[Coco] Nick's Survey results

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 05 December 2003 14:16, mmarlett at isd.net wrote:
>This has been done....The SuperBoard and SuperIDE cards have the
> FLASH option. The keyboard....Even though it might be a good idea,
> it will only work with a patched RSdos or NitrOS-9. Boisy has
> already done this for the up coming option of the PS/2 port on the
> SuperBoard. The problem is that when you do not have backwards
> compatibility all of the old software will not work. So unless you
> aren't going to run old software and just the new CoCo software
> being produced today, you will be frustrated. Even with patches to
> the RS routines yoou will still have programmers that talked to the
> hardware directly. That is why we selected the platform that we
> did.
>
>???? Did that make sense??? The polling method is a burden for sure.
>
>Regards,
>
>Mark

Yes it does make sense Mark, perfect sense.  For those games that 
insist on hitting the hardware for just a partial scan, just enough 
to determine if key so-and-so is pressed, I don't think they'd ever 
had any business doing anything but their own hardware scan which 
should still work, as opposed to jumping into the middle of the basic 
keyboard scanner routine.  If they do that, they are going to break, 
and will need fixed, while grumbling about bad dogs etc.

OR... The solution might be a reversable patch to the coco3's all ram 
image of the roms so that it can overlay the scanner routine with a 
read the port routine that lives at the entrance point of the 
overlaid scanner routine.  Something similar in operation to the 
rom-->ram routine we used in the cocos before the 3 might be in 
order, but as it overwrites the scanner, it should also save whats 
there, either as a disk file or in some high memory location not used 
by the system, something thats in short supply for a coco3, and leave 
behind a trigger check so that if a certain key combo is pressed, the 
original keyboard scanner is restored and the stock keyboard becomes 
active again.

The question then becomes:  Are the coco3's roms consistent enough 
that this 'patch' could be carved in stone and used in every one ever 
made, or are such things as pal/ntsc etc going to require multiple 
versions of what should be a simple little utility?  That I do not 
know.  I quit messing with those overlays when the 3 came out and I 
lost the memory above the disk controllers roms as a hidey place for 
all sorts of neat things like Jake Commanders Chrmakey editor.  I was 
also using os9 exclusively by then.

>>I for one would love to see a centralized site for COCO. Not
>>just for games though. If Nitros9 is free then where do I get
>>it? The coco all versions would make a great little
>>developement system. How about downgrading the basic roms to
>>just a BIOS Placed in a small Flashable prom,64k Static ram
>>using two 43256(32k x 8)chips,a serial keyboard that is NOT
>>an AT keyboard interface(COCO3 matrix keyboard with scanning
>>done by an encoder or a Pic processor sending serial scan
>>code to only the row I/O port,then change POLCAT to read
>>ASCII or other byte of key code). Making an AT keyboard
>>interface seems to me to be an excessive use of both hardware
>>and software just to have a lap keyboard that is transparent
>>to coco. Also perhaps an 8-bit ISA type slot or two.
>>
>>--
>>Coco mailing list
>>Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

-- 
Cheers, Gene
AMD K6-III at 500mhz 320M
Athlon1600XP at 1400mhz  512M
99.22% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly
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by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2003 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.