[Coco] Re: Coco 4 again!

[farna at att.net]

I was just poking around looking for something on the Halted Electronics site and noticed these single board computers: 

It says Embedded Pentium class controller, but I couldn't find any details on the parent companies website (www.st.com). Apparently this one is a discontinued model. What got me most was the $39 each price. With something like this (if it's fast enough for what I describe below -- at least fast enough to act like a 6-8 MHz 6809 would) it would be easy to build a CoCo 4 as a $150 box that you add your own keyboard and monitor to. This would be especially true if it can be housed in something like a SCSI external drive case, which are pretty easy to find surplus now. At $150 I think it would be a go even if you had to source your own case.

http://www.halted.com/commerce/ccp17878-embedded-pc-on-a-card-sgs-st-pc-95044.htm

Check the STPC line on the manufacturers site also. Easy upgrade line for the future! 

This site has items that are much more promising, but are sure to cost more. 
http://www.globalamericaninc.com/sbc/index.php

This would be the way to go though... it's what I originally mentioned -- an SBC with a 5.25" drive form factor. A PII class machine with enough flash memory to hold a highly customized Linux kernel and version of MESS programmed to take advantage of the I/O capabilities would be fantastic! Have the customized MESS preconfigured for the basic CoCo3 I/O and to use the IDE hard drive. For a CoCo4 I'd talk to Art (he's on here occasionally!) about incorporating ADOS-3 into the ROM code. In order to get around the copyright issue require all buyers to send in the serial and model number of their CoCo when purchasing. You'd have to standardize on a hard drive format for the DECB side though. You would have compatibility, but you still wouldn't have the easy hardware modification/addition capabilities of a CoCo. Most of these SBC computers do have an expansion port that might be useful, otherwise it's just USB, RS-232, and Parallel ports for expansion. That might not be so bad. I wonder if the parallel port could be reprogrammed to read a cartridge? But then a USB cartridge adapter might not be to difficult to cobble together... for someone familiar with USB technology (not me!!). 
http://www.globalamericaninc.com/new_spec/spec2.php?id=20


--
Frank Swygert
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