[Coco] TC-9

[Mark Marlette]

Chuck,

As I recall the TC-9 did use the GIME.

Mark

Quoting Chuck Youse <cyouse at serialtechnologies.com>:

> On Mon, 2008-07-07 at 10:06 -0500, Joel Ewy wrote:
>> I have a TC-9, Chuck.  I have to say I've never been able to put it to
>> very good use.  It (mine at least) was always a bit flaky in operation.
>> One of the main problems I had with it was that I could never get a hard
>> drive hooked up to it.  For some reason, it was incompatible with the
>> Disto SCII, which I already had.  So no no-halt floppy, and no 4-in-1
>> for RTC and SCSI.  Before I got that figured out, I bought an MM/1, and
>> the Tomcat sat mostly unused.
>
> Man, I'm a tad bit jealous - I want! I want!  :)  And btw, building a
> hard-drive interface for the thing would mostly likely be a piece of
> cake.. it doesn't get much easier than an IDE interface.
>
> Does it have any custom chips on it that you're aware of?  One big
> problem with making a Coco 3 clone is the GIME.  If the TC-9 did most of
> the naughty in PAL/GALs and discrete logic, then I might try to
> resurrect it..  The Coco 3 is a nice machine, but for 'serious' work it
> has some limitations, the poor keyboard, case, RS-DOS/Coco2
> compatibility stuff ...
>
> My ideal NitrOS-9 machine would have no bells and whistles on-board, and
> just lots of expansion slots.  I'm debating using a 63C09 and creating a
> custom MMU (which would cause problems with NitrOS-9, because I'd use a
> simpler mechanism than the GIME) or putting these handfuls 68008s or
> 68000/68010s to use and making NitrOS/68000.. I'm leaning towards the
> latter, if only because that eliminates the need for a DAT, and OS-9
> lost a lot of its elegance when the MMU was introduced (Level 1 -> 2).
>
> But if I had schematics for a TC-9, well then .. I might steal the
> design.. wonder if Mr. Puppo would mind.
>
> C.
>
>
>
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