16 May
2023
16 May
'23
3:55 p.m.
Fred, glad you chimed in.
If you have the original post, Tony wants to download different things images for those
machines, probably from the internet and use the software on those machines via floppy.
As another item, he acquired a coco computer hard disk that he like to get the data from.
A greezweasel was suggested.
So he has 2 somewhat related tasks.
Sent from my iPhone
On May 16, 2023, at 15:42, Fred Cisin via cctalk
<cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote:
On Tue, 16 May 2023, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
Tony in response to your original idea of wanting
to download images for use on you existing machines ( did i get that right?), i think you
have everything you need already. Download the images to your win 8 box then use file
transfer software (kermit or xmodem) to serially transfer to the specific box you want to
use the software on and the use the floppy on that box to write the floppies. It seems
like there is a version of kermit made for every box imaginable. The only possible gotcha
is does the box have a serial port.
He would have to add a serial port (USB to serial dongle).
Although, . . .
many years ago, in the early days of USB, there was a cable and software provision for
transferring files USB yo USB. 'course, it's doubtful that any of his other
machines have USB.
Similarly, he could buy a cheap external USB 3.5" drive. Write content to that
drive on the modern machine, and read those floppies on the older machines. The readily
avaailable one have firmware that only supports 720K, 1.4M, and [sometimes] NEC-style
"mode 3".
There do not seem to be any currently available USB external drives that support
cnaything other than a 3.5" drive integrated with the controller. There ONCE was one
with a non-integrated controller that could be modified for 3", 3.25', 5.25"
or 8"
I get the implication that he is considering USB flux-transition devices that could be
coerced into acting as a general purpose floppy controller.