[Coco] CoCoNet status

[Roger Taylor]

Hey dudes and dudettes, how about a little update on that "thing" 
called CoCoNet and the progress of the MicroSD drive pak, etc.  I 
have been getting e-mails asking about these things but it's hard to 
get into lengthy discussions with each person or I would have no time 
for anything else.  Sometimes a good update will answer a lot of 
questions at once.

First, I can only produce these things efficiently and deliver 
pending orders on-time, if I get new orders.  I'm sure this is 
exactly how any business works, and I'm being bold to say that I feel 
like Cloud-9 works this way as well.  That's my 2 cents on the 
Cloud-9 topic.  Nobody's doing anybody wrong or looking down on 
anybody.  People are simply GOING THROUGH ROUGH TIMES since a certain 
date back in 2008.  Anybody else who's successful enough at something 
to admit they're not having problems, is Lucky For Now.  They're 
coming to get ya, that's for sure.  The middle class picks up the 
tab, folks, one way or another.  Enough of that.

I'm asking that every die-hard CoCo user out there who wants the 
ultimate experience to consider three people in your next purchase of 
a CoCo gadget.  All 3 people make items that are designed to KEEP THE 
COCO ALIVE.
These people are: Roger Taylor (myself), Mark Marlette, and Roy 
Justus (VGA Adaptor box). If I left anybody out, please step forward 
and tell us what you've been working your ass off for years to 
develop for the CoCo community and you are instantly a hit in my book.

About CoCoNet.  It's not Ghostware.  I've been running it for over a 
year as I write it and CONTINUOUSLY reburn EPROMs in my tests.

CoCoNet is a collection of features added to Disk BASIC 1.1 and is 
burned to an EPROM that can be used in the Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak 
or the upcoming 1GB drive pak, or your own floppy controller.
It's a 16K ROM that works in any CoCo with Extended BASIC, or any 
CoCo 3 of course.   In other words, "CoCoNet works with any CoCo that 
has Extended BASIC".

You can take one of my serial paks (with the TTL header) and plug in 
either an EB301 bluetooth module or MicroSD drive module, plug in the 
CoCoNet EPROM, and you get as many features possible Automatically.
Btw, my Deluxe Wireless Pak and drive pak both are just the serial 
pak with the right module plugged in and the address configured for 
either $FF68 or $FF6C.

As complicated as all of this may sound, it really is plug and play, 
plug and go, or whatever you want to call an out of the box ready pak.

I've got a few more days, maybe a week, of fine tuning before I 
release the 16K CoCoNet 1.0 ROM image for those who have their own 
burners and want to give it a try.  I will burn EPROMs for a few 
bucks plus postage, but the client ROM is free since people are going 
to share it anyway.  The CoCoNet server applet for Windows will be 
free as well for the same reason.

Since the client (CoCo) ROM and the PC server software will be free, 
it's a free "product".  You can boot to the ROM and with the right 
cartridges plugged into your MPI you can customize your own setup.

What I make and sell to help clear off your desk of bulky power 
hungry gadgets is the Deluxe Wireless RS-232 Pak (bluetooth to PC) 
which pretty much clones the Tandy RS-232 Pak but over the air and 
has an EPROM socket which I will put the CoCoNet in to give the CoCo 
an instant wireless virtual drive system.

I'm also wrapping up on a "drive pak" which will have a built in 1GB 
MicroSD drive, also uses the CoCoNet ROM, and gives AT LEAST 256 
virtual floppies, huge hard drives, and any other kinds of partitions 
you want to add.  Disk BASIC will use up to 256 720K disks in one 
partition at a time, OS-9 can have mass drives of any size and also 
use the floppies... a NitrOS-9 boot disk is already on my own pak and 
fires up with all the drivers and module directories so you can build 
other disks or mass drives that boot using the pak, etc.  You know the drill.

I think this answers the question of "how can I get disks onto my 
drive pak?", although the distro pak will be prestocked with lots of goodies.
With CoCoNet, you can mix and match 4 or 5 different TYPES of floppy 
disks on DRIVES 0-3, and copy between them if you like.

115200 bps bitbanger virtual floppy disks (remote PC pathname or web URL)
	DRIVE 0,!"http://www.coco3.com/nitros9boot.dsk"
	DRIVE 1,!"http://www.coco3.com/games.dsk"
	DRIVE 2,!"c:\program filers\rainbow ide\projects\disks\mynewgame.dsk"
115200 bps RS-232 Pak virtual floppy disks (remote PC pathname or web URL)
	DRIVE 0,"http://www.coco3.com/nitros9boot.dsk"
	DRIVE 1,"http://www.coco3.com/games.dsk"
	DRIVE 2,"c:\program filers\rainbow ide\projects\disks\mynewgame.dsk"
MicroSD virtual disks (using a "drive pak")
	DRIVE 0;100  mounts disk #100 on drive 0
MicroSD LSN-based disks
	DRIVE 0;0,11,65   mounts a floppy starting at any LSN you want
Real 1793 controller floppy disks
	DRIVE 0,ON	turns ON REAL DRIVE #0
	DRIVE 0,OFF	returns to virtual drive prior

With a totally bare CoCo 1, 2, or 3 you can plug in the pak, turn the 
CoCo on, type DOS and within 5 seconds you're sitting at a NitrOS-9 
prompt.  You don't HAVE to do that.  You can make it where drive 0 
has a game disk mounted automatically on power-up, or the system disk, etc.

Right now only the NitrOS-9 L2 6809 version is on the pak.  In a few 
days I'll have an L1 version and depending on what CoCo you have the 
pak in, the compatible boot disk will be used automatically when the 
DOS command is used.  I haven't included the details of some of my 
schemes because it'll get me off on a serious tangent, but I'm making 
the pak as plug-and-play as possible so it can be used to "save a 
CoCo", so to speak, bring 'er back from the dead with thousands of 
games and apps without needing anything else but the little 
pak.  Btw, it's the size of a game pak.

Back to work!

Roger Taylor

-- 
~ Roger Taylor