[Coco] COCO Video

[Bruce W. Calkins]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gene Heskett"

> On Monday 24 June 2013 10:27:37 billg999 at cs.uofs.edu did opine:
>
>> To be honest, I don't
>> think Tandy ever expected the COCO to be anything but a cartridge based
>> game console like the Atari 2600 (thus the reason they never did a hard
>> disk for it even though they did for every one of the Z80 based
>> systems). Given that, I can't see them investing that much effort.
>>
>> bill
>
> Ahh, but they did do a hard drive interface for it, they had one at one of
> the local shacks that I've had in my hot, sweaty hands several times.  But
> it was in the late 80's, and $129.95 when child support and the IRS
> garnishments because she was playing with the returns was eating my lunch.
>
> Not exactly sure how it worked, was full of small scale ic's, 14 & 16 pin
> dips, and was I believe intended to function as an interface for some sort
> of SAS to MFM controller adapter.  IOW to get to the drive itself took yet
> another card between it and the drive.  The shack folks could not tell me
> what else was needed, no clue, I could pay the money and take it home &
> figure it out for myself.  I do know that os9 had 2 drivers for it, sized
> for a 5 meg drive, or a 15 meg drive.  Again, zero docs, you figure it 
> out.
> It had a place in the display case for several years, but I assume it was
> recycled when they left the coco business.  I never saw it on the tent 
> sale
> tables at the end either.
>>
>
> Cheers, Gene
> -- 

I have a copy of Radio Shack's "Hard Disk Interface"  It is little more than 
a few TTL chips providing a SASI port from the main CoCo buss.
Bruce W.