[Coco] CoCo4! 50% done!

[Frank Swygert]

Nick Marentes wrote:
Clearly, there are several "CoCo4" added features on the FPGA CoCo but I
fear that unless  the hardware is more readily available at a reasonable
price with minimal fuss to setup, we'll never see any new useful programs
ever created for it.

Certainly, the speedup is great for OS-9 apps. Must be great to see Dynacalc
running at 20Mhz!

The FPGA CoCo needs the hardware in more peoples hands. The CoCo3 core has
to be made available on some of these other Retro FPGA computer boards that
already have C64, Amiga and Atari ST cores.

Even then, that may not be enough for such to be "officially" classed as a
CoCo4... more a hardware gurus CoCo3 hack with some bells and whistles
tacked on.

What would be really cool is if someone developed a "CoCo4" FPGA production
prototype that could be presented to Radio Shack with the outcome that they
market and manufacture it as a product.

Imagine walking in to Radio Shack to buy a CoCo again! Surreal!
===================================

I could see something like that happening. If RS did something like this it would probably be more like the MCC -- a little box with USB and joystick ports and monitor, you buy the keyboard and monitor. It would also need an accessible buss of some sort. Just a DB 25 connector that can be programmed, a connector to a GPIO. I only mention DB25 because that would be 25 pins and it's easy to get, not a custom header. Could emulate the old CoCo cartridge port. You couldn't plug in a disk drive controller or anything like that, not without an adapter, but it wouldn't be hard to make an adapter. But the main use would be for experimenters -- they could program the little computer as a controller for something like Gene's mini CNC machine (apologies if that's not Gene Heskett's project...). THEN it would be a viable hobbyist product that RS might be interested in selling/supporting. It would be a ready to go controller for short run/experimenter projects. There were a few products that used CoCo main boards in them as the controller back in the mid 80s. I know some excercise equipment used a CC3 board.

For all practical purposes the under $200 DE1 board is about as affordable as a small group could produce. I don't think a single purpose board could be made cheaper, unless at least 50 people want to pony up the money ahead of time. Even then I don't think one could be made for under $150. Easy instructions to get the core on a DE1 can be found at the user group site. Maybe we just need to get the word out better. As far as the DE1, you might be able to get a group buy discount if you can get enough people to pre-pay for one. There isn't much of a discount for orders of 10, probably just enough to cover the extra shipping (in the US, not to you Nick!). Someone would have to be the focal point and receive the order then ship out to the other buyers though.

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com