Coco 2, 3, and... 3.5 inch disk drive?

[Atariman]

On my most recent trip to my local game shop, my friend pulled out a box from the back room and told me that I might be interested in its contents. Upon looking inside, I saw a Color Computer 2, a Color Computer 3, and a Tandy 3.5 inch external disk drive. I was intrigued by this and inquired about the price - $10. Sweet. So I picked it up.

 

Upon further inspection when I got home, I noticed that the box in the bottom of the larger box contained yet another CoCo3. There are also a few manuals (nothing very spectacular - just a CoCo2 manual and a couple catalogs) and two non-game cartridges - Art Gallery and Color File (...yay...).

 

So I began hooking everything up - I then noticed that there didn't seem to be any way to attach the 3.5 inch (720k) drive to the CoCo 2 or 3. After looking around online, I found very little information.

 

The end of the cable is the type that would go on the edge of a PCB (rather than being a plug that would fit on the back of the CoCo).

 

Are there many uses for the CoCo in the first place? I already had a CoCo2 and a couple games for it (I don't recall what they are) and was hoping that this disk drive might breathe new life into them...

[Lord Thag]

Yeah there is. Check out http://www.cloud9tech.com/index.html

 

Those guys have a ton of awesome hardware mods for the thing. There are some good games, including a port of the arcade Donkey Kong that's actually a direct translation of the Arcade ROM, so it's the EXACT same game.

[Atariman]

HA! Now that is awesome! Not only do they have some pretty cool stuff for the CoCo, but they even have byteblaster stuff for Altera CPLDs - I am VERY familiar with these devices!

[Atariman]

So... is there any way to use my 3.5 inch floppy drive with my CoCo 3? I looked at the products on that page and have searched the net, but have still not found out how to connect the two things together...

[mrnukem]

Also check www.coco3.com the forums and information there is excellent. The CoCo an Atari are my favorite systems and I have both hooked up right now

[jaybird3rd]

So... is there any way to use my 3.5 inch floppy drive with my CoCo 3? I looked at the products on that page and have searched the net, but have still not found out how to connect the two things together...

I have a Tandy 3.5-inch drive as well; if it's anything like yours, I believe it was designed for the Tandy 1000 series instead of the CoCo series.

 

Let me know if you decide you don't have any use for your it; I'd be interested in it as an 3.5-inch upgrade for one of my Atari XF551 drives.

[Atariman]

So... is there any way to use my 3.5 inch floppy drive with my CoCo 3? I looked at the products on that page and have searched the net, but have still not found out how to connect the two things together...

I have a Tandy 3.5-inch drive as well; if it's anything like yours, I believe it was designed for the Tandy 1000 series instead of the CoCo series.

 

Let me know if you decide you don't have any use for your it; I'd be interested in it as an 3.5-inch upgrade for one of my Atari XF551 drives.

 

Drat. I was beginning to worry that perhaps this was the case. Oh well - I'll hang onto it anyway. You're talking to the guy who owned Colecovision and Master System carts before owning either one of those systems.

 

Perhaps one of these days I'll pick up a Tandy 1000 as well.

 

Kinda makes me wish that whoever brought in those computers would bring in the rest of their stash (if they still have it, that is)

[marcfrick2112]

So... is there any way to use my 3.5 inch floppy drive with my CoCo 3? I looked at the products on that page and have searched the net, but have still not found out how to connect the two things together...

I have a Tandy 3.5-inch drive as well; if it's anything like yours, I believe it was designed for the Tandy 1000 series instead of the CoCo series.

 

Let me know if you decide you don't have any use for your it; I'd be interested in it as an 3.5-inch upgrade for one of my Atari XF551 drives.

 

Drat. I was beginning to worry that perhaps this was the case. Oh well - I'll hang onto it anyway. You're talking to the guy who owned Colecovision and Master System carts before owning either one of those systems.

 

Perhaps one of these days I'll pick up a Tandy 1000 as well.

 

Kinda makes me wish that whoever brought in those computers would bring in the rest of their stash (if they still have it, that is)

 

Well, Atariman, I have a full Super A'can system with no games for it.... I had a Donkey Kong cart. for INTV for years before getting an Intellivision......

 

Maybe there is hope that You might find 'the rest' of the computer stash.... years ago, I found a C128 with just some manuals, a 1541, I think a 128-specific wordprocessor... 2 Months later I found another big box with a second 128, and 1571 drive, .... plus a 128 monitor, and all of the hardware and software that I had the manuals from the last C128 haul....FlexiFont, FlexiPaint, Lightpen.... so there is hope...

[mrnukem]

So... is there any way to use my 3.5 inch floppy drive with my CoCo 3? I looked at the products on that page and have searched the net, but have still not found out how to connect the two things together...

 

 

You can use a 5.25" drive in your PC to transfer titles over. You need an old 360K 5.25" floppy drive and in your PC bios set it as a 720K 3.5" drive (yeah strange I know)

 

Get the MESS Emulator here : http://www.mess.org/download.php and inside the MESS .zip file is a program called wimgtool that will let you open up coco disk (.dsk) image files used in emulators. Once open just right click on the file names inside the disk image and click extract and save to a directory on your windows system. Then just copy those to the 5.25" drive and you have a useable coco disk.

 

If you can get the 3.5" drive to work on the coco the process of getting images over would be the same using the wimgtool software