[Coco] Thought

mmarlett at isd.net mmarlett at isd.net
Thu Sep 23 19:09:43 EDT 2004


Mark,

If your device was to interface to the floppy controller of a coco then I
would see no speed improvemnts over the current floppy due to the timing
loops that are in the drivers that are in RSDOS and NitrOS-9.

Making a new interface would allow you to go as fast as the coco can which
is faster than a floppy. Then you would have to write drivers. 

I would love to see USB devices on the CoCo.

Thanks,

Mark

>Allen Huffman wrote:
>
>> USB device versus USB host I get.  So the CoCo is a "device" to the PC. 
>
>Exactly.
>
>>  With Drivewire achieving floppy speeds via bitbanger ports, how much 
>> faster do you think such a USB interface could work?  What would it 
>> connect to on the CoCo side?
>
>Well USB 1.1 (as supported by the chip I'm using) has a theoretical
maximum
>throughput of 12Mbps. That's more than adequate for floppy speeds. I'm not
>sure at this stage exactly how much of this extra throughput, if indeed
any
>at all, will be realised when connected to the CoCo.
>
>It would connect to the standard floppy controller pak and would appear as
>normal floppy drives connected to the CoCo. I guess this would be the big
>advantage over the DriveWire as it would not require special drivers and
>would not be restricted to 0S-9 - much like Eric's SVD I linked to in my
>original post and which actually works on the CoCo now (something I
actually
>wasn't aware of until yesterday).
>
>IIRC (it has been a *long* time since I relinquished my real CoCo) there
was
>a drive controller pak that plugged into the CoCo?!? I guess another
option
>would be to eliminate the pak altogether and emulate the controller on the
>USB board as well? Interesting...
>
>Regards,
>
>-- 
>|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
>| <http://members.optushome.com.au/msmcdoug> |   with less resistance!"
>
>
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>



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