[Coco] Re: CoCo video? (CoCo4)

[farna at att.net]

I remember the problem with getting the PC video cards to work. Part of the problem was the closely guarded programming for the drivers. To much competition in that arena!! No one would give up code, even for older cards due to possible trade secrets, I believe. 

I think you're right though Mark. The Superboard will be the ultimate upgrade to the classic CoCo -- closest to a CoCo4. It's been so long since the CoCo3 now that we'd likely be on aabout a CoCo 6 (at least five) if development had continued, and all the CoCo2 (and likely a lot of CoCo3) compatibility would be gone by now. There comes a point when it's just to difficult to support all the old software and make a system more powerful. I mean really, how many people would want to run even CoCoMax3 when "CoCoMax5" would be so much more anyway? So development wise I think we'd be out there by now. The CoCo video really can't be upgraded without a new GIME, and even then there would still be some limitations. 

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

 -------------- Original message ----------------------
For someone or company to take a PC motherboard and write drivers to 
get it to work under an emulated platform. Maybe?? Considerable 
amount of work though. Then what? You still don't really have a CoCo 
to the fundamentalist. Does it matter? To me it does, to some one 
else it might not.

My point again? This thread appears almost predictably. I have shut 
down sales until I have completed the SuperBoard. Sales this past 
year kept me from working on it and I had orders out 90 days in many 
cases. To me the SuperBoard will be as close to a CoCo4 as we might ever get???

Someone, group, or company has to step up and take this dream to 
reality. Any takers??

Regards,

Mark
Cloud-9






At 3/4/2006 08:52 AM, you wrote:

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