[Coco] CoCo Progression...

[Mark McDougall]

James Dessart wrote:

>> Second, it's much easier to breathe new life into a possible CoCo 4
>> design by moving to a newer CPU, like an ARM. This gives you readily
>> available development tools like GCC and linux, not to mention many
>> other open source projects. But those aren't even necessary.
> 
> I have to agree that in-system emulation is probably better than just 
> reimplementing the CPU. Both Palm and Apple have used this technique to 
> move to a new architecture, and it seems to have worked well for both of 
> them.

I'm confused!

You're talking about designing a whole new computer and calling it 'CoCo 4'? 
  A new CPU and new graphics capabilities? Purely from a CoCo enthusiast's 
perspective - what's the point? You can't run CoCo software on it. Why not 
call it the 'Apple 4'?

I was talking about building a new CoCo in an FPGA - enhanced capabilities 
such as overclocking the 6x09 CPU, enhanced graphics, VGA output, maybe 
ethernet/USB etc - but always backwards compatible with the original CoCo. 
So you could play Donut Dilemma and run OS/9 at 2MHz, but also switch in a 
few MB of extended RAM, run a 1024x768 256-colour VGA display, surf the web 
etc at 40MHz on a modified OS/9 if you so wished.

Or am I missing something here?

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
| <http://members.optushome.com.au/msmcdoug> |   with less resistance!"