[Coco] Another 'rare' opportunity on eBay

Frank Swygert farna at att.net
Wed Jun 23 21:43:26 EDT 2010


The Disto HD controllers were also SASI, that's why they didn't work with more than one drive as far as I recall. SASI is a subset of SCSI I believe -- or rather SCSI is a more robust and useful SASI (SASI came first). The Disto controllers MIGHT have worked with two drives, but I distinctly remember from a manual of the one I had and from Tony himself that it was really a modified SASI controller, at least the little board that fit inside the Disto floppy controller. I recall a special cable had to be made for it to, or one purchased from Tony. That was mostly because the controller used a pin header on the controller end though.

It should be possible to use that old Tandy controller with a standard SCSI drive (old original SCSI). As someone stated, however, the ROM inside was limited to a few Tandy specific drives, you can't change the drive specs. That might not mean you can't connect a 100MB SCSI drive and use 15MB of it though.... The old Tandy hard drives were small by todays's standards! I remember when a 20MB (that's right, MEGABYTE, not GIGABYTE!) was a healthy drive. Still is for a CoCo...

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Date: Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:14:47 -0500
From:<sales at gimechip.com>

that's funny:-)
I think it's a sale in one of dad's Rainbow's that had it for 99.95, but
yep, you're right it was $129.95 (i did some digging). I didn't know it was
SASI - if it is SASI, could not an aftermarket SASI Controller (such as used
with the DISTO HDA) be used with it (assuming you could find one)? I wonder,
only because I read that they could only employ the Tandy Controller.
-John

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars"
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://www.amc-mag.com
(free download available!)




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