TRS-80 COCo carts on Dragon

[heatsink128]

I understand that some of the Tandy CoCo carts will work on the Dragon. anyone list me some that will work OK?
Also do I risk damaging the Dragon if I try carts from the CoCo??
Thanks all
Chris

[sixxie]

I can't think of many ways a working CoCo cart could damage a Dragon, as it's the same interface (two come to mind, but they're so incredibly unlikely...).

Most game carts will work fine. CoCo carts tend to be pretty good at making their ROM calls through the indirect jump table, which is the same on both machines. The reverse isn't true though: Dragon Data game carts all (well, all the ones I've seen) seem to make direct jumps to ROM, so they won't work on a CoCo.

[heatsink128]

Thanks for that, expands the availability of game carts at least a bit!
Chris

[heatsink128]

Bit of an update on this:
Polaris works 100%
Handyman 100%
Canyon Climber 100%
Bust out plays but options don't work, you stuck with gravity and vertical settings.
Color Baseball, curruptted graphics and game does not start.

Will update as I get more carts

[sixxie]

You can test a lot of these out in emulation first if you can get hold of some ROM images (ftp.rtsi.com is a good start).

Even "Typing Tutor" seems to work on a Dragon - poorly, as it's calling the ROM to read the keyboard, and the scanning routine in the Dragon's ROM is inferior for some reason.

Edit: hm, can you describe "Handyman"? Not a game I've seen before.

[zephyr]

You can test a lot of these out in emulation first if you can get hold of some ROM images (ftp.rtsi.com is a good start).

Even "Typing Tutor" seems to work on a Dragon - poorly, as it's calling the ROM to read the keyboard, and the scanning routine in the Dragon's ROM is inferior for some reason.

Edit: hm, can you describe "Handyman"? Not a game I've seen before.

You can download a copy here...
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gb9xs8

The archive password is 'Dragon32'.

[sixxie]

Cheers! So not a game, a helper tool for an actual handyman.