[Coco] Liber809

[Boisy G. Pitre]

Hello everyone,

I wanted to make you all aware of a project that I've been wanting to do for some time, and have finally gotten working (with Gary Becker's design help and some input from James Daggett).  It's called the Liber809 and is a 6809 daughterboard that replaces the 6502 CPU found in the Atari 8 bit computers such as the Atari 400/800/130XE/etc.  I've currently got a handwired prototype running on an Atari XEGS.

There were some challenges in getting the design right, as the Atari's employ special graphics and sound chips, some of which actually want to take over the bus.  Having the 6809 cope with that logic was interesting but in the end, doable.

Although this isn't necessarily a CoCo thing, it has some lateral interest because it will open up a whole new set of folks to the 6809 software and NitrOS-9.  Having the 6809 run on systems such as the Atari with their powerful graphics and sound hardware is a dream I've always had and now it's happening.

The idea is to also expand this idea to other 6502 systems like the Commodore 64 and Apple II.

The next step is to do some more testing and then make some actual PCBs for additional testing.

Thanks go to Gary Becker for the design and James Daggett for his assistance.

Best Regards,
Boisy G. Pitre

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