[Coco] COCO FPGA

[Aaron Wolfe]

If you want to run software that talks directly to the hardware, then
4 floppies is all you will ever have, since there are only 4 drive
selects as Gary explained.
To be clear, this is a tiny fraction of software.  This is not a
problem with any software that uses OS9, any software that uses BASIC
(unless it does some poking around).
All of this software already doesn't work with *any* of the hard drive
controllers, sd /compact flash memory controllers, or DriveWire on a
real coco, and honestly I've not heard many complaints about any of
those solutions, so I just cannot believe its a very big deal.

Gary already explained that in any case, he has a way to map those 4
drives to multiple places on a larger medium, and he already talked
about modes that work more like the hard drive controllers on a real
coco do, where you get a large bank of hundreds of floppy images.

I don't think there is any possibility that you'll be limited to 4
disks per sd card.


On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 11:29 AM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
> I understand that cost is the controlling factor. I don't have a problem with "wasting" half of the
> available space on a $4 SD card. I wouldn't object to 256 "floppies" on an SD card but if I only get
> 4 180K floppies per card I'd just as soon stick with drivewire and using the coco3fpga with it's drivewire
> tether.
>
>
> The Other Frank
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 26, 2011 at 09:33:09AM -0500, Frank Swygert wrote:
>> Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:21:57 +1100
>> Mark already explained that he has a disk image scheme figured out (splitting the 255 images between the SD card and DriveWire). But I wouldn't care if half an SD card was wasted as long as it worked reliably. Technology moves on, and if a 2GB card costs the same as a 1GB (never saw a 720MB... 512MB or 1GB) it doesn't matter that half is "wasted" as long as it does what it's supposed to do reliably. How many of use bought 360K floppy discs and used them as 160/180K discs (whatever the 35 track was... around 160K IIRC / and 40 track single sided). Sure, some of use punched holes and made them "flippies", but I used many without doing that as prices came down.
>>
>>
>> ---------------------
>> From: Mark McDougall<msmcdoug at iinet.net.au>
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] COCO FPGA
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts<coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Message-ID:<4EF83CB5.1000200 at iinet.net.au>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> On 26/12/2011 3:32 PM, Frank Pittel wrote:
>>
>>
>> >I can get 2gig SD cards here for $4 so I don't mind wasting even a lot of
>> >space but a 2gig card for 4 180K floppies is a bit to much waste!!
>> I don't think anyone here would propose using an entire SD card for 4 floppy
>> images. It would be almost as painful as using actual floppy drives.
>>
>> I would propose that a FAT-formatted SD with floppy disk images, and a
>> mechanism for 'mounting' the images would be the most sensible solution by
>> far. Even using the HDBDOS 255-drive mechanism would be a vast improvement
>> (and as I mentioned, already implemented (read-only) on my Coco).
>>
>> I'm sure Gary has something similar up his sleeve...
>>
>> --
>> Frank Swygert
>> Publisher, "American Motors Cars"
>> Magazine (AMC)
>> For all AMC enthusiasts
>> http://www.amc-mag.com
>> (free download available!)
>>
>>
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>
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