CoCo Floppies: Was:These darned old computers

From: Lawrence Walker <lgwalker_at_mts.net>
Date: Thu Aug 29 00:43:00 2002

 Thanks Tony. It ain't about to happen right away, but this goes in my
archives. Come to think about it my archives are full of your insight.
 Maybe the time is right to issue a CD " The world According to Tony Aird-
computer hardware hints and help". Not necessarily kidding.

Lawrence

> >
> > I haven't worked on my M.2 for a long time (since I first got it about 3 or 4
> >
> > yrs. ago, and I'm also missing the cables for the 3 HDs) It was
> > recommended by several people that I transfer the programs I have from 8" to 5
> > 1/4 disks (unless bit-rot has already got to them) and I believe there's a faq
> > on how to do that. Do you know if the disk controller on the model 2 /16 is
> > the same as on the other RS models ? If so possibly I could just transfer them
> > to another format.
>
> No, the M2/12/16 machines were desigend to use 8" drives. This would
> imply a 500kbps data rate (double density MFM), and a 360rpm drive. The
> 5.25" drives used on the CoCo, M3, M4, etc use 250kbps data
> rate (again double density MFM) and turn at 300 rpm.
>
> You should be able to wire up a 1.2Mbyte PC 5.25" drive to the M2 though.
> That's electrically very like an 8" drive. I am sure a web search will
> turn up something about doing this.
>
> A 1.44Mbyte 3.5" drive _might_ work. The data rate is right, but it turns
> at 300rpm. This shouldn't matter too much (there's enough time between
> index pulses for the machine to fit in all the data it expects to get in
> there), apart from during formating (where the machine might object to
> the excessively long gap between the end of the last sector and the next
> index pulse). All you can do is try it -- it might work.
>
>
> -tony
>


lgwalker_at_mts.net
bigwalk_ca_at_yahoo.com
Received on Thu Aug 29 2002 - 00:43:00 BST