[Coco] some questions and thoughts..... and a return to being a COCO nut... <G>

Thu Jun 19 20:46:18 EDT 2014

Salvador, the link to the DW4 specification is at:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/drivewireserver/index.php

For some reason my browser keeps taking me to the project page and not the Wiki. I'm on someone else's computer so it may be their browser.

The documentation at Cloud9 is for DriveWire3, NOT DriveWire4 (completely different monsters). I don't know which you are looking for, but if you're want DW4, the Cloud9 docs are not what you want. Try the link above and if it doesn't take you to the DW4 wiki, then something's going on with SourceForge.

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens

My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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-----Original Message-----
From: Salvador Garcia <ssalvadorgarcia at netscape.net>
To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thu, Jun 19, 2014 8:28 pm
Subject: Re: [Coco] some questions and thoughts..... and a return to being a COCO nut... <G>

 Hi all, sorry for the blank posts. My email is blocked at work and the only way 
I can reply is by using my BlackBerry Bold, but I still have not figured out the 
issue as to why it send a blank message. I will continue testing, so apologies 
in advanced if future posts are blank.

6. Is there anywhere that describes the drive-wire protocol?

http://www.frontiernet.net/~mmarlette/Cloud-9/Support/DriveWire%203%20Specification.pdf

 Regards, Salvador

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Ahrendt <chrisahrendt at bellsouth.net>
To: coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Thu, Jun 19, 2014 1:08 pm
Subject: [Coco] some questions and thoughts..... and a return to being a COCO 
nut... <G>

I am getting back into the COCO... my original coco was a battleship 
grey 64MB coco 1 with 2 disk drives and a 300 baud modem.
I should be receiving my coco 2 with 64MB and a FD-500 next week 
sometime. I have ordered the parts to do the drive wire cable.
I was very active in the coco scene in the Washington DC area and ended 
up stopping when I moved back to Germany...

Now with all of that said... here comes the old timer / newbie questions...

I have been going through all of the archives on the various magazines 
(Rainbow, Hot Coco, etc).

The model I am getting is:
26-3127B which I read has the newer video chip that has lower case.
The Floppy is a
26-3129 FD500
I won't know if the drive has one or two drives in it till I get it. My 
thought is to replace the drive(s) if they are SSDD with a DS/DD drive 
and then a 720k 31/2" drive in the second bay.

So here are the questions:

1. How do I turn on and keep the lower case on if indeed this model has 
the video chip with the lower case ability.
2. IF I want to use the drives as DS/DD  drives what needs to be done. I 
have read the drive tutorial and it is a bit confusing to me being an 
old timer. It used to be you had to have a new ROM burned or a non-Tandy 
drive controller.
3. One of the things I do remember liking was a friends setup (think it 
was a J&D) had the ability to hit the up arrow and repeat and edit the 
last command much like I do on Linux. and he was able to address the 
drives as single or double sided...  so would this just be a matter of 
getting the right prom and cable?
4.  I have read that the FD500's have issues with heat... is there 
anything that can be done to help that? any instructions?
5. Is there a way to set up the Coco so that I can used the drive wire 
and the floppy drives at the same time? IE use drive-wire as my gateway 
for printing / drives etc...
6. Is there anywhere that describes the drive-wire protocol?

I was looking at the archives here and one of the discussions was around 
a network controller for the Coco's why not instead use a Arduino with
either a hard wire Ethernet or WiFi? I assume that there is some sort of 
handshake between the server and client that goes on...
It would be real easy to pull a pin high from the arduino to let the 
coco know that a packet has been received.
The limiting factor would be the bit banger if you used that .. It may 
be faster to interface via the cart and have a splitter one going to the 
disk
controller and the other to the arduino connector.  The IP stack is 
built into the arduino so you would just need to write a simple arduino 
routine to talk to the drive wire client.
If this works the drive-wire server could use the IP connection it 
already has to talk to the client. Question is does the server support 
multiple connections?

7. I have seen several projects in the older coco's for 128k upgrade 
projects... is this worth it or should I just bite the bullet and buy a 
coco 3 for that?
8. If I install a board which does the inverted (light green on black (I 
prefer that)) would the characters still be lower case?
9. I have read also about the Hitachi upgrade to the coco... what would 
it buy me on a coco 2 or a coco 3? I am going to be using it for OS-9 
and some games.
10. If I do the composite  color mod and connected it up to a composite 
input on a LCD monitor would I get the artifact colors still?
11. Multi-pack.... I am thinking of getting one of these but have heard 
there is an issue with the PAL and the coco 3.
         There is a version A of the Multi-pack that works with the coco 
3, does it work with coco 2's?
         I get the pal fix from coco3.com and install the fix is it a 
one way trip and no longer useable by the coco 2?
12. Will an X-pad (the big grey slate) work with either coco2 / 3 if its 
used through the Multi-pack?
13. Is there anyone out there that would burn a eprom for a disk 
controller to add the HDB-Dos to the controller... or is it just as easy 
to boot off disk?
14. what are some of the gotchas that I need to check with a vintage coco?
15. What are some of the things I should probably buy/build/ find?
16.  Real Time clock... there was some talk of a plug in compatible 
(basically put it under the DOS prom) real time clock... does anyone 
have a instructable on this?
17. Is it worth building a high res joystick adapter to use or is it 
just limited to coco max use?

I am sure I will have more questions once she gets here.. thanks 
everyone....

Chris

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