[Coco] Are MC68B09E's and HM63C09E's as well as various support chips still available?

[Frank Swygert]

If space is so tight why not drop the 1MB of DRAM? The CoCo3 could only 
address 512K without mods, and nothing really uses 512K except for a few 
games. I know with OS-9 the extra RAM can be addressed, but how useful 
is it? Most people will never use even the full 512K. The other items -- 
PS/2 keyboard, true serial port (hmmm... would bit-banger be adequate 
with the faster CPU core?), video and some kind of monitor ROM are 
required to run. Some of that could be offloaded onto a companion board 
though. I'm not familiar with the development boards, but most do have a 
I/O header. Would it be possible (or rather PRACTICAL) to have the CPU 
on the dev board and a I/O daughterboard with video and other I/O on it? 
Would make the dev board FPGA useless without the d-board, but might be 
a more cost effective solution.

Your project "scheduling" sounds like my Jeep J-10 truck rebuild.... 
little spurts of work, a long time in the making!

---------------------------
Date: Fri, 25 May 2012 12:08:20 +1000
From: John Kent<jekent at optusnet.com.au>

Hi James&  Computer Doc,

I am working on updating the FPGA 6809 design to include 6309 instructions.
I have bursts of enthusiasm from time to time and then I'm distracted by
other things.
As I mentioned on the list before, I have a 6809 SoC on the XESS XuLA
board, which is a 200K gate FPGA.
It includes the CPU, PS/2 keyboard interface, serial port&  text VDU as
well as a monitor ROM.
It has 1MB of RAM with Dynamic Address Translation.
It's a very tight fit in the FPGA. I'm not sure the 6309 design would fit.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com