Tandy Color Computer with Six-Drive DOS

HxC Floppy emulator support for all others computers...
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n3pla2000
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Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2022 11:03 pm

Tandy Color Computer with Six-Drive DOS

Post by n3pla2000 »

I have a Tandy Color Computer 3. I want to be able to use a HxC device within my system. I presently have a Combo Drive in the system, which is basically a 5.25 floppy and 3.5 floppy in a single half height 5.25 drive bay. Since each of these drives are double sided I use software called Six Drive which makes changes to the DOS, and can be then burned onto the ROM based DOS on the Floppy Controller. Six Drive does not change the way the Color Computer sends or receives data to and from the drives. It however allows you to read and write to both sides.

In order to read.write both sides, it assigns each side it's own drive number, the first side of the first drive is usually assigned to be "drive 0", the second side is usually "drive 1". However Six Drive is flexible and allows either side to be any drive number you wish. The other advantage that you can change the track count from the original 35 tracks to 40 or 80, some people have even gotten away with 41 track on a single density drive and over 80 on a double density. So not using Six Drive would be detrimental to accessing floppies with more than 35 tracks. I assume the HxC can detect side selects, other wise how could it read/write to entire the floppy disk.

The Color Computer uses the original standard pin out as for it's drives as set by Shugart. three pins 10, 12 and 14 as drive selects 0, 1, and 2. In a single sided system pin 32 is used as drive select 3. When using double sided drives pin 32 is used to select correct side.

So here is my question... Can any of the HxC devices be told to assign two single sided disk images to one drive double sided drive, using the "side Select" as a means to determine which disk image to reference? or Can the HxC be used as two different drives by using two different drive selects? If I can assign the HxC as two drives using either method I can get the HxC to act as two drives. I can always use a 74LS138 3to8 decoder to provide two separate drive selects by connecting it between the controller and the drive.

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