[Coco] COCO4 Emulator

[John Donaldson]

Alex,
   What you said is all true. I forgot that the COCO3 could display 16 
colors, not 8. I kinda like the idea of porting NitrOS9 over to the PC 
and let it be a real PC OS. This may be the best of both worlds. It 
would allow a new hardware platform and allow use of upgrades that are 
coming out for the PC's. The OS source could be kep the the Net 
Dispostory so upgrades, changes, bug fixs and such could quickly be 
implimented. We then have true 80 column screens, all the colors we will 
ever need, speed would be determined by which PC Process your using. You 
could then envoke the current emulator programs to give backward 
compatiblity to the COCO2/3. Just think Multi-View could become our 
verison of Windows.

John Donaldson


Alex Evans wrote:

>In any group of enthusists for old computers there are a few major
>groups including the emulation crowd and the hardware crowd.  The
>emulation crowd wants the best emulation possible (possibly including
>extentions) and the hardware crowd generally feels that there is
>nothing quite like the real hardware.  You are not going to satisfy the
>hardware crowd with anything other than a hardware CoCo 4, now maybe
>you can have your emulator to debug the hardware and develop apps for
>it, but it could never be an end itself for them.
>
>As far as some specifics you have mentioned.  The CoCo 3 can display 16
>colors at a time, and has no 8 color mode at all.  The CoCo 1/2 can
>display 9 colors at a time in any of the semigraphics modes.  You
>proposed a machine with more than 2M memory and smaller memory pages. 
>It should be taken into consideration that in the CoCo 3 the 2M limit
>is what you get for a max of 256-8k pages.  From what I understand it
>would take some pretty serious changes to make Nitros9 use more than a
>single byte for page numbers, and I am certain that it would break
>nearly all of the software that uses paging directly.  As for DOS
>(BASIC) using all of the memory, ML applications already can, and for
>BASIC this is merely a software issue.  You just need to rewrite the
>interpreter to take advantage of more of the memory.
>
>--- John Donaldson <johnadonaldson at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>   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.
>>
>>
>> 
>> 
>>
>>
>>-- 
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>>Coco at maltedmedia.com
>>http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>>
>>
>>
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