[Coco] DE1 arrives :-)

[Mark McDougall]

Aaron Wolfe wrote:

> I wonder, if we just had an interface between the FPGA board and a
> multipak interface, would this allow the MPI to provide the "standard
> modular interface"?  seems most of us have or can obtain an MPI.  If
> it does provide enough signals for everything someone wants to do (and
> I'm not sure of that), then supporting a new FPGA board would mean
> redoing the work to get an MPI connected, but at that point you would
> be compatible with all classic coco hardware and any new paks made
> specifically for use in fpga boards.

I think Joel was talking about a modularised/standard interface board that 
supported coco peripherals to be attached to any number of FPGA development 
boards. This would allow Coco3FPGA to be ported to current and future FPGA 
platforms and provide the usual Coco I/O such as joysticks, sound, video and 
a cartridge connector.

You seem to be describing a board that (only) adds a coco cartridge 
connector to an FPGA development board, and then providing Coco periperhals 
via plug-in cartridges. Not quite the same.

FWIW BurchEd Electronics pretty much sold the former in modularized form 
anyway. I have a box of boards which I bought during a close-out. One such 
board has PS/2 & video connectors. Another has SRAM. Another has 
dipswitches. Lastly, there is one with LEDs. They all have std IDE headers 
like the DE1, and largely have the same pinout. In fact, I've interfaced 
them to the DE1 for various projects.

As I said in another post, no good for high speed I/O though. :(

Feel free to correct me if I got it wrong. ;)

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"