Floppy Drive Questions

[CamTheBridge]

Hey all,

 

I just acquired a side car floppy drive, but I don't have a 32k RAM expansion for it and I'm looking to mess around with assembly language. I do however have a nanoPEB.

 

Now, as silly as this may sound, would it be possible to set up the floppy drive, AND the nanoPEB so that the nanoPEB would act as the 32K expansion, or would having the 3 emulated floppy drives and the real floppy drives make something go wrong?

 

In addition to that, now that I have a real floppy drive, what are good floppy disk games out there?

 

Thanks!

[+Lee Stewart]

Hey all,

 

I just acquired a side car floppy drive, but I don't have a 32k RAM expansion for it and I'm looking to mess around with assembly language. I do however have a nanoPEB.

 

Now, as silly as this may sound, would it be possible to set up the floppy drive, AND the nanoPEB so that the nanoPEB would act as the 32K expansion, or would having the 3 emulated floppy drives and the real floppy drives make something go wrong?

 

In addition to that, now that I have a real floppy drive, what are good floppy disk games out there?

 

Thanks!

 

I believe the sidecar-floppy has the same CRU address as the nanoPEB virtual disk controller. If so, the sidecar will be seen first, so the nanoPEB controller will never execute. At the very least, you would need to change the CRU on the sidecar. I am pretty sure that will not work either because the sidecar-floppy would need to be DSK4 and I do not think that is an option.

 

...lee

[Stuart]

 

I believe the sidecar-floppy has the same CRU address as the nanoPEB virtual disk controller. If so, the sidecar will be seen first, so the nanoPEB controller will never execute.

 

 

If the CRU addresses are the same, then won't both be 'seen' at the same time, and it will end in a very messy crash? Unless one unit manages to drive the data bus far better than the other?

[digdugnate]

In addition to that, now that I have a real floppy drive, what are good floppy disk games out there?

 

Thanks!

 

There's tons of good disk games. If you are interested, let me know and I can mail you some of my game disks that I'm not using.

 

A number of mine, tho, use Extended Basic so you may eventually want to consider picking that cart up as well.

 

Edit: Since you asked specifically, some of my favorites are Cubit, Submarine Commander, the Scott Adams Adventure games (requires Adventure cart) and of course, Tunnels of Doom (requires ToD cart).

Edited December 19, 2017 by digdugnate

[FDOS]

Hey all,

 

I just acquired a side car floppy drive, but I don't have a 32k RAM expansion for it and I'm looking to mess around with assembly language. I do however have a nanoPEB.

 

Now, as silly as this may sound, would it be possible to set up the floppy drive, AND the nanoPEB so that the nanoPEB would act as the 32K expansion, or would having the 3 emulated floppy drives and the real floppy drives make something go wrong?

 

In addition to that, now that I have a real floppy drive, what are good floppy disk games out there?

 

Thanks!

If you can change the CRU address of the side car to >1000. It should work fine. Even if that drive is set to DSK1. If the file name is found it will be accessed otherwise the search for the file name will continue on DSK1 of the NanoPEB.

[CamTheBridge]

 

There's tons of good disk games. If you are interested, let me know and I can mail you some of my game disks that I'm not using.

 

A number of mine, tho, use Extended Basic so you may eventually want to consider picking that cart up as well.

 

Edit: Since you asked specifically, some of my favorites are Cubit, Submarine Commander, the Scott Adams Adventure games (requires Adventure cart) and of course, Tunnels of Doom (requires ToD cart).

Thanks, I just picked up extended BASIC, and I'm also trying to get a hold of the Editor/assembler and start learning assembly

[+Ksarul]

If it is the original TI sidecar, there isn't an internal option to change the CRU address (for that matter, you would have the same issue with a Percom Data TX-99, a Myarc MPES-50, a CorComp 9900 Micro Expansion, or an Atronic CPS-99, which pretty much covers all known sidecar disk controllers).