[Coco] CoCoNet beta release

[Christian Lesage]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Saturday 02 January 2010, Roger Taylor wrote:
>   
>> If you keep on the path I did, eventually, you'll get mad at Mark
>> Hawkins and the gang for screwing up a way to take a bare CoCo 3
>> running software from over a 2 or 3-wire cable.  :)
>>     
>
> If I can be so audacious as to mention it, I have wondered if they were more 
> concerned with getting their trio image into it than with preserving 
> functionality.  OTOH, that might have been the shacks way of trying to get 
> everybody over to the pc.  Us peons will likely never really know though.

I've always thought SECB didn't live up to the expectations, especially 
since ECB was good compared to the competition back in 1980 or 1981. In 
my opinion, SECB was a kludge. And, yes, I'm mad they managed to screw 
the only BASIC command that would be really useful nowadays. Some people 
say the space occupied by the picture was wasted anyway, because this 
range of addresses is also used by the disk controller ROM, but I 
disagree. That space could have been used to store more and better 
patches. Or a scheme could have been devised to switch between different 
ROM/RAM modes.

That said, I will keep on the DLOAD path, because I'm convinced it can 
work, just like I'm convinced some folks would appreciate having a 
"no-extra-hardware" option to allow them to play with DriveWire (and 
maybe CoCoNet)! :) Do not underestimate the number of people who'd just 
like to tinker with a CoCo, but will not invest their hard-earned money 
into buying new hardware for a "toy" that is nearly 25 years old. 
Similar options exist for the Apple II computer, and I just want to 
contribute bringing that to the CoCo world as well.