[Coco] Why do we need a CoCo 4? (Long irrelevant rant)

[Bill Barnes]

--- On Mon, 12/29/08, jdaggett at gate.net <jdaggett at gate.net> wrote:

> From: jdaggett at gate.net <jdaggett at gate.net>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Why do we need a CoCo 4? (Long irrelevant rant)
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Date: Monday, December 29, 2008, 7:37 PM
> 
...
> Yes one could expand the 6809 core. As far as I know there
> is no 6309 IP 
> core in existance, yet. What I have coded is still early in
> design. The ...

I'm sure someone will probably work on it if the interest is there.

> 
> Yes I have ideas of what could be done to improve the
> 6809/6309 core. 
> One would be to do what RISC controllers do, pipeline
> fetches. That is 
> doable in an FPGA. 
> 

Solid Ideas.

...
> 
> To do an enhanced opcode is really a nightmare in getting
> consesus on 
> what to add and what not to add. Personally I would like to
> see more 
> instructions like that in the HC11/HC12. BRCLR and BRSET
> are nice 
> instruction. The IDIV and FDIV are more fucntional than
> what the 6309 
> has. That also requires someone to rewrite assemblers and
> any compilers 
> for new instructions. That is out of my realm of expertise.
> I am a hardware 
> dude that can do some programming. 
> 
> james
> 

Agreed, someone will need to write the compilers and modify code as needed to take advantage of such changes. I haven't ever written a compiler so I'd be lost taking on such a project. Also all the additions would need to be finalized as to what codes, and what happens when they're encountered before compilers could be written. Of course then, that leaves the debugging of the new functions that haven't previously existed.