Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

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Lothos
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:13 am

Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by Lothos »

Hi all,
I am only recently rediscovering the joys of my Dragon 32.
I always wanted to get a disk drive to run on my Dragon but the opportunity to do this now seems to be a rare and expensive one!

I see that there seem to be a lot of modern twists on running drives on Dragons so my question is, what do I need to get (and where from) in order to experience disk drive use on a Dragon 32?

Oh... and if anyone has a genuine Dragon Drive they don't want anymore please message me!

Thanks in advance.
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Stig
Posts: 74
Joined: Mon Mar 17, 2014 4:54 pm

Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by Stig »

First thing you need is a Dos controller. You can buy the recently made ones here: http://www.sellmyretro.com/offer/detail ... -new-10652

You can connect several different floppy drives to that, original dragon, BBC compatible or even a PC 3.5" drive

Getting software onto actual floppy disks is a whole different story
Lothos
Posts: 11
Joined: Sun Oct 18, 2015 12:13 am

Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by Lothos »

Thanks Stig,

I'll get the controller and drive sorted first, then I'll come back and ask about the software!
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Stig
Posts: 74
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Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by Stig »

Lothos wrote:Thanks Stig,

I'll get the controller and drive sorted first, then I'll come back and ask about the software!
No worries. I should be able to guide you through the process. It wasn't easy for me, had to use 3 different PC's to get it all setup but now I can easily write any dragon .vdk disk image to 3.5" floppy disks and then load them on my dragon :)
Lothos
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Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by Lothos »

Does anyone know if a trs-80 color computer disk controller will work without modification in a Dragon 32?
zephyr
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Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by zephyr »

No. Disk Extended Color Basic (CoCo DOS) needs the CoCo BASIC ROM.
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tormod
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Re: Playing with disk drives - what do I need?

Post by tormod »

Lothos wrote:Does anyone know if a trs-80 color computer disk controller will work without modification in a Dragon 32?
You'll need to replace the controller ROM with a DOS that integrates with Dragon BASIC and is compatible with the disk controller. HDB-DOS for Dragon should work, as well as the SuperDOS ported to CoCo disk controllers (just learned about that one tonight https://pairlist5.pair.net/pipermail/co ... 50438.html).
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