[Coco] Making a new OS9 disk.

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

Boisy Pitre wrote:
> Phill,
> 
> Using ToolShed, you could certainly use 'os9 modbust' to bust the 
> individual modules from the bootfile and go from there.  That is 
> assuming you can extract the contents of the floppy to a disk image.

Right I'll try that, should be easy enough to extract as the boot disk, 
is a pretty standard Dragon format OS-9 disk.

> Also, please share with me how you got DriveWire to work on a Dragon, as 
> that is not a supported platform for the DriveWire product.  Did you 
> purchase DriveWire, and if so, did you modify the driver, etc?

Designed hardware consisting of a CPLD for address decoding and 
buffering, a ROM to hold a modified copy of SuperDos, and an FTDI245R 
module, basically on the Dragon side this appears like a latched buffer, 
and talks USB->virtual comp port to a PC running windows.

Details of the module I'm using are here :-

http://apple.clickandbuild.com/cnb/shop/ftdichip?op=catalogue-products-null&prodCategoryID=39&title=UM245R

Some pictures of the hardware setup here :-

http://daria.bio.warwick.ac.uk/~bshu/Dragon/USB/IMG_0119.JPG

Warning largish images :)

Server was scratch written from the published DriveWire spec in 
FreePascal, and should work on Windows and Linux, I may also be able to 
port it to Mac OSX, if I can figure out what is needed to get the third 
party serial component I am using to compile :)

Thinking about the Cloud 9 Drivewire stuff, it possibly could be made to 
work (cirtainly under OS9/Nitros), using the same method as on the CoCo, 
I believe when I checked a few months ago the PIA lines that are used 
for the CoCo Bitbanger, all appear on the Dragon Paralell port, so it 
may be possible to build a simple hardware interface that plugs into 
this, to give you a CoCo compatible bitbanger.

Cheers.

Phill.

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

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