[Coco] Nick's Survey results

[Roger Taylor]

At 09:12 PM 12/7/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>>Mark,
>>Thank you for your reply! I understand that there is already
>>some excellent hardware and software for "real COCO,s" but if
>>I wanted to really build a super expanded COCO I would not
>>use a true coco at all. Instead I would run a coco emulator
>>which would give me the use of all the natives systems
>>periferal devices. I could then have hard drives,floppies,CD-
>>roms or whatever and run at whatever speed my native machine
>>would do. For my interests the real beauty of the coco is
>>that it is a full computer with video,keyboard etc. in a
>>small size. The SAM chip was an excellent product for it,s
>>time because it tied together the VDU,DRAM,CPU,roms and I/O
>>using an "Interleaved DMA" allowing the cpu access to all
>>memory at any time without it(the CPU) having to worry about
>>refreshing ram and accessing video memory only during video
>>retrace or non refresh times. Of course the SAM,s later
>>cousin the GIME also did this.
>>
>>If I truly wanted to operate a COCO I do have a coco1,several
>>coco2,s and a 512k coco3. My interests are a bit different
>>though. Thank you from all of us coco,ist for all of your
>>fine work in keeping this machinge going in this modern age.
>>
>>Eric


I think some of the most common uses for a CoCo emulator are:

1) playing all those games we never could afford to buy
2) keeping the CoCo alive in any form is better than total death
3) developing software for a real CoCo

I've never been a total game freak, but at 35 I still find it a lot of fun 
to boot into an old CoCo 1, 2, or 3 game that I never owned or even had a 
clue about other than seeing it in Radio Shack or the Rainbow, etc.  All 
these ROM Pak images are now floating around for free.  This is truly a trip.

If EPROM burners and 4 or 8k EPROMs were free, then I'd bet that a lot of 
CoCo users would put these images on real cartridges.  Realistically, we'd 
be better off just emulating the ROM Paks and getting the same exact 
enjoyment from playing the games.

Now, if we could actually develop ROM Paks or disk software from a better 
environment (cross development is nothing new in this world), then there's 
another good use for some.

But I highly suggest not throwing out or selling off your entire CoCo 
system just because you've got a cool emulator like M.E.S.S.  Nothing beats 
being able to use the real thing.  If anything, give it it's own corner in 
your backyard shop and use it for handyman calculations or controlling 
gadgets, etc. etc. etc.