[Coco] Re: 512K vs disk copy

[Ray Watts]

Robert Emery wrote:

>Most 3.5" floppy drives are hardwired as drive 1, or B:. 
>  
>

****  I dunno about that , Bob.  I've used about a dozen 3.5" drives 
from 5 different companies on my CoCo's.  They all could could be 
jumpered for drive #0 - 3.  The NEC drives (my favorites) may have 
looked hard wired because they used a miniature 4-position switch 
"hidden" under the case for drive selection.  The switch could be 
reached with a small screwdriver and an educated guess for selection.

>My advice, if you want to be able to boot from a 3.5" floppy is to leave the
>drives jumpered as-is (5.25=/d0, 3.5=/d1), but intercept the drive select lines
>coming out of the controller and use a toggle switch to swap them at will. Then
>you can boot from either drive.
>  
>
****  It is easy to make a 3.5", 720k boot disk if you have EZGen or 
KwikGen.  If I recall correctly, you can also use the stock OS9Gen.  A 
convoluted method of making a 720k boot disk was presented by Dr ASCII 
in The Rainbow back about 1988.  I believe I used that method for my 
first boot disk.  Of course, once you have one boot disk, you can mess 
around with the modules and make more with Cobbler.

>As far as floppy disks, you can use HD disks for temporary backups if you cover
>the HD hole or glue the (non-optical) switch in the drive down. The disks I've
>used this way start developing errors after a few weeks, but they *may* have
>also been too close to a magnet. Not enough real experimentation to draw any
>conclusion other than "be careful".
>
>Bob
>
>  
>
**** Cheers,  Griz