[Coco] RE: [Color Computer] Re: Why USB would be nice.

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-09-02 at 08:31 -0600, Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote:
> I am not trying to argue or fight ethier!
> I am not putting the "re-building" the CoCo down ethier, or even the USB, I 
> am just asking WHY!( It seems that most believe it to be the "holy Grail" 
> for the CoCo) People think I am argueing and being thick headed, but that is 
> not the case here. I want to understand.
> But everyone is saying WHAT we can do, and how much less it will cost. I am 
> just trying to figure out WHY (besides cost and when hardware becomes 
> imposible to replace).

I'm not too concerned about replacing hardware... at some point the coco
motherboard will dry out and turn to dust. Nothing is permanent.

In the meantime, coco-usb would provide advantages in 
-	cost
-	being able to "use what you got." If you use PCs and macs you will
eventually collect up some USB hardware.
-	being able to buy hardware off-the-shelf
-	cool factor of using modern hardware off-the-shelf. "You just hooked
my USB key drive to your coco, copied Time Bandit to it for me to use at
home, and it worked? That rocks!"
-	ethernet, wifi, etc. though we don't know how well a coco can keep up
with an ethernet chip.
-	oddball devices like graphics pad (I think X-Pad is only 256x192, some
folks could use the higher resolution).
-	

>  I am not trying to say don't do it. All I am saying 
> is that it does not make much sense (to me), when we all ready have most of 
> the "Stuff" USB will make use of, without buying a USB controller and in 
> most cases a Hub or more.

Have you considered that the reason it seems obviously useful to just
about everyone else might indicate that it would really fun thing for a
lot of people?

It may not fit your needs. But do a little thought experiment. Imagine
that all you have is a coco, a usb ethernet adapter, and a usb key
drive. You want to get your coco on the net. What do you do?

In my case, I would plonk down $75 and adapt whatever existing usb
drivers exist to my hardware. I never have to start from scratch: Linux
comes with a full set of USB drivers that I can look at as a model. And
guess what... it would be FUN to get such things working, at least for
the programmers among us. And for the non-programmers, others would be
able to benefit from the programmer's work.

I can think of lots of other scenarios where such a device is the
"right" solution for someone. 

>  There are THOUSANDS of printers on the market, and 
> a different driver will have to be written for each. This just does not seem 
> feasable, for not very many people have the knowledge or expertize to write 
> a driver for thier devices.

As to printers... I used to use a laser printer with my coco on a daily
basis.

The USB driver required for USB->parallel converter would basically just
give you the same type of connection you would get through a real
parallel port or a serial<->parallel converter.

Then the issue of "printer driver" comes into play.

I used to have an HP LaserJet printer attached to my coco. For printing
text, it needs no driver. It can format text all by itself. I used to
use the Coco 3 word processor "Simply Better." Before that, I used
TSEDIT/TSWORD. The Coco+LaserJet got me through High School and some
college with professional looking papers and resumes produced on the
coco.

You can do more advanced stuff in one of two popular printer languages:

HP PCL
or
PostScript

There are only two. You don't really need a driver for every printer
unless you're really pushing it to the limit.

PostScript is a complete programming language, so if you wanted to do
complex scalable vector graphics you could. Certainly screen dumps are
possible, and I'm sure there's a driver around. For PCL it might be more
problematic; if it allows scaling of output, you can send a little bit
of data and have the printer scale it up. At 300dpi, sending the raw
data would be too much for Coco.

I'd guess the situation is quite similar for USB printers.


Another cool thing with USB: if we use the same chip as these
Atari/Apple/Commie folks are using in their usb cartridge, we can
exchange drivers (they are all 6502, but easily converted). So in effect
we become one big retro community sharing development. That would be so
cool.

-- John.