[Coco] Still having newbie issues

[Aaron Wolfe]

There are basically 3 ways a program can talk to a coco disk drive:

1. Use the ROM routines built into the coco, as BASIC and *some* machine
language programs do
2. Use a driver, as all OS9 programs do
3. Invent your own code that talks directly to the floppy controller

Programs in the first two categories will work with hard drive controllers
and alternatives like DriveWire, but programs in the third will not.
On Jul 9, 2014 7:57 PM, "Stephen Pereira" <spereira1952 at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> Hello again, all,
>
> I am still having a problem with two programs that I can get to work on
> the VCC emulator, running on my MacBook Pro in Windows XP on Parallels, but
> I cannot get them to work on my physical system.  One program is Zork I,
> and the other is Disk EDTASM.  Both of these .DSK files have been
> downloaded from the Color Computer Archive.
>
> My physical system is a CoCo 3, recently purchased from Cloud-9.  I made
> up an EPROM cartridge, and I have HDB-DOS in EPROM, also purchased from
> Cloud-9.  I am using Drivewire 3 at the moment, served up on a Dell Mini
> laptop running Windows XP.  Everything works great in this setup, but I am
> stymied by the fact that I cannot get these two programs to work, even
> though both do work just fine with the VCC emulator.
>
> I even went and purchased a Tandy FD-500 floppy disk controller ($50 plus
> $10 shipping on eBay) so that I could power up with Disk Extended Color
> Basic to start, then CLOADM HDB-DOS into my machine so I would have all the
> original CoCo ROMs in place, and HDB-DOS in RAM.  Still no dice.
>
> I realize this is a trivial thing in the big picture, but why can I get
> Zork II and Zork III to run fine (now that I have my EPROM cartridge
> properly configured and running correctly) but not Zork I?  What is it
> about my setup that I cannot run Disk EDTASM?
>
> I would greatly appreciate any ideas that you folks might be able to
> offer.  Thanks, in advance, for all your attention and assistance!
>
> smp
>
>
>
>
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>