jsa@tut.fi (Jari Salo) (08/10/87)
Could someone please tell me what exactly do Coco 2 and Coco 3 consist of ? I myself run OS9 on a machine called DRAGON-64. Does this happen to be one of the machines mentioned above ? If so, is there somewhere a RAM -disk support available for the machine I am running ? I sure would like to get one, because using the C -compiler really is quite a timetaking job with even 6 ms drives. -- Jari Salo Tampere University of Technology UUCP: jsa@tut.UUCP Computer Systems Laboratory Internet: jsa@tut.fi PO box 527 Tel: 358-(9)31-162590 SF-33101 Tampere, Finland
pete@wlbr.EATON.COM (Pete Lyall) (08/10/87)
Jari - Coco {II, III} is an abbreviated name for the Radio Shack COlor COmputer. It's been out since 1980 or 81, and is a 6809 based micro. The DRAGON was one of two clones of the coco, and was released by TANO corporation... an English based firm, I believe. I have a few friends that are also running os9 on dragons. The cocoIII is an enhanced version (redesigned, actually) of the coco II. It has some memory management hardware, enhanced graphics, and will support up to 512k. It handles os9 level II. -- Pete Lyall Usenet: {trwrb, scgvaxd, ihnp4, voder, vortex}!wlbr!pete Compuserve: 76703,4230 (OS9 Sysop) OS9 (home): (805)-985-0632 (24hr./1200 baud)
harmon@abvax.icd.ab.com (Larry Harmon) (08/11/87)
The Tano Dragon is basically an enhansed CoCo II. The enhansements include the addition of a hardware uart (6551) located at $FF10 and a parallel printer interface using the keyboard PIA (6821). The two units are so close that the CoCo II firmware will run in the Dragon with 2 minor modifications. The modifications are required because the powerup routine sloppily addresses the PIA at $FF00 by one of it's mirror addresses ($ff1c) which conflicts with the Dragon's 6551 uart. All of the CoCo II expansion interfaces will work with the Dragon. I have successfully used a J & R electronics 256k ram disk with the Dragon. This interface replaces plugs into the 6883 SAM chip socket and thus doesn't take up an expansion slot. I believe a 512k ram disk is also available. Note: because the Dragon has the additional uart the 6809 bus is loaded more and use of Y cables should be avoided. The Tandy Multi-pac interface may be used however, the Dragon needs to be raised up about an inch to mate with the MPI. A couple magazines work nicely. I have used the Dragon with Tandy OS9 level I and found it to be a good system (until I got a CoCo III). The additional Serial and Printer ports may be used with drivers found on the Compuserve OS9 group to provide a complete computer system with only the addition of a disk interfacs. The uart is even connected to the 6809 interrupt line unlike the Tandy RS232 pac. Larry Harmon