[Coco] Re: CoCo video? (CoCo4)

[RJRTTY at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/4/06 9:53:08 A.M. Eastern Standard Time, farna at att.net  
writes:

>Making an FPGA enhanced CoCo does sound feasible, but I have to  ask why? 
That's a lot 
>of work for a product that will end up costing more than most would  want to 
pay. I 
>understand the desire for a high performance CoCo, but with the cost of  PC 
hardware and 
>fast emulators, the "CoCo4" is already there. A decent Pentium 3  processor 
will run an 
>emulator much faster than a CoCo
 
David Kiel's emulator can break even with the coco3 on a 16 mhz 386  machine.
It is written in X86 assembler so it is the fastest emulator by far.   It can 
also
access real coco double density disk drives directly from the  emulator.
It can also access high density drives directly from the emulator.
 
 
>So why not tweak an emulator to extend
> the CoCo capabilities?  That should be
>doable while still maintaining  compatibility.
> It would be easy enough in NitrOS-9. 
>DECB could  always have the option of
> running a standard emulator. Make the  thing
>self booting with one of the free DOS systems,
> and  run from something like a VIA 
>mini computer board, package in a small  case
> with either a small laptop HD or a 
>flash card to boot from,  and there you have it! 

Now this is the best idea I have heard so far for
a coco4 project.
 

>I'd like to see DECB patched to something 
>like the old 512K  BASIC capabilities, and 
>most of the ADOS enhancements added.
> A  configuration utility similar to a BIOS 
>editing screen on the PC so that  configuration
> of drives (at least) could be changed 
>easily, and  as often as desired, would be nice.
> Support for larger disk drives would  
>be a necessity also (and that might be a problem
> -- but maybe  not if an enhanced 
>and standard emulator were with each machine...)  
>Once all that was worked out and 
>running nicely, it could then  be programmed into
> an FPGA and a new board made if 
>that's a real  desire. At least a standard for the 
>extended capabilities would be  worked 
>out. 

Do it first in the emulator THEN you have a guide to build
the real thing.  The first step anybody should take in
building a coco4 is to emulate it first on a PC.
 

>The only thing missing is an easy way
> to interface to the  outside world. There's your
>hardware project: an external interface  board
> that plugs into a PCI slot. I always liked 
>being able to  easily use the CoCo joystick
> ports (and even the cassette port) for  
>easy I/O. Maybe even emulate the CoCo cartridge port on the same card!  Some 
>easy to program data I/O ports and a half dozen relays on a card  would be 
realy 
>nice. The CoCo's strong point has always been  experimentation and easy 
>programming -- an I/O card and the standard  DECB with extended memory 
>capabilities (long BASIC programs -- and might  want to extend variables to 
more 
>than two character names) would really  open things up. 


>--
>Frank Swygert
 
YES !!!!    Implement all the ports on the coco3 on a ISA or  PCI card.   
THis is
good.  And you could use the real parallel and serial  ports of the PC as 
coco4 
enchancements beside the standard ones.   How about adding  connectors to
the cartridge port so more that one real coco cartridges could be plugged  
in? 
I think I am going to look into doing this as my next hardware  project.
 
 
Roy