[Coco] CoCo and SATA/USB drives.

[Mark Marlette]

Anything is possible.....

But what you have to watch for is it practical or will not work well. 
For example. That is why the SB will use an embedded Ethernet solution. 
Expensive yes, but it is performance based. Having a 1.78MHz 8 bit 
processor trying to run an OS and service the protocol, etc would tank 
the poor little 8 bitter. Let the hardware manage everything and just 
pass data to/from the CoCo, almost transparent but the data stream can 
be all the processor/OS can handle.

With time chip solutions appear, like in the above example.

AS I have not looked at USB in detail as pertaining to those devices, 
james and James have. Too much on my plate right now.

Keep in mind that USB by itself has a higher bandwidth many hundred 
times than the CoCo itself. Some devices handshake, some do not. The 
spec might say that they do but I can tell you from the IDE development 
side that a spec is not followed, what works is.

We always love to be proved wrong. This is what makes the CoCo still fun.

Mark


Quoting James Hrubik <jimhrubik at earthlink.net>:

> Well, first off, don't stop thinking. %^D
>
> Years ago I earned a number of brickbats on this list for suggesting  
> an IDE adapter for the CoCo.  They said it couldn't be done.  Its was 
>  done.
>
> I suggested a VDG adapter for the CoCo.  They said it couldn't be  
> done.  Roy proved them wrong.
>
> Five or six years ago I suggested a USB adapter for the CoCo.  "You  
> don't understand the difficulty.  It can't be done" said they.  And  
> they are right, I don't understand the difficulty.  I have no  
> training whatever in electronic engineering.  I DO have, however, an  
> old Kodak DC240 camera that I use daily for my work.  It has a Mac- 
> type serial port, and connects directly with a Mac printer cable to  
> old Macs.  It also came with a cable that has the Mac serial plug on  
> one end, a USB plug on the other end, and a little "tootsie roll"  
> that looks like an RF choke toward one end.  It plugs directly into  
> my Pavillion and my iMac.  No adapter.  I use that cable every day.   
> I don't understand the difficulty.  I don't even know where I would  
> start to write a driver for such a thing.  But I DO know that my  
> camera sends .jpgs every day down a cable that is serial at one end  
> and USB at the other with no adapter.  And I DO know that my  
> Pavillion running XP is too stupid to know the difference.
>
> So don't be discouraged.  Keep on thinking outside the box.  If we  
> don't ask the stupid questions, we will never learn to defy gravity.
>
> On May 24, 2006, at 2:24 AM, Jim Cox wrote:
>
>> This got me thinking about the future of Floppies and Hard Drives  
>> for the CoCo community.  With low cost USB External Enclosueres for  
>> SATA drives becoming available and with USB floppy drives already  
>> available, I think what the CoCo needs is a USB 2.0 adapter that  
>> can address both.  I wonder if it is possible to have this adapter  
>> create a new drive type that will allow the CoCo to read 1.44M 3.5"  
>> floppies.
>>
>> I'll follow up later when I have time, but I would like to know  
>> what others think about the future of drives and how the changes  
>> will affect the CoCo.
>>
>> -Jim Cox
>>
>
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