[Coco] Will Cloud-9 Super IDE work with SDC?

[Darren A]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 10:15 AM, Mark Marlette wrote:

>
> I see no reason why the two can't coexist together, like someone has
> already mentioned, the address selection must be different.With that said,
> I do not own a SDC.
> Regards,
>  Mark Marlette
>
>

The CoCo SDC uses the same addresses as a floppy controller.  I don't own
an SIDE but am aware that many have used one along with a real floppy
controller, so address conflicts should not be an issue.

The main problem I see in using them together would be the different BASICs
invloved.  The SIDE needs a version of HDB-DOS to access an IDE drive from
BASIC.  The SDC emulates a floppy controller so it's capable of working
with any version of Disk Basic, including HDB-DOS.  However, the extended
commands which allow you see the contents of the SD card and to
create/mount the disk images contained on the card are only available in
SDC-DOS.

You can put a STARTUP.CFG file on the SD card to automatically mount disk
images when booting the system under HDB-DOS. Another option would be to
flash a copy of HDB-DOS into one of the empty banks on the CoCo SDC.  That
way you can boot the system using SDC-DOS, use the DRIVE command to mount
the desired disk image(s) and then enter RUN @b to re-boot into HDB-DOS.

If your goal is to use the devices together under NitrOS-9, then start the
system with the MPI switch set to whichever device has the drive containing
the OS.  Once you boot into NitrOS-9, assuming the system is configured
with the required drivers and descriptors, both devices should work
together seamlessly. There are utilities available (sdir and sdrive) for
selecting image files on the SD card under NitrOS-9.

- Darren