[Coco] CoCo emulation on a Compaq Internet Appliance?

[Andrew]

> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 19:57:21 -0500
> From: Roger Taylor <operator at coco3.com>
> Subject: [Coco] CoCo emulation on a Compaq Internet Appliance?
> To: cocolist for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Message-ID: <20071021005752.BE94E7D112 at qs281.pair.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
> 
> While driving through town today a local church was having a huge 
> multi-family rummage sale.  I whipped in to comb the place for 
> gadgets and I came across this wierd little compact device that 
> appeared to be a terminal.  Someone had it at the bottom of a big box 
> full of Tandy 1000 stuff.  I passed up the Tandy computer, monitor, 
> and stuff, and was mesmerized by the small size of the Compaq "thingy".

[snip]

That sounds like a very interesting project, Roger. I played around with 
something similar a while back (Acer NT-150, iirc). Less power than what 
you have (AMD 5x86/166) - but still fun, nonetheless.

Anyhow - given the limitations of the device, and the fact that you have 
to run emulation, I wouldn't bet on MESS being up to the task. I 
currently have MESS on my DOS emulation box (1.61b or whatever the last 
version for DOS was), and while it runs, it certainly isn't anywhere 
near "native" speeds. My box is a P166 with 16 or 32 meg, can't remember 
offhand.

However, if you can get DOS to boot on it (since based on the links you 
gave it is a regular PC platform, this should be doable), and get the 
sound card to work (likely it will emulate an 8 bit soundblaster), you 
should have enough speed to run one of the DOS emu's fine. I don't think 
there would be enough horsepower on the thing to run it via DOSBox on 
Linux - but it might be worth trying since getting the networking and 
USB running on DOS will be near-to-impossible.

Good luck with it, and let us know how it turns out - sounds like a fun 
project!

-- Andrew L. Ayers
    Glendale, Arizona