[Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M controllers, and EDTASM pak.

[Bill Pierce]

Mark,
To get drivewire going on the Coco, you need to have HDBDOS.
To get hdbdos to the Coco, you use one of several programs that will transfer the hdbdos file to cassette or just use the hdbdos wave file and play it through the soundcard output to a cassette or to the Coco directly by plugging the old Coco cass cable into the headphone out on your PC. Once you get hdbdos to the Coco, that's all the software you need on the Coco itself unless you want to use nitros9 with dw.
There are a couple of places to get the hdbdos cass/wav files but I always forget where they are at when someone wants a link. I have several configurations of hdbdos for cc1, 2, & 3 and will gladly send you the files. Just send me a private email.

Next you will need a cable... Coco serial to DB-9. These can be made from old cables, I think the pinout is on the DW4 site or you can purchase one from Cloud9 for about $14+sh.
Also, if your PC has no DB-9 serial, you will need a USB-2-DB9 adapter. They are (on average) $12 - $20 and available in about any good electronics supplier. I bought mine from Office Depo for $12. They don't usually carry them in stock but will order them. They will ship direct to you and usually waive S/H. These work very well. You still need the above cable.

Once you have hdbdos on the coco and a cable connected to the pc, all that's left is the DW4 software. Just D/L and follow the instructions on the site. If the cable is connected, DW4 will see the connection in the config wizard and the rest is all defaults.

With this set up, you can access the (literally) thousands of disk files in all the archives. This would be equivilent to having been extremely rich in the 80s and owning every piece of software advertised in the RS catolog, Ranbow mag, Hot Coco, and Color Computer Magazine. On top of that, you will now control multiple virtual hard drives with the Coco..... for FREE!

The cool thing is, hdbdos and dw4 will work without a disk controller! Just a Coco and a cable. I run my Coco 1 this way as my MPI and controller as well as my other carts (CocoMidi & Orch90) are on my Coco 3. When everything is up and running, I have a Coco 3, Coco 1, 1-2 VCC Coco 3 emulators on the PC and they all share files through DW4 with just a few mouse clicks.
Oh yeah... DW4 also allows your Coco to play midi files through you PC with no external hw using Lyra, CocoMidi Pro, or Ultimuse3 in NitrOS9.

Bill Pierce
My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
Co-Webmaster of The TRS-80 Color Computer Archive
http://www.colorcomputerarchive.com/
Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thu, Aug 22, 2013 10:20 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M controllers, and EDTASM pak.



On Aug 22, 2013, at 06:36 , Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
> DriveWire - All I can say is... WOW... Best thing since the disk drive was 
invented
> http://sites.google.com/site/drivewire4/

Is there already a canned solution with DriveWire for transferring an RSDOS disk 
image file on the PC to a real floppy on the CoCo?

Also, how could I bootstrap DriveWire onto my CoCo if I don't have any means of 
writing CoCo floppies other than on the CoCo itself? I bought a device called 
KryoFlux thinking I'd use it to write CoCo floppies on my Mac, but I didn't read 
the fine print enough to realize that it's going to take some software 
development work before I can do that. It'll read the floppies just fine, but 
there's a big gaping hole in the write side of the equation. Grr!

For the Apple IIe that I'm also playing with, I found a package called ADTpro 
which can be used to transfer Apple disk images to floppies on the Apple over a 
serial link. It can even bootstrap itself onto an Apple with no pre-existing 
floppy disks by taking advantage of the way Apples let you receive input from a 
serial card as if you typed it on the keyboard. It seems to me that it should be 
quite possible to do a similar thing on the CoCo using either the cassette 
interface, or a Deluxe RS232 Pak plus multi-pak interface. Has that particular 
wheel already been invented on the CoCo?

-- 
Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
http://www.nf6x.net/


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