[Coco] Drives, Controllers, and Alternatives?

[Jim Cox]

Well it appears my first post didn't go through, so I'll 
try again:

What are people paying for drives and drive controllers 
these days?

If a drive and controller are getting ~ $100 US on eBay, 
then to be honest, the DriveWire at $40 when used with an 
older PC, seems to be a realatively decent alternative.

I know some may not be able to read threir older 5.25" 
360K disks with this set up, but if you can get them 
copied over to 3.5" 720K disks, then the problem is 
solved. What other problems am I missing here?

What other alternatives are out there? This issue has 
become a concern for me because I do believe that the 
inability to read disks is a threat to keeping the CoCo 
community from shrinking or even dying.

Could a solution be found that would allow the use of 
newer 1.2M 5.25" drives to read the older 360K drives? 
I've been told that this is an issue. Is it?

-Jim