[Coco] Re: CoCo needs?

[Boisy G. Pitre]

On Mar 8, 2005, at 3:32 AM, John R. Hogerhuis wrote:

> DW does not require a controller to be plugged in.

That is correct.  There does need to be SOME way for the CoCo to "see" 
the DriveWire server.  So at the very least, something has to be 
plugged into the cartridge slot.  But this could well be a ROM Pak with 
HDB-DOS in the ROM.

> Boisy made me an MP3 cassette file at some point that I loaded through
> an MP3 player on the cassette port (since I don't have a working floppy
> drive). I was using it to test my PalmOS DW server. But that was
> experimental, and last I checked he couldn't make a new MP3 file that
> worked for him for latest drivewire.

BTW, what is the status of that John?

> Now if you want to use DW with disk basic, someone will need to create 
> a
> patched disk basic rom and make a simple, hopefully cheap ROM cart with
> it in ROM. This wouldn't do any good for apps that access the disk
> controller directly though.

You must not be aware that DriveWire 2.0 comes with HDB-DOS for 
DriveWire?  That's one of the major advantages of 2.0, that and CoCo 
1/2 support, and yet smaller I/O routines on the CoCo.  So Disk BASIC 
support is now in the product.  All that is needed is to have a ROM pak 
with HDB-DOS in it.

Is this something that folks would want to buy with DriveWire?  I can 
certainly talk to Mark about productizing an affordable ROM pak 
solution (since HDB-DOS-DW already comes with the package).

> Other than that it would be a good, cheap solution (BTW, for the server
> you can theoretically use anything with a serial port and storage space
> and that can keep up with the coco talking at 57600... obsolete 
> laptops,
> PDAs, palmtops, old computers, ... someone had complained about not
> having their PC close to their coco... lots of possible solutions for
> the server side, since Boisy publishes the DW protocol)

Yep, it's up there for all to see.
> --
Boisy G. Pitre
E-Mail: boisy at boisypitre.com
Mobile: (337) 781-3997
Web: www.boisypitre.com