[net.micro.6809] Short review of Coco Max, and OS-9 question

michael@nvuxd.UUCP (M.CAIN) (02/26/85)

I recently acquired the new Coco Max (terrible name!) system
for my Color Computer.  Impressive!  It's a MacPaint clone,
and has brought very large portions of that environment to
a very small machine.  It's best feature, from my viewpoint,
is that they added a special cartridge with 8-bit A/D, so the
mouse/joystick can address the entire high resolution screen
without "moving windows" or other artifacts. Total price,
including a Y-cable to hook both A/D and disk controller,
was a hair over $100.  That's quite a bit more than Graphicom
and some of the other packages, but I think you get more.

Now for the question.  With the A/D and the disk controller
both plugged into the ROM slot using a Y-cable, OS-9 refuses
to boot up properly.  I get to the "OS-9 BOOT" screen, then
everything locks up with drive 0 spinning but nothing happening.
With the A/D unplugged, no problems.  Is there anyone out there
who can shed some light on this problem?  I would certainly
like to access the 8-bit A/D from OS-9.  The documentation says
that the unit is located at 0xff90, and that it can be placed
in any slot on the RS Multi-Pak.  Would using a Multi-Pak in
place of the Y-cable help?  Thanks in advance,

Michael Cain
Bell Communications Research

kim@mcrware.UUCP (Kim Kempf) (02/28/85)

> Now for the question.  With the A/D and the disk controller
> both plugged into the ROM slot using a Y-cable, OS-9 refuses
> to boot up properly.  I get to the "OS-9 BOOT" screen, then
> everything locks up with drive 0 spinning but nothing happening.
> With the A/D unplugged, no problems.
> Would using a Multi-Pak in place of the Y-cable help?
> 
> Michael Cain
> Bell Communications Research

It seems the Y-cable is causing the problem.  Using the A/D and
the disk controller in the Multi-Pak cause no boot problems here.
I haven't tried accessing the A/D with OS-9, although I forsee
no problems.  BTW, the Coco Max operation *IS* impressive...