[Coco] Using a CoCo disk drive with a BBC computer

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

Dan Olson wrote:
> Tandy floppy drives are standard drives, they just have all the drive 
> selects jumpered, as they're designed for a cable which only has one DS 
> wire connected.  Don't know about the BBC...

The BBC uses standard drives either jumpered as DS0 or DS1 (it can only 
normally have 2 drives, a restriction of the firmware), however the way 
these are handled is quite clever.

side 0 of first drive is drive 0
side 0 of second drive is drive 1
side 1 of first drive is drive 2
side 1 of second drive is drive 3

In this way if you write a single sides disk on a double sided drive the 
drive numbers stay the same, also a double sided disk can be written in 
a single sided drive as long as only drives 0 and 1 are used.

To answer the OP's question, I have used my CoCo/Dragon drives with no 
problems on my BBC and BBC Master, plus a few other 80's micros too :)

Cheers.

Phill.

-- 
Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !

"You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.