[Coco] Stand-alone DriveWire devices.

[Eric J. Rothfus]

> Now that's a very novel approach.  You're effectively emulating a
> disk drive, though still requiring a disk controller on the CoCo.
> Mark and I have discussed the possibility of doing a floppy
> controller for the CoCo that would utilize a PC floppy controller
> (possibly a '765) but with a PIC to emulate WD1773 commands.  This
> way, existing RS-DOS software would work.
> 
> The ideal situation would be to wean CoCo users from floppy drives
> completely, but there has to be some way of bringing data into a
> CoCo from the outside world.  Plus there are those games that are on
> copy protected diskettes that cannot be easily transferred to other
> media.

The real impetus behind the SVD was to make it possible to use the
old gear without making ANY changes to it at all.  That is, no
special hardware, no special software...just a bootable OS (or, let's
face it, "game") and you're off and running.  And, yup, copy protected
disks was a big part of it.  In fact, I've made sure that "Sands of Egypt"
runs just fine with the SVD (this led to a change in the JVC format too).

The CoCo world is a bit easier than that of many of the other vintage
boxes, because you can _still_ create WD17XX disks with available
equipment for running on a CoCo with a floppy.  However, trying to do
that with a Model I FM-based floppy is getting very hard...let alone
trying to do it with a machine expecting hard-sectors, like the Heathkit.

Eric