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CoCo2 SDC availability (or alternatives)

D

Divarin

Veteran Member
Joined
Mar 9, 2019
Messages
565
Location
Cleveland, OH
I'm looking for a way to load up disk images of CoCo2 software on a real CoCo. I don't have a disk drive and I'm looking for a modern alternative such as the CoCo SDC. However all pages I have found that talk about the SDC refer to a single page on Zippster Zone to buy it and it's sold out.

This is a reoccurring theme in the retro community, someone designs and builds a nice piece of hardware, assembles a few, sells them, everyone gets all excited about it, then they're sold out and no more are coming so unless you were there in the beginning you're SOL.

At least with open source hardware you can (try to) build one yourself but from what I can tell the SDC was not open sourced and I can't find an assembled one. Is there an alternative project? Something using a raspberry pi maybe? Or is there another source to purchase the SDC?
 
Divarin said:
I'm looking for a way to load up disk images of CoCo2 software on a real CoCo. I don't have a disk drive and I'm looking for a modern alternative such as the CoCo SDC. However all pages I have found that talk about the SDC refer to a single page on Zippster Zone to buy it and it's sold out.

This is a reoccurring theme in the retro community, someone designs and builds a nice piece of hardware, assembles a few, sells them, everyone gets all excited about it, then they're sold out and no more are coming so unless you were there in the beginning you're SOL.

At least with open source hardware you can (try to) build one yourself but from what I can tell the SDC was not open sourced and I can't find an assembled one. Is there an alternative project? Something using a raspberry pi maybe? Or is there another source to purchase the SDC?
Click to expand...

Keep checking the Zippster Zone page. New batches of the SDC occasionally appear. I too was disappointed about them not being available, but this month a batch of 5 came up and I got one. You've got to be quick.

Now if I could just get a bloody TI-99 NanoPEB...
 
Alright thanks all for the responses.
Just yesterday I learned about DriveWire so I might try but I'll keep trying to get an SDC as it seems more convenient. Meanwhile I can at least load tapes.
 
I picked one of these up at VCFMW a couple months ago, but can't get it to work reliably for the life of me. I recapped the CoCo, reflowed solder in the SDC, tried a couple different SD cards, etc. I just get tons of IO errors and failures trying to load anything.
 
I didn't have any problem with the actual device, but the CoCo SDC archive from colorcomputerarchive.com contained many files that wouldn't load properly. I had to replace with disk images I saved from nearly a decade earlier. Those files worked. The colorcomputerarchive looks like a great service, but I think they need to recheck their images.
 
Mr.Amiga500 said:
I didn't have any problem with the actual device, but the CoCo SDC archive from colorcomputerarchive.com contained many files that wouldn't load properly. I had to replace with disk images I saved from nearly a decade earlier. Those files worked. The colorcomputerarchive looks like a great service, but I think they need to recheck their images.
Click to expand...

Interesting... pretty sure that's where I got my disk image collection. Maybe I'll have to look for something from TOSEC on archive.org.
 
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