[Coco] A little help with DriveWire

[Joel Ewy]

Marcus Vinicius Garrett Chiado wrote:
> Dear CoCo friends,
>
> I´m gonna receive my first CoCo 3 computer ever in about two weeks, so I am
> a complete newbie in terms of any CoCo machine.
>
> I also bought the DriveWire with that EPROM installed into the disk drive
> interface. I´ve got the following questions so far (I am sure there wil be
> more coming!):
>
>
> 1) What kind of image files could I make available with DriveWire to my
> CoCo?
>
>   
I believe that DriveWire will work with both RS-DOS and OS-9 floppy
images on the host PC.  But of course, you will have to boot OS-9 in
order to be able to access the contents of the OS-9 disks.  And you'll
have to use a utility (available on os9archive.rtsi.com) called 'rsdos'
to be able to access the contents of RS-DOS disks from within OS-9.
> 2) Would I just need to load the image under DriveWire and then power on my
> CoCo in order to load it?
>
>   
I think this depends on whether or not you will have the CoCo side of
DriveWire in an EPROM.  If not, you will probably have to load a CoCo DW
program from disk or tape first.
> 3) Are there games that run "directly", I mean, without the need of typing
> DOS command lines? Like, for instance, Karateka (Apple II) and The Goonies
> (Atari)? - not these games, only the way they run.
>
>   
Since the CoCo's disk system is optional, the CoCo does not attempt to
load any OS or program from disk automatically when powered on.  The
closest you would come is the OS-9 games distributed by Tandy, which
come with a stripped-down OS-9 system disk.  In this case, you would
have to type only 'DOS' in Disk Extended Color BASIC (DECB, AKA RS-DOS)
to start booting OS-9.  I believe that with these games, OS-9 will
auto-execute them when it gets booted up.  Games like this would include
Rescue on Fractalus, Microscopic Mission, King's Quest III, Sub Battle
Simulator.  Probably others.

There may be a few games for RS-DOS that will also run when you type
'DOS', just because their loader code has been put in the same place on
the disk where the OS-9 bootloader usually resides.  They would have had
to be specially written that way.
> 4) Does the "file" games (more than 1 game per disk side) run mostly under
> DOS or OS-9?
>
>   
There are plenty of each.
> 5) I´d like to copy games to actual floppies. Are there special copiers to
> copy protected games? Are there proteced games?
>
>   
There are protected games (Gates of Delirium comes to mind) and programs
to crack them.  I don't know much about them though, so I'll leave this
one for others to answer better.
> Sorry for these "dumb" questions, but the case is I´m a little lost here.
>
>   
I think most of here enjoy sharing what we know with newbies!
> :-D
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
> MARCUS VINICIUS GARRETT CHIADO
> Editor da Jogos 80: http://www.revista-jogos80.cjb.net
> Gosta de filmes de Terror?
> http://br.groups.yahoo.com/group/terra-dos-mortos/
> Colecionador de videogames antigos e de micros 8 bits
> "Quem tem um(a) filho(a), tem o maior tesouro do mundo"
>
>