[Coco] Re: Floppy contoler Q

[Arthur Flexser]

On Sun, 15 Jan 2006 farna at att.net wrote:

> I realize this discussion was really geared toward OS-9, which is almost
> unlimited as far as number of drives. The only limitations are the
> controller and memory to load drivers. With the Tandy controller the
> practical limit is three double sided floppies. I'm suspecting that Art is
> correct -- a fourth single sided drive could conceivably be wired in, but I
> don't see a practical reason to do so. Of course with some logic circuits
> added to the drive and side select lines a lot more floppies could be
> connected -- just manipulate the bits in the correct combination with the
> drivers. I think that falls under "if there's a will there's a way" though
> -- is there a practical reason to have 16 floppies connected when you can
> only read/write to one at a time? Unless you want to boost the signal and
> write to several at a time for copying purposes, I'd think not.

Actually, I do recall hearing of someone who hooked in some logic to the select
lines to enable (I think) 4 double-sided drives, with the extra one being
enabled whenever both DS1 and DS2 were active ($06 and $46 for its 2 sides).
A practical reason to do this, back in the olden days, would be if you were
running a BBS from floppies, which would require a goodly amount of storage.

Art