[Coco] RE: CoCo 4 - the dream continues...

[farna at att.net]

My thinking almost exactly! It's difficult to program most computers now. Even if you work with the little BASIC STAMP or PIC controllers you have to write the program on a PC then load into the controller. That takes time, though not much. Debugging can be done through an emulator before loading on the real thing. I guess that does speed things up a bit, but I really liked writing and debugging right on the CoCo. Type in, run, fix the errors (usually a typo, but not always!) as they come up, run again. Not only that, but hardware interfacing is almost impossible! On the CoCo you can easily interface with the joystick ports, and even the cassette relay came in handy on occasion. Then there was the cartridge port also. Something simple to prgram, can be used to develop on AND use as the controller, and easy to interface to without worrying about letting vital smoke out of an expensive piece of equipment (the worst that usually happened to a CoCo was blowing the 6809 due to the
  lack 
of buffers, or the buffers on an interface board). That type of single board computer would be a good seller! A board that emulated a floppy controller and drive but held either a thumb drive or SD or CF card would be a nice addition. Or even modify something similar to DECB and just have an SD/CF card, or thumb drive interface as the ONLY storage. Of course such a computer wouldn't really be a "CoCo4" unless it was at least CoCo3 compatible. But on a simpler level something more like a CoCo 2 would be enough. If it had LCD drivers on board it would be even better for experimenters, but then again that's getting away from CoCo compatibility. 

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

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
> Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2006 11:33:00 -0400
> From: jdaggett at gate.net
> Subject: RE: [Coco] CoCo 4 - the dream continues...

> 
> As for a market as a desktop machine there probably would not be 
> a large  market for such a product. IMHO the market would be less 
> than a 1,000 units. 
> 
> A Coco 4 has more an appeal to those with a flair for nostalgia. I 
> would think there would be a larger market if a board could be made 
> small enough to be used in embedded projects. 
> 
> 
> james
> 
> On 24 Jun 2006 at 7:09, Bert & Peggy Schneider wrote:
> 
> > I know it would be great to have a CoCo 4 - but has anyone does a market
> > survey to find out the size of the market that would warrant the
> > development, production, and distribution of such a system?  Looking at
> > the problem from a business angle, I bet there is a big market out there
> > for a multi-platform (hardware emulator) for ALL old 8 bit systems.
> > Think about all of the baby boomers who have disposable income now that
> > bought the CoCo or other 8 bit systems as an older adult in the early
> > 80s.  They are now in retirement, and want a little piece of nostalgia.
> > The problem with this business model is that if there are any game
> > cartridges, disks, and cassettes with software out there - it is
> > probably limited.
> > 
> > Bert
> >