[Coco] First experiences with my DE1

[Frank Swygert]

Okay, I don't have a DE1, but from your description the thing is obviously hard coded to be a CoCo3 WITH a Multipak interface. That makes sense, you can incorporate several add-ons directly into the CoCo as if they were built in and still maintain compatibility. There was a convention to what slot you used for specific devices, and I think slot 4 was always the disk controller. So if you have a multipak the slot select must be in position 4 to boot (or whatever slot the disk controller is in). If not it won't boot into DECB, just ECB. I think it's OS-9 that "expects" things to be in certain slots, not as important with DECB, but I've never used a multi-pak either.

Can't read/write SD cards, have to use Drivewire. Someone already mentioned that. I would think SD support could be added, but through the expansion header using an Arduino or some other processor to do the job, not the on-board SD card slot. The FPGA isn't big enough to do it on-board with all the CoCo stuff too. If you have to use another processor board you may as well use something like a Raspberry Pi or some other small single board computer as a drivewire server instead of trying to use the DE-1 expansion header or SD card slot. I bet you could find one (maybe one of the little Android computers?) that would fit inside the CoCo case along with a DE-1 and a mini USB keyboard...

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Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2014 06:52:51 +1000
From: Nick Marentes<nickma2 at optusnet.com.au>

I've now got my DE1 running the CoCo3FPGA with Disk Extended Basic.

I don't know exactly how or why though.

What I decided to do is erase the Flash RAM then wrote the CoCo3 rom
image (32K) to the flash starting at address 000000.

The DE1 didn't boot but when I set the DE1 switches (2 & 3) to select
slot 4 of the virtual multipack, it booted into Disk Basic like a normal
CoCo3 with a disk controller cart.

Why I don't know. I hadn't flashged the Disk Basic ROM so clearly it is
included in the CoCo3 ROM image.

And why didn't Extended Color Basic boot when the virtual MPI switch was
on 0?

I'm sure a multipack with no cartridge artached just boots as a
cartridgless CoCo3?

Anyway, it's working.

Now I need to work out how to read DSK images. I copied a DSK file to
the SDCard but I can't seem to read it. Anyone had experience with the
DE1 reading DSK's?

It does do it doesn't it?