[Coco] Disk drive question

Bill Pierce ooogalapasooo at aol.com
Wed Jan 18 16:48:56 EST 2012


The J&M controller & the 3 drives are the same ones Michael Knudson (it's his old system) used for years while developing Ultimuse3. I also have an FD-502 that I've tried. The system hadn't been used except an ocassional boot up in over 10 years. Nothing in the system was changed and it booted (minus the hard boot due to missing boot floppy) when I first recieved it. As I was trying to figure out the system and what I had recieved, when things slowly started to fail. Keyboard was first (dry rotted pads on the Eagle keys) then the drives started to slowly fail. In DECB the computer itself runs fine. I have even loaded in ML programs, Lyra for instance, and they run as expected. DSKINI and BACKUP seem to work but when I go to read the new disk, they error out. OS9 format shows errors while formating. Sector 00 being a constant in the errors. Assuming sector 00 is not writing, I would also assume sector 00 is not reading therefore boot fails in OS9 Lv II. Does os9 lv I use sector 00 in it's boot as well?


Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3 
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Bill Pierce
ooogalapasooo at aol.com




-----Original Message-----
From: Bob Devries <devries.bob at gmail.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Wed, Jan 18, 2012 4:31 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] Disk drive question


I had two 80-track drives and one 40 track drive connected to my coco for 
ears. That should not prevent OS9 from booting.
I would investigate the drive heads to see if they need cleaning, and also 
heck to see if the J&M controller is compatible with OS9 LII. I seem to 
emember reading somewhere that (one version of) the J&M controller was not 
ery compatible with the Coco3.
Regards, Bob Devries
7º10'26"S, 151º16'30"E
----- Original Message ----- 
rom: "Wayne Campbell" <asa.rand at gmail.com>
o: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
ent: Thursday, January 19, 2012 4:13 AM
ubject: Re: [Coco] Disk drive question

> On another note, are there any special jumper settings needed to use a 
> Coco 5.25 drive on a PC? The 3 drives I have are a 5.25 40trk DS (D0), 
> 5.25 80trk DS (D2) and 3.5 80trk DS (D1). I do have a couple of old 3.5" 
> 1.4meg drives that came with PCs. The drive is set for drive 0 on the 
> Coco.

 This may be your problem. As I recall, a 80-track disk only allows you to 
 use 3 drive descriptors. When I had my CoCo3 I had 2 40-trk 5.25s and 1 
 80-trk 3.5. I'm not certain, but trying to use 2 80-trk drives may be what 
 is causing your problem. Someone who knows more than I can say for sure.

 Wayne


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