[Coco] What would your ideal CoCo cartridge do?

[Juan Castro]

OK, let me daydream a little...

It has an SD card slot which accepts FAT32 formatted cards. It has, as
a default ROM, a derivative of HDB-DOS with some additional commands:

MOUNT n,"FILE.DSK" - Mounts file \DSK\FILE.DSK from the SD as drive n.
Like DriveWire in HDB-DOS mode.
MOUNT "BIGFILE.DSK" - Mounts one big file (also from \DSK) like
DriveWire in non-HDB-DOS mode.

MOUNT works with subdirs and long names. So MOUNT
"COCOSUPERFUNPACK/LOTSOFGAMES.DSK" would grab file
"\DSK\COCOSUPERFUNPACK\LOTSOFGAMES.DSK" from the SD. Also, the
settings are nonvolatile, so if you mapped a NitrOS-9 disk image the
CoCo will boot directly into it.

ROM "MYDECBWITHMANYHACKS.ROM" - Makes file
"\ROM\MYDECBWITHMANYHACKS.ROM" from the SD appear at C000-FFEF instead
of the card's native rom, and resets the computer. It will now boot
with your custom ROM. Unless you press BREAK during boot, in which
case it reverts to the cartridge's native ROM.

ROM (no arguments) - Undoes ROM mapping so the machine will boot wit
hthe cartridge's ROM by default.

BROWSE - Calls up a file navigator to browse the SD contents, from
which you can perform the ROM and MOUNT operations interactively.

It also has a USB port that you can connect to a PC. As soon as you do
that, the PC sees a network interface with an IP address. Exactly like
the GCW-Zero handheld console does.

Now, for network connectivity and PC access to the SD files while
mounted on the CoCo, I'll leave that for later.

On Sun, Oct 27, 2013 at 7:14 PM, Mark J. Blair <nf6x at nf6x.net> wrote:
> I was just daydreaming about what an ideal cartridge for my CoCo 3 might do. This is what I came up with:
>
> * Floppy drive controller for real floppy drives.
>
> * Battery-backed real time clock.
>
> * Hard drive emulation using SD or CF for storage.
>
> * DECB-compatible ROM. I'm not sure whether the ROM would support hard drive access from Basic, or if it would just provide a command to boot an operating system from the virtual HD much like the DOS command for booting from floppies. Or maybe it would look just like an original FD-502 with a normal DECB ROM, but the virtual HD and other functions would appear to the CoCo as other cartridges plugged into an emulated Multi-Pak Interface?
>
> I'm just thinking out loud. I wonder what other folks would want in their ideal CoCo cartridge?
>
>
> --
> Mark J. Blair, NF6X <nf6x at nf6x.net>
> http://www.nf6x.net/
>
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco