28 Aug
2002
28 Aug
'02
5:10 p.m.
Argghh 100 year old houses, tho great and well-built do have their problems.
$10.000 is more than I paid for mine with 2 lots.
Now that you've ticked my memory I do remember that trick of looking for
the sensor. Now I have to go thru the fdds I marked NG the last time around.
With all the takeovers and failures of once mighty companies I no longer
have the faith I once had in the hardware companies. Only Big Blue remains
faithfully supportive.
I checked out the Cloud 9 site and am totally impressed. I don't find the
prices out of line. It also led me to a site I had forgotten about, the group that
puts on the CoCo-fest in Chicago.
OK scratch the CM5. I still remember it as a step above CGA. I have a
couple of NECs that might work, that sync down to 15mhz (?) . I'll try them
and then google my way thru. :^)
Sorry Merch you just happened to be present as the most knowledgeable
man on the list about CoCos. Tony likely is the most knowledgeable about
TRS in general now that Ward Griffiths is no longer with us :^) (just kidding
Tony). And Allison, a former development mgr for TRS, IIRC, and CP/M guru,
seems to be no longer with us.
. I'm as lazy as the next man. You did give me much valuable info on the
CoCo that googling likely wouldn't have provided since I didn't know the right
questions to ask.
Thanks Merch
Rumor has it that Lawrence Walker may have mentioned
these words:
lgwalker(a)mts.net
bigwalk_ca(a)yahoo.com
I'm fortunate in that I laid in a good stock
of "on sale" floppies since
my STs and Amigas require them. I also have a bunch of 3 1/2" floppy
drives. Other than installing and testing them is there any way of
identifying which ones are the lower density ?
Sure, if you look just inside the dust flap on a 3.5" drive, and you see a
switch {or optical sensor) on the right hand side, it's a 1.44Meg - that's the
1.44Meg sense switch to see if it has a HD disk in it. If the switching
mechanism is missing entirely, it's *probably* a 720K (but no absolute
guarantees). Another way is take the model number & google it -- I heard
somewhere that the Internet can be good for finding info like that... ;-)
Who is FHL ?
Frank Hogg Laboratories...
Are they still in existence, and with the
"eliminator". The best
thing would be a SCSI interface. Did anyone ever make one for the CoCo ?
FHL went the way of the dodo bird long, long ago... the eliminators are
rather rare... anyone have an extra they'd like to get rid of???
;-)
However, Mark [pause -- googling] Marlette of Cloud 9 Technologies was
making another batch of his SCSI board that used full-parity (some earlier SCSI
cards didn't have that ability, so you couldn't use certain devices like Zip
drives...) Ta'int cheap... USD $85 w/o RTC, $100 w/RTC [for the $15, get the RTC
is my feeling, anyway...] but they're new, and they're nice...
http://www.cloud9tech.com/Hardware/index.html
for a list of all his hardware that he has available...
I'm tellin' ya... this Internet thing might actually catch on someday... ;-)
How did you chain the 3rd drive ? Just with a
second connector on a
cable connected to the 1st or 2nd connector on the 502 ?
Just punched a new connector onto the existing cable... prolly not the
*right* way to do it, but as I always say: if it's stupid, but works, it
ain't stupid!
I have a CM-5 that I used on a Tandy 1000 and on
something else (cant
remember what) which used the special TRS video format (RGBI ?). Never
occurred to me, DOH, that I might be able to use it on the CoCo.
It shouldn't have occurred to you -- because you *can't* use it!!! RGBI is not a
special TRS format -- it's CGA/EGA. It's a digital mode which stands for
Red/Green/Blue/Intensity, and uses 5V digital levels. The CM-5 is also known to
be computing history's abso-frelling-lutely crappiest monitor in the universe.
It had a <gasp> .52mm dot pitch - hell, the lead in my mechanical pencils is
smaller! The CM-8 was better, but not outstanding with a .42mm DP. You're better
bets were the Magnavox 3CM515 (IIRC?) or hacking a cable for the Atari/Amiga
monitors... A few of the NEC 2[mumble] VGA monitors with .28 DP would sync that
low, too; they make gorgeous displays, but were super-expensive way back when...
[snip]
As Sam likely found, it is confusing to switch
from platform to platform
concurrently. I usually immerse myself in one for some time before
working on another. I've been in a laptop mode lately. Grid and others.
I'll have to switch to a CoCo mode to explore this further.
Too many projects, too little time.
A good project would be a video switchbox that would take an Atari SCM1224 and
give you 3 or 4 inputs for it to switch between, adapted between the
CoCo3/Atari/Amiga/others... I have a $10,000 sewer problem to repair first,
tho... :-(( <sniff>
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
zmerch(a)30below.com
What do you do when Life gives you lemons,
and you don't *like* lemonade?????????????