[Coco] CoCo Hard Drive History

[Bruce W. Calkins]

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Mark J. Blair"

>I recently got an OS-9 Level 2 package for the CoCo 3.

>
> The manual makes several mentions of hard drives. Were there any 
> commercially supported hard drive packages for the CoCo back when it was 
> in production, or are these mentions of hard drive support leakage from 
> other OS-9 distributions, or referring to something that folks were 
> expected to home-brew, etc.? I do not recall ever seeing a hard drive 
> package for the CoCo back then, but I quit paying much attention to 
> anything CoCo-related around 1985 or so.
>
> -- 
> Mark J. Blair, NF6X



========================



The drive descriptors in the OS-9 package were for the Radio Shack/Tandy 
hard drive package.  That hardware started with an overpriced cartridge to 
SASI adapter with a SASI to MFM adapter card in an again overpriced hard 
drive enclosure.  The enclosure was the same unit used with the Model 3/4.


Disto/CRC made a SASI adapter that plugged in to their floppy drive 
controllers.  They along with a few other companies made more "affordable" 
hard drive sets for the CoCo.  Burke and Burke's unit used a CoCo buss to 
ISA buss adapter to use an 8 bit MFM controller card.  Other systems used a 
SASI to MFM card to utilize common MFM drives.


I was blessed in that I acquired a complete CoCo 3 with hard drive and 
manuals that had been dropped off at the recycling center around 1993.  All 
of the third party hard drive sets required their own drive descriptors as 
they did not conform to the Tandy specification.

Bruce W. - KV4OE