[Coco] Disk drive interface question...extended basic required to use it?

Walter Miraglia walter.miraglia at gmail.com
Mon Aug 31 20:12:43 EDT 2015


I purchased a disk drive FD 500 and 26-3129 controller. I was able to test
them at VCFMW and they both worked great (thanks again guys).  I brought
them home. Then I unpacked my recent eBay purchase and set it up. It
powered up and all keys work.  ( a COCO 2 ) with 16 k ram (expandable to 64
with 2 64x4 ram chips)  version  1.3 basic in the standard 8 k rom (but
switchable to 16k because the rom socket on the motherboard is 28 pin).

I plugged in the controller and the boot message at the top of the screen
did not indicate disk basic like it did when we tested it at the show.    I
cleaned the contacts on the cartridge port and cleaned the contacts on the
cartridge but no luck.

I think I remember Neil saying I would need extended basic before the disk
basic would work.  Can anyone confirm this?   I was going to burn a 16 k
27128 this evening as soon as I find the file and then change the jumper
setting on the board to 128k.

The testing was all done with COCO 3's which I am hoping to get soon,  and
we know this cart does not require 12 volts as it worked fine in the COCO 3.

Unfortunately I don't have another cart to test with to verify its not the
COCO 2 with basic 1.3.

Help?   :0)


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