[Coco] CoCoNet beta release

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 02 January 2010, Christian Lesage wrote:
>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.
>
I sure can agree with the skinflint-ish assessment, and would also point out 
that for some of us, it is an automatic boot to nitros9 about 10 seconds 
after the monitor is warmed up enough to read it.  There have been some 
amazing things done with rsdos/basic, but its not multi-user/multi-tasking, 
so if I can't do it with os9, shrug.  But that is just one old farts 
attitude, and the original os9 on a coco2 convinced me that single tasking 
os's are wasting a huge resource, on any machine.  The attitude can be 
ignored, its not worth much, but its a habit its taken me 25 years to develop 
and it seems like a good habit to me.  I see the broken dload as the man 
sticking it to us for his own selfish reasons.  YMMV of course.  That is 
after all, what makes much of this society run, differences of opinion, and 
it gets things done.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)

Art is a lie which makes us realize the truth.
		-- Picasso