[Coco] CoCo3FPGA, FPGA Development, and GIME replacement

[Frank Pittel]

I'm sure Mark M, Roger T and others in the harder biz will chime in about the
costs but the problem with a productized cost board is the cost involved in the
price of making the board. :-( While the current coco3fpga project is written
for specific "trainer" boards I would imagine that it would be fairly easy to
modify it to a special built board built for the needs of a coco4. The advantage
as I see it is the current boards are cheap and have readily available. I do
have to admit that the documentation on how to setup a de1 board and install the
needed software leaves a bit to be desired and after I get through a couple of
other projects I'll be typing up the steps I took to get my board to work.

The Other Frank


On Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 06:21:57AM +1000, Nick Marentes wrote:
> > I don't think there will ever be a mass-produced,
> > shrink-wrapped Next Generation CoCo. But if there's enough interest, we
> > could very well see hobbyist-produced kits that make it pretty easy to
> > plug in one of the FPGA development boards, upload the CoCo3FPGA bit
> > file, and go.
> 
> I guess this what I'm afraid of. If there is no "shrink-wrapped next
> generation CoCo" but hobby-produced kits, will there be a
> "mish-mash" of different boards, each customized to a handful of
> user's specifications? Writing software will be a case of software
> that supports the feature of one board versus the other. Software
> may not utilize all the features of one board, instead supporting
> the most common set of functions.
> 
> This is not so bad, it's fun for the hardware hackers (the old
> definition of the term!) but it doesn't create a standard product
> that everyone else can use fully. And considering that such a
> product would probably be sold in small numbers ($200?), it may be
> something only for the few. It may not attract the software
> developer type, not that there are many left for the CoCo.   :(
> 
> In the end, I guess it's just a fun project for those few who are
> interested in FPGA/CPLD designs.
> 
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