[Coco] Multi-Processor 6809 Computer System

[Mark McDougall]

On 2/05/2013 3:11 AM, Brian Blake wrote:

> And I would certainly agree with this. Gary's CoCo-X is a perfect example of
> the above - along with unwanted drama...

As I've mentioned before, it is going to be difficult to design a Coco 
replacement and even get anywhere near breaking even in the long run. It 
will have to be a labour of love for someone...

FWIW I'm currently designing a custom FPGA board for my own purposes - 
primarily for the prototyping of a specific emulation not related to Coco - 
but also to be used for "play" over the next 5 years or so - it is 
ridiculously over-engineered! With that in mind, the design does include 
expansion capabilities, and I've specifically been thinking about the Coco 
along the way. The base board, along with a relatively simple 2-layer 
expansion PCB, should have everything that you could possibly want on a 
Coco-X, and much more.

The board itself will cost way, way more than any Coco enthusiast could 
possibly justify spending (it's not for sale anyway) but I was intending to 
port both my own Coco1/2 and Gary's Coco3FPGA designs to it, and 'showcase' 
the possibilities in a video. I think in these types of cases, a picture (or 
video) is worth a thousand words, and it might just be enough to get people 
enthused again. And of course the future possibility exists to down-scale 
the design specifically for a Coco-X application.

Mind you, it's a big project and completion is many, many months away at 
this point, as I'm still in the schematic capture phase. Layout is going to 
be a mammoth task, and it may very well stall there forever. So take all 
this with a grain of salt.

Regards,

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