[Coco] Introduction, cartridge slot proto boards, J&M controllers, and EDTASM pak.

[Matthew D Stock]

Hi Mark, welcome!  I'm still new to the party myself, but I have a few 
suggestions.  Regarding the prototyping board you're looking for - I was 
never able to find one from any of the usual sources that would fit the 
Coco.  That's one of the reasons I created my bus buffer 
(http://www.bexkat.com/products.html).  It breaks all of the bus pins 
out to a header which you can connect to a breadboard or other project.

I'm also finalizing a design for another board that will pull disk and 
ROM images off of microSD.  I also added an ethernet port for the fun of 
it.  In the middle of testing the (final?) board layout now.  I hope to 
have pictures and stuff up soon, but I've been having too much fun 
playing with the thing.

Good luck in your experiments!
   -Matt


On 8/21/2013 10:42 PM, Mark J. Blair wrote:
>
> I seem to recall that back in the day, Radio Shack carried a bare PCB with card edge fingers at both ends which match the CoCo's cartridge slot, and it could be used as-is or cut in half for CoCo hardware projects. Is any similar sort of proto board still available? Vector still makes their expensive plugboards with 44 pin edge fingers, but I don't recall whether they have the right pitch. I can check when I get home from work this evening. If there is not an off-the-shelf solution, then I guess I'll just need to lay out my own and have it made!
>
> Also, I'd be interested in getting my hands on a J&M controller. I think that I had a JFD-COCO originally, but the JFD-CP looks more interesting to me now. I'll use one of the Radio Shack systems I got on eBay for the CoCo 2, but it'd be nice to use a fancier controller on the CoCo 3 with DSDD drives. I don't suppose anybody has an extra JFD-CP that's looking for a new home?
>
> Last but not least, would any of y'all have an EDTASM program pak to dispose of?
>