[Coco] Shipping with UPS was ReCoCo-X is funding

[Mark McDougall]

On 27/03/2013 2:38 PM, Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote:

> I hate to play the devil's advocate, but if you stop looking at this
> through rose-colored glasses, you will see that other than "supporting a
> CoCo project" there is no real incentive what so ever to donate to this
> cause. -Sure, we all need to "keep the CoCo alive" but there are way
> better ways that this.Again, taking off the "Rose colored" glasses, I
> fail to see any point or need for this project: and here is why:-other
> than VGA, it offers no real improvement over a stock CoCo 3.

With all due respect, I disagree entirely. I suspect you're a little too 
focused on the base specifications, and you perhaps fail to see the 
potential for this product - or indeed any product based around programmable 
logic.

I'm loathe to speak for Gary, but he has tried to balance the (initial) 
feature set with a reasonable timeline. IIUC the plan is to design enough 
expansion capabilities in to allow for much more exciting features in the 
future. But as any product developer knows, you need to draw a line in the 
sand somewhere or you'll never get out of the design phase. And personally, 
I think base Coco3 functionality is a very sensible first milestone.

The possibilities for this product far exceed those of a stock Coco3. Aside 
from VGA, there's (significantly) over-clocking the system, enhanced 
graphics modes, a plethora of input device options (keyboard, mouse, 
joystick, gamepads, etc) that can be made to emulate legacy devices without 
need for additional drivers to be written, modern storage solutions (IDE, 
CF, SD) that emulate tape, floppy and/or hard disk storage, in-built stereo 
sound, development aids like hardware debugger, custom MMU for limitless 
memory capacity, the list goes on. And the beauty is, a lot of these 
enhancements require little more than a custom cable and some extra logic.

Not to mention, there's no reason why people can use the same platform to 
run other retro micro emulations, like TRS-80 Model I/III, Apple II, etc 
right out of the Coco keyboard!

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"