Getting Started
There are three main steps involved in establishing communication between DriveWire MacServer and your CoCo. We'll go through each one and provide you with the details, and in no time your CoCo will be talking to your Macintosh!
Step 1: Make the Connections
The first step is to make the physical connection necessary for communicatons. Since modern Macintosh computers do not come with built-in serial ports, you will need to obtain a USB to serial convertor. A recommended vendor for such an item is Keyspan, though there are others.
Once you've obtained a USB to serial convertor that is supported by OS X, do the following:
- Plug the USB to serial convertor in an unoccupied USB slot on your Macintosh.
- Connect the other end of the USB to serial convertor to the 9 pin female connector found on one end of the DriveWire cable.
- Finally, connect the other end of the DriveWire cable to the 4 pin DIN jack on the back of the CoCo labeled Serial I/O.
With the physical connection complete, the next step is to configure DriveWire MacServer so that it knows what type of CoCo it's talking to, what channel of communication will be involved, and what cartridges will be used.
The third and final step is to prepare your CoCo to talk to DriveWire MacServer. Depending on how you plan on using your CoCo, you may wish to have DriveWire's DWDOS burnt into EPROM and installed either on your CoCo's motherboard or in a ROM Pak or disk controller. Another option is to configure HDB-DOS for DriveWire and use that as your primary means of communicating with DriveWire MacServer (see the DriveWire User Manual for more information on configuring HDB-DOS for DriveWire).
A more readily testable option is to load and execute the CoCo-specific binary that comes on the DriveWire distribution disk. It requires that a bootable cartridge (such as a NitrOS-9 system cartridge) be inserted in virtual disk drive 0:
By executing the loader program, your CoCo will initiate a transaction to DriveWire MacServer. At a minimum, you should see some information in the statistics window and the log window.