Tempest Posted January 4, 2006 Share Posted January 4, 2006 While looking up information on the Adam power supply mod I read that there is a hard drive available. Would it be possible to copy Colecovision game carts to the hard drive and run them from there? I think this can be done with the tape games, but I'm not sure about the cartridges. It would be nice to have a hard drive full of Colecovision games so I wouldn't have to keep my cartridges out. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brasky Posted January 4, 2006 Share Posted January 4, 2006 There's way to add a hd to an ADAM. I've never done it. Yes, you could put the entire CV and ADAM software library on an internal HD. I have a guys email who sells them like this. Coleco never actually sold HD's for the ADAM. Some 3rd party company made a plug-in board to add a hd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pixelboy Posted January 4, 2006 Share Posted January 4, 2006 While looking up information on the Adam power supply mod I read that there is a hard drive available. Would it be possible to copy Colecovision game carts to the hard drive and run them from there? I think this can be done with the tape games, but I'm not sure about the cartridges. It would be nice to have a hard drive full of Colecovision games so I wouldn't have to keep my cartridges out. 993912[/snapback] Many years ago, when I had an Adam computer, a friend of mine showed me how one could dump the contents of just about any CV cartridge and save it into an Adam tape. At one time, I had pretty much every CV cartridge game on datasettes, which I could play at any time! As for your hard drive question, I don't know, but wasn't there a 5.25-inch disk drive available for the Adam? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted January 4, 2006 Author Share Posted January 4, 2006 While looking up information on the Adam power supply mod I read that there is a hard drive available. Would it be possible to copy Colecovision game carts to the hard drive and run them from there? I think this can be done with the tape games, but I'm not sure about the cartridges. It would be nice to have a hard drive full of Colecovision games so I wouldn't have to keep my cartridges out. 993912[/snapback] Many years ago, when I had an Adam computer, a friend of mine showed me how one could dump the contents of just about any CV cartridge and save it into an Adam tape. At one time, I had pretty much every CV cartridge game on datasettes, which I could play at any time! As for your hard drive question, I don't know, but wasn't there a 5.25-inch disk drive available for the Adam? 993926[/snapback] Yep I have one of those. I suppose you could put them all on disks too. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
else Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 (edited) These things rarely pop up even on eBay. They probably didn't sell very many back in the day.... I've never owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work much like a hard drive in today's sense. Since Coleco never released a version of EOS (Elementary Operating System) that supported large volumes, I would think the hard disk would have to be partitioned in to lots of little volumes each roughly the size of a data pack. You probably simply select which "volume" you want to run though a program launcher. Also, there was no way to "quit" from most Adam programs, so you would still need to pull ye olde reset switch if you wanted to run something else. Anyhow, this is pretty much speculation on my part.... To be honest, there were such few programs released for the Adam (and those that were are pretty buggy) that a hard drive seems almost unnecessary. Edited January 5, 2006 by else Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 These things rarely pop up even on eBay. They probably didn't sell very many back in the day.... I've never owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work much like a hard drive in today's sense. Since Coleco never released a version of EOS (Elementary Operating System) that supported large volumes, I would think the hard disk would have to be partitioned in to lots of little volumes each roughly the size of a data pack. You probably simply select which "volume" you want to run though a program launcher. Also, there was no way to "quit" from most Adam programs, so you would still need to pull ye olde reset switch if you wanted to run something else. Anyhow, this is pretty much speculation on my part.... To be honest, there were such few programs released for the Adam (and those that were are pretty buggy) that a hard drive seems almost unnecessary. 994199[/snapback] Oh I wouldn't use it for Adam games (all 10 of them), I'd use it for Colecovision carts converted to run on the Adam. I assume they could do that since they did it the other way. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Brasky Posted January 5, 2006 Share Posted January 5, 2006 These things rarely pop up even on eBay. They probably didn't sell very many back in the day.... I've never owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work much like a hard drive in today's sense. Since Coleco never released a version of EOS (Elementary Operating System) that supported large volumes, I would think the hard disk would have to be partitioned in to lots of little volumes each roughly the size of a data pack. You probably simply select which "volume" you want to run though a program launcher. Also, there was no way to "quit" from most Adam programs, so you would still need to pull ye olde reset switch if you wanted to run something else. Anyhow, this is pretty much speculation on my part.... To be honest, there were such few programs released for the Adam (and those that were are pretty buggy) that a hard drive seems almost unnecessary. 994199[/snapback] I read the opposite. The OS can support HUGE HD's, waaay bigger than anything available at the time of the ADAM's release. The HD's are regular Western Digital drives. It can't go up to the 250-300 GB drives of today but still enough space that you could never fill it up. ecoleco sells/sold a RAMdisk upgrade that was interesting sounding. I don't think the commercially released ADAM games are buggy. There are some that were released to the public domain after coleco stopped supporting the adam and some of those were unfinished betas. ecoleco: "Hard Disk Drives contain a permanently installed disk that spins at very high speed to save and retrieve data and boot programs. The Adam's House Hard Drive may be installed under the top cover of the Memory Console. Hard Drives are very fast using Western Digital 70 Mili-second 3.5" drives and IDE 16 Bit Controller interface boards. The Slot #1 interface card provides Hard Disk Drive interfacing. Our optional Printer Interface card provides an auto-booting PROM Chip socket to set up the Hard Drive after power is applied, or you may quickly boot the hard drive using a tape or disk provided. The Hard Disk Drive is available in a capacities of 10, 20, 40, and 60 Megabyte. A wide variety of programs are provided in TDOS System format, and set-up boot files for EOS System Programs like SmartWriter, SmartBASIC, AdamCalc, etc. Space is divided equally on the Hard Disk for use with TDOS (the CP/M alternative system) and EOS (the standard format of the ADAM computer. Programs can be transferred into the Hard Drive using the included utility program, FILE MANAGER V3.1. After the Hard Drive is quickly up to speed and brought on line, a Main Menu Screen appears that allows the user to move into any area of the drive to run programs, boot programs, or simply save and retrieve files and documents. Very little time is needed to become familiar with the operation and use of our new Hard Disk Drive." I have a couple 5 1/4" disk drives that I believe are non-working though they can be used to convert them into new 3 1/2" drives. You need to hook the control board from the dd to a new floppy so it's recognized by the adam. Anyone interested? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted January 5, 2006 Author Share Posted January 5, 2006 I have a Adam disk drive that I need to test. I picked it up at AGE in 2003 but I never tested it. I think I may have Coleco game on disk somewhere around here. A 3.5" drive would be interesting, but not sure what practical use it would be. I have one for my Atari 8-bit (a modified XF-551) but I never use it for anything. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
else Posted January 6, 2006 Share Posted January 6, 2006 (edited) These things rarely pop up even on eBay. They probably didn't sell very many back in the day.... I've never owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work much like a hard drive in today's sense. Since Coleco never released a version of EOS (Elementary Operating System) that supported large volumes, I would think the hard disk would have to be partitioned in to lots of little volumes each roughly the size of a data pack. You probably simply select which "volume" you want to run though a program launcher. Also, there was no way to "quit" from most Adam programs, so you would still need to pull ye olde reset switch if you wanted to run something else. Anyhow, this is pretty much speculation on my part.... To be honest, there were such few programs released for the Adam (and those that were are pretty buggy) that a hard drive seems almost unnecessary. 994199[/snapback] I read the opposite. The OS can support HUGE HD's, waaay bigger than anything available at the time of the ADAM's release. The HD's are regular Western Digital drives. It can't go up to the 250-300 GB drives of today but still enough space that you could never fill it up. ecoleco sells/sold a RAMdisk upgrade that was interesting sounding. I don't think the commercially released ADAM games are buggy. There are some that were released to the public domain after coleco stopped supporting the adam and some of those were unfinished betas. ecoleco: "Hard Disk Drives contain a permanently installed disk that spins at very high speed to save and retrieve data and boot programs. The Adam's House Hard Drive may be installed under the top cover of the Memory Console. Hard Drives are very fast using Western Digital 70 Mili-second 3.5" drives and IDE 16 Bit Controller interface boards. The Slot #1 interface card provides Hard Disk Drive interfacing. Our optional Printer Interface card provides an auto-booting PROM Chip socket to set up the Hard Drive after power is applied, or you may quickly boot the hard drive using a tape or disk provided. The Hard Disk Drive is available in a capacities of 10, 20, 40, and 60 Megabyte. A wide variety of programs are provided in TDOS System format, and set-up boot files for EOS System Programs like SmartWriter, SmartBASIC, AdamCalc, etc. Space is divided equally on the Hard Disk for use with TDOS (the CP/M alternative system) and EOS (the standard format of the ADAM computer. Programs can be transferred into the Hard Drive using the included utility program, FILE MANAGER V3.1. After the Hard Drive is quickly up to speed and brought on line, a Main Menu Screen appears that allows the user to move into any area of the drive to run programs, boot programs, or simply save and retrieve files and documents. Very little time is needed to become familiar with the operation and use of our new Hard Disk Drive." I have a couple 5 1/4" disk drives that I believe are non-working though they can be used to convert them into new 3 1/2" drives. You need to hook the control board from the dd to a new floppy so it's recognized by the adam. Anyone interested? 994264[/snapback] Yea, the games are all pretty stable. It's the apps that are all buggy -- SmartWriter doesn't print blank lines correctly and has other random lockups, SmartFiler records lose their formatting when you print them, AdamCALC gets screwed up on cell references, SmartBasic has lots of misc bugs, etc. As for the hard drive, from what you posted it looks like they get around the limited Adam EOS capacity by using TDOS instead. EOS is burned in the Adam's ROMs, while TDOS is a third-party operating system that gets loaded in to RAM (much like how the Atari ST works). But the above does seem to confirm that for the much more common EOS based apps it really just acts as a program launcher and not much else. I do have my doubts though that TDOS apps are as plentiful as they make it sound. I've never seen much of any apps besides the Coleco (EOS based) ones -- though I suppose ecoleco has a few for sale.... Edited January 6, 2006 by else Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgtpepper74 Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 These things rarely pop up even on eBay. They probably didn't sell very many back in the day.... I've never owned one, but I'm guessing they don't work much like a hard drive in today's sense. Since Coleco never released a version of EOS (Elementary Operating System) that supported large volumes, I would think the hard disk would have to be partitioned in to lots of little volumes each roughly the size of a data pack. You probably simply select which "volume" you want to run though a program launcher. Also, there was no way to "quit" from most Adam programs, so you would still need to pull ye olde reset switch if you wanted to run something else. Anyhow, this is pretty much speculation on my part.... To be honest, there were such few programs released for the Adam (and those that were are pretty buggy) that a hard drive seems almost unnecessary. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I read the opposite. The OS can support HUGE HD's, waaay bigger than anything available at the time of the ADAM's release. The HD's are regular Western Digital drives. It can't go up to the 250-300 GB drives of today but still enough space that you could never fill it up. ecoleco sells/sold a RAMdisk upgrade that was interesting sounding. I don't think the commercially released ADAM games are buggy. There are some that were released to the public domain after coleco stopped supporting the adam and some of those were unfinished betas. ecoleco: "Hard Disk Drives contain a permanently installed disk that spins at very high speed to save and retrieve data and boot programs. The Adam's House Hard Drive may be installed under the top cover of the Memory Console. Hard Drives are very fast using Western Digital 70 Mili-second 3.5" drives and IDE 16 Bit Controller interface boards. The Slot #1 interface card provides Hard Disk Drive interfacing. Our optional Printer Interface card provides an auto-booting PROM Chip socket to set up the Hard Drive after power is applied, or you may quickly boot the hard drive using a tape or disk provided. The Hard Disk Drive is available in a capacities of 10, 20, 40, and 60 Megabyte. A wide variety of programs are provided in TDOS System format, and set-up boot files for EOS System Programs like SmartWriter, SmartBASIC, AdamCalc, etc. Space is divided equally on the Hard Disk for use with TDOS (the CP/M alternative system) and EOS (the standard format of the ADAM computer. Programs can be transferred into the Hard Drive using the included utility program, FILE MANAGER V3.1. After the Hard Drive is quickly up to speed and brought on line, a Main Menu Screen appears that allows the user to move into any area of the drive to run programs, boot programs, or simply save and retrieve files and documents. Very little time is needed to become familiar with the operation and use of our new Hard Disk Drive." I have a couple 5 1/4" disk drives that I believe are non-working though they can be used to convert them into new 3 1/2" drives. You need to hook the control board from the dd to a new floppy so it's recognized by the adam. Anyone interested? I was wondering if you still had those dead 5 1/4 ADAM disk drives, I wouldnt mind one to make into a 3.5 Do you have any other ADAM equipment or software you would be interested in selling? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Psionic Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 I have a couple 5 1/4" disk drives that I believe are non-working though they can be used to convert them into new 3 1/2" drives. You need to hook the control board from the dd to a new floppy so it's recognized by the adam. Anyone interested? I was wondering if you still had those dead 5 1/4 ADAM disk drives, I wouldnt mind one to make into a 3.5 Do you have any other ADAM equipment or software you would be interested in selling? This thread is 3 1/2 years old. The person you're quoting is not an active member of AA. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doubledown Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 I was wondering if you still had those dead 5 1/4 ADAM disk drives, I wouldnt mind one to make into a 3.5Do you have any other ADAM equipment or software you would be interested in selling? Do you have the file that needs to be programmed to an EPROM within the disk drive for this conversion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coleconut Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 I bought out a guy a couple of years ago who was collector and small dealer. Part of the horde was what looks like 2 or 3 sets of loose Eproms which I believe were meant to mod an original 160K drive to a 320K (maybe but not likely a 720K). They were in envelopes that I believe came from Eve Electronics who used to mod drives and/or sell kits to do so. Was going to attempt a mod on one of my own dead 160's but I am handier with a clothes iron than with a soldering iron. Ultimately I'd like to have the mod done but if someone needs them dumped for some reason, we can work it out I am sure. -coleconut- I was wondering if you still had those dead 5 1/4 ADAM disk drives, I wouldnt mind one to make into a 3.5Do you have any other ADAM equipment or software you would be interested in selling? Do you have the file that needs to be programmed to an EPROM within the disk drive for this conversion? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coleconut Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 Oh yeah, back to the thread topic. I have one of Mark Gordon's Powermate unit for the ADAM which contains 2xMFM HD, a 320K doublesided 5.25" and a 720K 3.5" (maybe 1.44??) all in a self-contained unit with its own power supply. This came from the same guy where I got the Eproms. Trouble is I dont have the card to match it. Makes a nice doorstop now but would love to get my hands on that Microinnovations card that goes with this unit. In the mean time, at the recent 21st annual ADAMCon in MI recently, BobS had a presentation on various configurations of storage for the ADAM including floppies of various sizes, ZIP drives, IDE hard drives of 1G and less (yes they must be partitioned - I forget what the max is, but it is in megs not kb) and even SD cards. Part of that presentation is shown on one of newcoleco's youtube videos that he put up in the last week. Search youtube for newcoleco or adamcon. -coleconut- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doubledown Posted July 9, 2009 Share Posted July 9, 2009 I'd love to dump those EPROM's for you. I've found the instructions on how to do the drive conversion, but haven't been able to locate the program file. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+evg2000 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 If you are looking for coleco adam stuff, I bought a an ide card and CF adapter to use on the adam. Optionally you can also use an ide hard drive. They have other stuff also, just check that they have what you want in stock. Bob is very helpful. Colce Adam Supplies later, charles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgtpepper74 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 I was wondering if you still had those dead 5 1/4 ADAM disk drives, I wouldnt mind one to make into a 3.5Do you have any other ADAM equipment or software you would be interested in selling? Do you have the file that needs to be programmed to an EPROM within the disk drive for this conversion? I wasn't aware that the EPROM needed to be reprogrammed. Oh, well guess that wouldn't be as easy as I thought. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sgtpepper74 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 If you are looking for coleco adam stuff, I bought a an ide card and CF adapter to use on the adam. Optionally you can also use an ide hard drive. They have other stuff also, just check that they have what you want in stock. Bob is very helpful.Colce Adam Supplies later, charles Charles, What are your thoughts on the IDE/ CF setup? I am working with Bob at this time on getting an ADAM 5.25 drive, very nice guy, a wealth of information. Also do you know if you buy the IDE kit, is it an easy process to just say, take an old IDE hard drive you have lying around and hook it to the ADAM? I would have to think the drive may need be formatted and partitioned in a certain manner. I was very interested in the ADAMServe application as well, to be able to do a serial connection from the ADAM, using an Orhphanware serial card, and an IBM pc, and then be able to use the IBM's hard disk and other peripherals from the ADAM. I am wondering if you could use this method instead of the 5.25 drive to trasfer disk images, software, etc from the IBM PC world and ADAM. -Gregg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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