[Coco] Re: Coco Digest, Vol 23, Issue 31

[farna at att.net]

Now this is interesting! An IDE and floppy interface would be nice, or skip the floppy for a flash card would be workable. Unless you can make a USB port and code in the ROM to "see" it like a drive. Even if a USB port had to be hard coded to work like a floppy drive to work with the SECB ROM that would be acceptable -- plug in a thumb drive and format it like a CoCo floppy. Might have to have a special program to read it from a PC, but would be a viable solution. If a thumb drive would work, I'd think any memory media or even a real drive (say a 3.5" laptop USB floppy) designed for USB would work. Then another USB port could be hard coded to work like a serial port, even if it had to be hard coded for a printer. My understanding of USB printers is that the computer does most of the work though, which wouldn't work well with a CoCo, so maybe an old fashion RS-232 port would be better. 

Using an IDE drive header for the expansion port sure does sound good -- connectors are easy enough to come by and should be available for quite a while. 

The GIME portion could be coded to work with a standard VGA monitor, even if resolution weren't increased. 

Are PIAs readily available? If they are, it might not be a good idea to include them in an FPGA. They would be used for I/O, and blowing one would mena replacing the entire FPGA. That might be a problem on the expansion connector also. Maybe just use external, socketed buffer chips on all I/O lines so the buffers would blow if any overloads. Would make the board a bit bigger, but safer for experimenters. 

--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Independent 
Magazine" (AIM)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AIM.html
(free download available!)
			

 -------------- Original message ----------------------

> Message: 7
> Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:04:30 -0400
> From: "James C. Hrubik, Sr." <jimhrubik at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Hidden 256-color mode
> 
> On Aug 10, 2005, at 3:47 PM, Nickolas Marentes wrote:

> > I'm really looking forward to this "CoCo3-in-a-chip" design. Maybe 
> > once completed, a few extra functions could be squeezed in to make it 
> > qualify as a CoCo4?
> >
> > Any plans for an expansion bus? Maybe a small "microbus" 
> > idea...something that allows for expansion cards but takes up little 
> > space and uses a small connector (IDE type connectors)?
> >
> > I guess the easy route would be a drop in replacement motherboard to a 
> > standard CoCo3 case and to finish the job...a replacement case badge 
> > that says "Color Computer 4"!
> >
> > I'd wanna be one of the first in line to buy that!
>