[Coco] [color computer] Just imagining...

[Phill Harvey-Smith]

Mike Pepe wrote:
> jdaggett at gate.net wrote:
> Understood, but I was thinking of one CPU to handle the OS, and then 
> driver-level stuff to offload to the others. One CPU could handle all 
> the graphics, one could be configured as a DMA or handle I/O. I've done 
> some preliminary feasability studies on the idea, and with some sub-50ns 
> SRAM or SDRAM it just might work...

This is basically what the Dragon Beta did, used one 68B09 to do all the 
processing and another to handle the I/O. Both sat on the same bus and 
had some logic to abitrate that seems to have been based around using 
BS.BA and the TSC lines. Because the machine was not fully developed at 
the time Dragon went under, the second CPU really only ever got used as 
a disk DMA processor. Would have been a really cool machine back in 
1984, but expensive too :)

Phill.

-- 
Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric !

"You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.