[Coco] Re: Coco Repack

[farna at att.net]

IIIRC the 6309 is a 4 MHz part? I doubt it will run reliably after 6-8 MHz. Even then, it could vary between chips. If you put a 6309 in FPGA you could drop some of the 6809 compatibility and possibly put in some new code, but then you'd lose program compatibility. Not sure how much that would affect NitrOS9 for the 6309 though. Still, if you do a CoCo repack with the joystick ports and replace the bit banger with USB (or two...), it would be a nice system. Wouldn't be 100% CoCo compatible once the ROMs were in place, but would be close. Would be very nice if the DECB ROM could be modified to use a USB floppy, and maybe HD. But DECB really doesn't need a HD for experimental purposes. Some sort of mass storage would be needed, maybe one of those USB "drives" would be easier to code in the ROM, but you'd have to transfer code from a PC to run DECB programs. The only reason I harp on DECB is the ease of programming for experiments. Basic09 is more powerful, it has similarities to Pascal, but CoCo BASIC is so darned easy to learn that for simple and/or quick experiments it would be preferred. 


--
Frank Swygert 
Publisher, "American Independent 
Magazine" (AIM) 
*Elite* publication for those 
interested in all 
aspects of AMC 
history,performance,restoration,etc 
. 
(AMC,Rambler,Nash,Hudson,Jeep,etc.) 
http:farna.home.att.net/AIM.html 
(free download available!) 



-------------- Original message from coco-request at maltedmedia.com: -------------- 

> Message: 3 
> Date: Fri, 06 Aug 2004 11:30:48 -0400 
> From: jdaggett at gate.net 
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Re: Coco Repack 
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts 
> Message-ID: <41136BE8.14904.E66F7 at localhost> 
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII 
> 
> Frank 
> 
> You are ringt if a FPGA version of the 6x09 were incorporated 
> along with an FPGA version of the GIME chip, breaking the 10 MHz 
> barrier will be no problem. Speed control can be done with external 
> clock ship. One by ICT can derive 1000's of frequencies from a 
> single crystal frequency. In fact the one chip that I was looking at, 
> from a 28.6868 MHz cyrstal I can derive over a 1000 different E 
> and Q Clocks for the CPU from 400 KHz to 19 MHz. 
> 
> My initial intent was to use a 6309 and my new GIME chip and j ust 
> see how fast I can over clock the 6309. I have two bytes resevered 
> in the memory map to address the clock PLL chip. 
> 
> Just keep pushing the clock until the chip stops. 
> 
> james