AtariLeaf Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 Steve Bjork's still working with the CoCo after all these years, eh? Yep, he's very active in the community. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted March 8, 2011 Share Posted March 8, 2011 The 501 has gold edge connectors and the 502 doesn't. Thanks James. I had it backwards! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briza1 Posted March 9, 2011 Share Posted March 9, 2011 I wish I could find a disk drive. Hard to come by and when they show up on ebay they go pretty high (and shipping is a lot, they're heavy). Its too bad because drivewire doesn't work with all coco 3 games because of the disk access routines some need. You can use any standard 360K drive in an external case with power supply. The coco uses standard PC drives. Another advantage the coco has. All you would need is an FD-501 or FD-502 disk controller. You should be able to get one of those easily. The drive simply interfaces with the controller via the standard ribbon cable just like inside a pc. You can use 180K single sided drives too. I have a few cases with those drives in them. They are good for RSDOS but I really recommend a 360K drive as OS9 (Nitros9) stuff fits better on a those disks. Like Kings Quest 1 on a single disk. Or Kings Quest 2 on 2 disks. Hey good to know thanks. I'll keep an eye out for the disk controllers and go from there. Is there a difference between the FD-501 and 502 and is one preferable to the other? G'Day Atarileaf. I would go with the 501 or even 500, I have a FD500 and it is still going strong. I found the 502 were not as durable as the 2 earlier versions, The components would fail more often. If you can get a 501 go for it as it has the Gold connectors that I am aware of. laters Briza Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BydoEmpire Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 CoCo Arcade Clones Wow, that is really cool. I had no idea there were so many. I guess I just never knew anyone that had a CoCo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Briza1 Posted March 10, 2011 Share Posted March 10, 2011 CoCo Arcade Clones Wow, that is really cool. I had no idea there were so many. I guess I just never knew anyone that had a CoCo. Yeah there were a few clones made. Some were crap and others were pretty close to the originals. If Tandy opened up the programming market to 3rd party companies the coco would have had a better chance off being well known. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keatah Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Did color computers have graphics chips in them? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tupin Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 I've had a CoCo 1 and 2 for a while. I'm not quite sure how to get games other than cartridges working. I've seen Atarileaf's video about that Food Fight Clone and I want to try it out. I have an RS-232 and Disk Controller cartridges, but I never could get my disk drive to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
potatohead Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 Yes there are graphics chips. The CoCo 1 and 2 had a simple chip, produced by Moto. It was a 256x192 pixel device, 32 column text, with internal character generator, no redefinition, and various graphics modes, 2 and 4 color, with 8 color palette. CoCo 3 has the GIME, which does considerably more, and it has a memory management system, where ram is moved into and out of the 64K 6809 address space in 8 k blocks, providing for megabytes of RAM. I think 2 or 4 was the reasonable limit. GIME can do characters and such, still no redefinitions possible, however, text attributes are. 64 color palette, 640 pixel @ 4 colors, down to 128 pixels @ 16 colors, with various vertical sizes possible. It also has a 50 / 60 Hz switch, meaning it will do NTSC 50, which I found kind of odd at that time, but now know some machines did for better PAL compatibility. NTSC CoCo 3 machines can do artifacting for a 160x200x256 color space. See my blog for some crude examples, and screen captures converted by Jason in Australia. With a screen interrupt, PAL CoCo 3 machines should be able to do a similar thing with similar results at the 320 pixel resolution, but I don't think it's been tried. I don't have a PAL, but do have NTSC. No sprites, bitmaps only, though pixels can be vertically sized and the system does that. 160 byte DMA, unless scrolling is used, then it can be 256. Coarse hardware scrolling is provided for, as is variable screen addresses. Graphics memory fetches do not slow the CPU, as they are done on a second phase clock. Interesting design. CPU as shipped runs SLOOOW. .8Mhz, or something like that. A poke doubles it up, and is often used. Never was sure why they did that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 (edited) I've had a CoCo 1 and 2 for a while. I'm not quite sure how to get games other than cartridges working. I've seen Atarileaf's video about that Food Fight Clone and I want to try it out. I have an RS-232 and Disk Controller cartridges, but I never could get my disk drive to work. If your drive is dead drivewire is a good solution for most games that don't need constant drive access. Using drivewire you can load virtual disks, such as the one that contains Mudpies, right onto your coco. You can learn more about it here if you're interested. EDIT - This is a a video I made a year ago using the drivewire cable and cassette cable to load the rom. I've since purchased the rompak to forgo the long process of loading the proper .wav file since it must be reloaded after each time you restart the coco and can take about a minute and a half each time. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HU85qTOhWx8&feature=channel_video_title Edited April 19, 2011 by AtariLeaf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck D. Head Posted April 19, 2011 Share Posted April 19, 2011 (edited) Thanks for the video, Leaf! Gotta get me one....ummm, is this gonna work with a coco 2? (answered own stupid question by clicking the link and reading) Edited April 19, 2011 by Chuck D. Head Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Drivewire is cool, but i found that it doesnt work too well for most RSDOS games. Even when it does it can be a pain as you need to poke the coco back to .8mhz or the games run really fast.... There are very cool versions of all the Sierra games modified to play via drivewire. Just over the weekend I replayed through Kings Quest 1 and it was fantastic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted April 20, 2011 Share Posted April 20, 2011 Drivewire is cool, but i found that it doesnt work too well for most RSDOS games. Even when it does it can be a pain as you need to poke the coco back to .8mhz or the games run really fast.... Are you using a Coco 3 and playing Coco 2 games? The CoCo 3 version of HDB-DOS sets the double-speed poke to get higher transfer speeds. It isn't reset before the program starts running so if you hit reset it'll turn off the double speed poke and you're good to go. I haven't run across too many RSDOS games I couldn't play via drivewire, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Charlie_ Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Drivewire is cool, but i found that it doesnt work too well for most RSDOS games. Even when it does it can be a pain as you need to poke the coco back to .8mhz or the games run really fast.... Are you using a Coco 3 and playing Coco 2 games? The CoCo 3 version of HDB-DOS sets the double-speed poke to get higher transfer speeds. It isn't reset before the program starts running so if you hit reset it'll turn off the double speed poke and you're good to go. I haven't run across too many RSDOS games I couldn't play via drivewire, I am using a coco3. You can also type POKE 65496,0 to turn off the high speed. Reset sounds way easier. :-) I have had the opposite experience with Drivewire. Nothing seems to work. Nothing I like to play anyway.... All the good coco3 games like the ones from Sundog systems wont work. Even the cracked versions... coco2 games like Draconian and Donkey King all run super fast, but I didnt realize about killing the highspeed at 1st. I guess with patience lots more things work with DW than I've given it a chance to try. Its just easier when you have the disk system and piles of disks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AtariLeaf Posted April 21, 2011 Share Posted April 21, 2011 Its just easier when you have the disk system and piles of disks So true, but I haven't found one locally and I'm not paying ebay prices since many are described as being "as is" Coco3.com also has a device similar to drivewire called the MicroSD Drivepak. Directly from the site: This is a 2GB virtual disk drive pak that aims to replace all your real drive systems. Each MicroSD card can hold thousands of virtual floppy disks and hard drives for OS-9. The pak includes a MicroSD card stocked with lots of bootable OS-9 game disks, NitrOS-9, and many Disk BASIC disks full of games and programs. The Drive Pak can pretend to be a ROM Pak by auto-booting to a virtual disk and BASIC program that loads up a game or app. No Multi-Pak Interface or real floppy system required. I've thought about getting one but they're normally around $85 or $90 although now that I look, they're 25% off until Easter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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