[Coco] newb: Can I use DriveWire with my CoCo 2?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 1:24 AM, Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Aaron, That's part of the problem... there are no "maintainers" for most of the stuff needed. I would just link a site to the HDBDOS roms... but where? Sure, a couple of people have them on obscure "fan" sites, but there's no official repo other than the sources.

Right... to use this one element as an example.. You could do a quick
tutorial on building these from source (actually the NitrOS9 wiki has
some step by step guides already), or you could include your own
binary build.  If you link to the NitrOS9 building guide or include
your own, there is a reasonable chance that people following your docs
would end up with a current version. But, while some people will
appreciate the guide to building, some will look at such a thing as
too complicated or an indication that the software isn't "user
friendly" enough for their liking.  OTOH if you include your own bin,
you are in some ways obligated to provide support (what if something
seems to "work" in the current source version but not yours, what if
something important is fixed, etc).

I'm not trying to be discouraging, I think it's a good project and
I'll help :)  I just want to point out the pitfalls.  No good deed
goes unpunished and so on.
One compromise might be to include a prebuilt bin but also link to the
NitrOS9 guides for building them and explain that the prebuilt is for
ease of use but not authoritative, etc.  So whenever possible include
a quick download and a pointer to the origin or explanation of where
it came from so that an interested user can pursue things if they
desire.


> BTW... The Coco serial to DB-9 & DB-25 cable has been around since the 80s. They used it to network with MSDOS and thier Tandy 1000s, as well as Model 1, 3, & 4 and others. I had one in '95 hooked to my Win 95 machine transferring text files. I didn't have one before then as I had no other computer before then except my Cocos. There's text diagrams of the cable conversion in the MM archives from old messages on Delphi and CIS

Yes, but shorting CD to RD on the coco side to enable 230k mode is
something new I think.