[Coco] COCO4 Emulator

[John Donaldson]

   The main reason I brought up this question, is hardware is expensive 
and takes a very long time to develope for a market like ours. Example 
is the "Superboard" that Mark and Boisy are working on.
Theirs is not on the market yet. It WILL, but it takes time and MONEY. I 
have attented many COCO fest and heard others wish the COCO had a bigger 
screen, the CPU run faster, use more than 8 colors at one time and it 
had more memory.

   If we are going to try and get more people interested in the COCO, 
more coming to the fest, and keep it alive, we really need to enhance it 
as much as possible but still keep the COCO alive inside it. This is
 why I envision a COCO4 Emulator. I don't think there will every be 
another hardware COCO. Even the current COCO2/3 hardwares are getting 
scare and scarer. Look how hard it is to get monitors, thus the 
RGB-Svideo and VGA devices that have been developed.  It would evolve 
more and faster as a emulator. As time goes on, more features can be 
added and enhancements made easier. Put the source code on the net 
respository so that developers can get access to it for enhancments, bug 
fixes, and new features. This would allow in one since a "committe 
developed system". Similar to how Linux was developed.

  Either keeping it as a emulator or porting it as a real Intel/AMD OS 
is where I see the COCO going.
Whether it is a emulator or a native OS, there are plenty of older 
hareware system in the used market. The COCO4 could be mated up with a 
cheap hardware system, setup to boot when the system is turned
on. Someone could make these up, preload and ready to go, then take them 
to a fest and sell them.