You're welcome Robert, I'm delighted you found it to be so good. Drivewire is a great tool. Did you know that there is a "drivewireless" module in development for the CoCo? No kidding, a WiFi module for the CoCo to let you "drivewire" wirelessly.
I love playing around with these old systems. The beauty of Drivewire is that if you have any form of PC or raspberry pi you have a diskdrive for your Coco. Thanks for watching Gorf ;)
Also, with regards to software compatibility - 64K programs tend to override your HDB DOS (since they use all 64K). A lot of 64K games run completely from RAM after loaded, so they still work, but some (which need to access disk after loading) will crash. And, any games that directly tried to talk to the disk controller (vs. going through the Disk BASIC ROM calls) won't work. This is another area the CocoSDC shines; it simulates (at the hardware level ) the floppy controller chip, so if you have the "expanded" disk images that contain all track and sector header info, etc., you can even play copy protected programs, 360 and 720K floppy images, hard drives, with no compatibility loss. (You do have to occasionally boot the SDC to "plain" old Disk Extended Color BASIC 1.1 for some of these, but then they work fine).
Thanks, I saw your video just this morning. Nice work, I wasn't aware that a program existed to run DECB through the command prompt to perform disk operations until I saw it ;)
Gigerpunk just played shocktrooper for the dragon32 just recently! I said I remembered thier being a color computer version and it looks like I was right! Very cool!
The CocoSDC (the SD card solution for all 3 Coco's, and even the Dragons), not only emulates floppy and hard drives for the Coco's, but also includes Drivewire support in it's SDC DOS (which is based on HDB DOS), so it gives you best of both worlds. It is, however, more expensive than just hooking up your PC via Drivewire, of course. :)
Your right Curtis, and I have my sights set on a CocoSDC but just not for right away. The other advantage of the SDC is that it can also hold and boot up cartridge images which is damb cool. For the moment however, Drivewire is my new buddy when it comes to exploring the delights of the Coco. Thanks for watching. ;)
Is it possible to start DriveWire on the CoCo using the Disk Drive DF 501 cartridge connected to a 5.25 "drive to transfer disk images on the PC to real disks on the drive connected to the CoCo?
It most certianly is, but to access drivewire you will need to program a rom chip with HBDDos and place it in your disk controller . Ac's 8 bit zone made a video on this very process which you can check out here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bFOGSQnscsc.html&ab_channel=ACs8-BitZone. Thanks for watching ;)
I'm sure that it's possible. As drivewire is still undergoing development you could take a look and see if anyone has made any progress towards a USB2 implementation just google search "drivewire github". Thanks for watching Jeffrey ;)
Hi, yes you'll need the cassette cable to load HDBDos from cassette (or your PC or phone) to your Coco unless you can make a cartridge with HDBDos on it. HDBDos is the software that tells your Coco that it's connected to drivewire and how to use the protocol. And you're right the link is dead, so I've updated the video description and it now contains a Wayback machine link to the original site where you can still download the files for drivewire 3. Ive also included a link to drivewire 4 which to be honest would be the best to use now as it's the latest version of the software and the same old drivewire cable works for both versions. Thanks for watching and have fun with your Coco.
Good point. The PC I used isn't connected to the outside world so it's not a worry for me. Drivewire 4 which is a much more feature rich version has been available for a number of years now and will run on 64-bit versions of Windows and also many flavours of Linux (including the Raspberry PI). I just used Drivewire 3 for this video because it's easier to demonstrate. Thanks for watching and again good point on the security risks ;)
It sure does. You just need a USB to serial adaptor (or a really really old laptop) they are quite cheap nowadays. Once the adaptor is pluged into your laptop and configured (Its normally configured automatically under Windows) its seen as com1 and drivewire and the Colour computer are happy to talk to each other.
@@mattmyers9351 Just in case, I was only kidding about the really old laptop. The old laptops have the correct ports but have trouble runing Windows XP and higher. Get an adaptor, they are only 2 - 3 euro each on Ebay.
