[Coco] stepping down from projects

[James Dessart]

It has become clear to me that if I am to continue the course of my 
education, I will likely not have any time for CoCo projects. If 
anyone's interested I can go into more detail on that, but I'll keep it 
short on details for now.

The projects that I was working on, and their status, are as follows... 
If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

gcc for the CoCo
http://sf.net/projects/gcc-coco/
http://skwirl.ca/coco/gcc.html
  - needs a rewrite for PIC code, and better code generation
  - best start for someone taking over: port 68hc11 code
  - needs C stdlib
  - small-C might be a better option (easier to learn back-end)
  - I know nothing of the gcc backend, really
PacketWhacker based uIP ethernet - Coco UIP Interface - CUIPI - 
pronounced "kweepy" ;)
http://skwirl.ca/coco/ethernet/
  - question of creating ethernet pak, then software
  - basic pak hardware design done, but not tried out
  - software is based on uIP-AVR (same interface, both 8-bit processors)
  - gcc may be good enough to compile and link an RSDOS version
  - I'm willing and able to help someone pick this up where I left off
  - could facilitate fully-networked OS-9, with disk and other IO done 
over ethernet
    - single pak with ethernet, OS-9 ROMs and connection to desktop 
server
    - would allow for hardware design simplified over my current one
    - full network booting of OS-9
Contiki
http://www.sics.se/~adam/contiki/
  - no real work done
  - may be dependant on better C compiler support for debugging
  - ethernet not a requirement to start
  - can leverage uIP work to deliver a CoCo internet experience
  - easy enough project, code is quite understandable

Whoever would like to take one or more of these over, I'd be very 
grateful. I don't want to see these projects fall by the wayside, but I 
just don't have the time to do them myself. I will help anyone who 
wants to pick one of these up get started, even if it means teaching a 
skilled assembly programmer C. Teaching for me takes less time than 
doing these projects, but only if the person is already a decent 
programmer. I am a skilled and patient educator.

The easiest project here, by far, is Contiki. Theoretically, with gcc 
the way it is, Contiki should be able to work. I just never got 
anywhere, because the documentation I could find for RSDOS ROM routines 
was pretty poor, and even documented assembly is of no use when you 
don't know what you're looking for.

I really hope someone steps up to take one of these over, I think any 
single one would really help the CoCo, as a platform, a lot. They are 
all things available to the C64 (C compiler in the form of small-c), so 
I don't see why the CoCo couldn't do them too.

Thanks,
James