[Coco] Multipak redesign/replacement / New CoCo...

[RETRO Innovations]

On 2/24/2015 1:35 PM, Gene Heskett wrote:
>
>
> The 80 wire cable with 3 40 pin headers on it that I just checked, appears to
> have 34  usable connections in it, there are 6 of the pins on the side with
> the blocked pin tied together.  I wonder if there are true, 80 pin IDC
> connectors available for that stuff.
According to the above, that's 33 lines (6 pins + key) = 7

According to the link I went to, there are 7 ground lines:
2,19,22,24,26,30,40 (all connected to the internal 40 ground lines)
And, then pin 34 is removed
Pin 20 is a key

So, while 34 might be available, I think 32 (or 31, if it's an ATA66 
cable and pin 34 is removed) are all you can guarantee as available.

> So the 34 I just measured isn't enough.
If you dropped SND and maybe ditched address line 14 and 15 (it appears 
as though nothing on the expansion bus is accessible below c000, so 
address line 14 and 15 are always high), and maybe removed another line 
(not sure what), you could get there.  But, that's a pretty poor design 
decision just to use a cheap cable.