[Coco] What would your ideal CoCo cartridge do?

[Tormod Volden]

On Tue, Oct 29, 2013 at 7:29 PM,  <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>> Someone mentioned they wouldn't want to use another computer as a
>> server. Well, build the server on a cartridge, and have the cart work
>> like a serial port. The server software could be pre-loaded, and could
>> be transparent to the CoCo. An RPi could be used, but there are other
>> small ARM based computers that would work, some smaller than the RPi
>> (but a bit more costly). Maybe build an entirely new board, stripping
>> the unnecessary functions of the RPi...
>
> Now that brings up even more ideas.  How fast would DriveWire be
> if the interface were parallel instead of serial?  RPi in a cart
> talking directly to the bus hosting DriveWire and all the bells
> and whistles that gets you. :-)

I believe Boisy already has done all that. He hooked up an Arduino,
talking DriveWire over the cartridge bus (parallel). HDB-DOS includes
support for this DriveWire interface. See Boisy's mails about it and
his blog.

Tormod