven't been
> able to test all of it.
>
>
>