[Coco] Cloud9 Coco3 buying, best config?

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sat, Dec 3, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Karl S <dee-k at live.ca> wrote:
>
> Hi! I wanna buy a coco3 from cloud9. I am an enthousiast who just started programming assembly for the 6309 and wanna make game for coco3.... Just to prove myself that the coco wasn't that "shitty" as I tough it when I was younger. The fact is that my father at this time didn't knew anything about computers and to make me happy bought me a coco2 with 64k and a cassette player/recorder. I was 10, had fun for a while but I had no clue about the possibilities of the machine. I was a game oriented kid and started to compare it with others like c64 that was little more advanced for gaming. Had no clue about Os-9 at this time, only knew some BASIC commands. Then coco3 came with the GIME, the 512k upgradable and others but never been able to convince my dad to buy me a new coco w 512k. He said that it would only make the same thing as with the coco2 I had; Finding it "shitty" lolll!!! Okay I was a kid, and I so much regret this time  hehe!!!
> I'm a bigger kid now, and wanna make it happen again :D So now here the infos I need:
> I'd buy a coco3 with 512k upgrade. Is the 512k enough to run ALL softwares and games ever made for coco3? I wanna feel like I'm still in the 80's, so need the hardware that was "available" at this time.

Yes, 512k is enough.  I've never heard of any software using more than
512k, much less requiring it.  The only actual use I've seen for more
than 512k is as a ram disk, but with the superIDE there is little
point in a ram disk imho (the superide has essentially 0 seek time and
very fast i/o)

> I'd also add a SuperIDE. I know it wasn't available at this time but this would only make me save space. The waiting loading time from disk or cassette are obsolete and as long as the coco3 itself is a genuine config from the 80's, the IDE is okay for me.
> Is the DriveWire a better option? Or is it something I may add to connect to my PC? Does it replace SuperIDE?

DriveWire can do some of the things that the SuperIDE does, but it
doesn't replace it.  They both provide storage, but besides being
much, much faster the the key thing that the SuperIDE will give you is
ROM slots that can be flashed with various Coco roms.  Really, the
DriveWire and SuperIDE work great together.  The SuperIDE provides a
convenient way to load the DW rom, so all you need is the SuperIDE and
a drivewire cable. you'll have the fastest drive controller and the
most powerful connectivity solution working together.