Labyrinth |
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| I thought I could have this made in a snap! I had no idea it'd take 2 months just for the base unit itself! There was a lot of work involved here as you can see. I first planned out the casing on paper and got the proper measurements. Then I took those measurement and drew them all out on the wood that I'd be using. Cutting it took a long time cause all I had was a simple handsaw and I had to be careful to keep my cuts straight. I then took apart a 64K TRS-80 Color Computer 2 (Thanks Jim Cox!). Downloaded the instructions on how to connect a PC power supply up to a CoCo3 and made the modifications. It was a bit different for a CoCo2, but I was able to figure it out. Once made I got it all in place on the base of the unit. Then I had to get all the peices glued together and screwed down. Then I had to make a few quick additions to help support the case better, cut the dowel for the power switch to proper length, etc. After the case was all together, I connected the new reset button up front. I had to make a slight modification to the Power supply to hook it up to the FD502 drive. I built a rail system for the floppy drive and got that in place. Of course, I ran into a few problems which made this take so long. One of which was the CoCo dying on me as I was finishing up. I had to find a replacement from another person and I was lucky to get my hands on another 64k Tandy Color Computer 2. To my surprise the board layout was different than the previous one, because this was the latest board for the CoCo2 unlike the last CoCo2 I had. So I rearranged the inner dowels that suspended the board from the base and took care of it from there, plus I had to refigure out the PC supply to CoCo modification on this board as well without blowing it up. Luckily I figured it out the FIRST time. I ran into other problems, such as the floppy cable that came with the disk controller I bought, had that infamous missing pins on the connectors which wasn't working with the floppy drive, so I had to take them off and crimp a whole new one on. But after all that, it started to work and my cat Aunry, was there to see it succeed! (Picture number 13) |
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