[Coco] Drivewire cable - Where to get it?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Gene Heskett <gheskett at wdtv.com> wrote:
> On Monday 29 July 2013 17:30:25 Fedor Steeman did opine:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I just realized I have HDBDOS 1.2 on a cartridge, so I guess that means
>> I can readily use Drivewire. I just need a Drivewire cable going from
>> my CoCo's serial port to the computer. However, I cannot seem to be
>> able to find where to order such a cable. And what if your computer no
>> longer has a serial port, but only USB?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Fedor
>>
> Almost any serial to usb adaptor I have tried works well except the
> pl2303's I have, they have a tendency to drop the first character of a
> transfer.  Not 100% of the time, but often enough the error logs when its
> listening to my UPS will eventually fill my /var partition on a terrabyte
> drive.  But I'm partial to the FDTI versions, they Just Work(TM).
>

FTDI is a safe bet.  You'll pay a little more, but the adapter will
work.  One thing to remember though is that FTDI adapters usually come
with defaults that are not well suited to DriveWire.
You can gain 40% or so by adjusting settings as shown here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8Ehm-J0LAA

"Newer" Prolific adapters seem to work fine too, though it can be
difficult to tell what you're getting sometimes.  If the Prolific was
significantly cheaper and the store has a decent return policy, I'd
personally take the chance :)

-Aaron