[Coco] Any news on the so called CoCo4 or NextCoCo projectthatBjork was heading?

[L. Curtis Boyle]

The DAC and ADC were also full 8 bit. It was also easy to upgrade to 1MB of RAM (with no soldering). Chris Burke made an RSDOS boot disk for it too, although I could never get it to boot reliably. It did run OS-9 and NitrOS9 very well, though, and a little faster than a Coco 3.
As far as I know, the multislot K-BUS stuff never got past the developmental stage. Bruce Isted, Bill Nobel and I did the OS-9 and Nitros9 drivers for it, and those worked really well (particularly proud of the keyboard and backwards compatible keyboard and sound drivers). 

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L. Curtis Boyle


On Oct 20, 2010, at 10:20 PM, Little John <sales at gimechip.com> wrote:

> The TC-9 was a 6809 based machine. It was basically a CoCo 3 (GIME and all) but without the BASIC ROMs and the audio DAC was mapped differently. I don't think it went over too well - it was geared towards OS-9 L2 usage. It could be connected to one of the other FHL OS-K machines (was that the TC70?). Actually up to 14 TC-9's I think could be connected to the 68K machine and appear in it's memory map. I can't remember exactly - it was something like that...
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sean" <badfrog at gmail.com>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 11:02 PM
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Any news on the so called CoCo4 or NextCoCo projectthatBjork was heading?
> 
> 
> I remember seeing the MM/1 at the '91 Rainbowfest in IL, and wanting
> one.    I was just a poor high school student at the time.  If I was
> in the position I am now, I'm absolutely sure I would have bought one.
> I remember being torn between the MM/1, and the other 68k boxes being
> shown at that show - I think the TC-9 was one of them, was that Frank
> Hogg?
> 
> Somewhat proof of my willingness for beta devices would be that I'm
> still on the waiting list for a Pandora.  (www.openpandora.org).
> Homebrew originated, taking much longer than promised, etc....
> 
> But I also have a netbook thanks to my job, and that works just fine
> as an emulator box, and weighs a lot less than a CoCo.  So I would
> agree that 'coco 4' hardware might be kind of silly.
> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 9:44 PM, Boisy G. Pitre <boisy at tee-boy.com> wrote:
>> Aside from your stance on software emulation (I prefer an FPGA based hardware solution), this is a great post and right on target. The MM/1 was a dream that was just too laborious to realize, and several people sunk a lot of effort only to realize little gain. The one who I believe was most affected was the creator himself, Paul K. Ward. My understanding is that he put a lot of his money on the MM/1 and ended up loosing it all, including his marriage. Suppliers (including Microware, as I was told when I worked there) got paid little or nothing from IMS. As tough a lesson as it must have been for him, I admire that he did it. Trying to follow an act like Tandy just felt like a loosing proposition at the time, but you have to hand it to him.... he tried.
>> 
>> I still have my old MM/1 VHS video that Paul shipped to me back in late 1990. Holy cow, it's been 20 years already! I recently digitized it an aside from some bad spots and skips, it's pretty watchable. I should put it up on YouTube.
>> 
>> Fast forward to now, and we have computational power that can emulate the MM/1 40 times over. It's a different world now... a software world, where hardware is a commodity. Building good software is enough of a job without adding hardware to the mix.
>> --
>> Boisy G. Pitre
>> http://www.tee-boy.com/
>> 
>> On Oct 20, 2010, at 8:31 PM, Paul Fitch wrote:
>> 
>>> I think the FPGA route is the only realistic method available to do this in
>>> hardware. I'm just not that interested in a hardware project. Doing it in
>>> emulation (the Coco4) however, has had me wishing very hard that I could
>>> program at that level. I just don't see spending hundreds of dollars on
>>> duplicating hardware that in most any matchup would be inferior to the stuff
>>> found on every bargin basement Windows 7 starter computer available today
>>> for under $400.00. And that's just the brand new stuff.
>>> 
>>> I would love to be able fire up VCC v2.0 and get a 1024 x 768, 64k color
>>> screen under Uber-DECB or Nitros9 v3.0. With native USB awareness built in,
>>> I would run it on my netbook, it would talk to my X-10 stuff, it would get
>>> my email, I would surf the web.
>>> 
>>> The thing about that (now dead) Coco4 wishlist is it could all have been
>>> realized two or three years ago fully in software, without the thousands of
>>> hours necessary to design hardware to run it. Then finding the money to get
>>> it into production, then the need to convince 50 or 60 or 100 people, out of
>>> how many of us are there left these days, 400-500 tops, to buy it?
>>> 
>>> It reminds me so much of what the MM/1 guys went thru. They spent their
>>> dreams trying to get the hardware available at the time to live up to their
>>> (and mine, and everyone elses) expectations. Today you don't need that
>>> hardware headache. The hardware is here, it's a software problem.
>>> 
>>> I dearly wish someone would code a solution. I wish even more I had the
>>> skills to do it myself.
>>> 
>>> I'm not interested in a hardware Coco4, but I would buy the emulation.
>>> 
> 
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