[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Bill Loguidice]

On a side note, maybe one way to expand the "power" of our community is to
team up with the Dragon community. It's not unrealistic to think that
if/when some type of solution is put forth that is generally agreeable to
most of us (i.e., willing to support it with both money and technical
input) it wouldn't necessarily be all that hard to incorporate a Dragon
mode.

-Bill

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Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade,
Inc.<http://www.armchairarcade.com>
===================================================
Authored Books<http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1>and
Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
===================================================


On Sun, Feb 9, 2014 at 11:10 AM, Steve Batson
<steve at batsonphotography.com>wrote:

> I'm still amazed at the amount of disagreement that continues to go with
> these CoCo Replacments and The CoCo 4, CoCo X, Super CoCo or whatever you
> want to call it. Quite some time back, some were saying they wanted the
> "Real Look and Feel of the Real Hardware" or something to that effect. Some
> want a hardware solution, some want emulated solutions and some want a
> hybrid and as Steve mentioned, people loose interest because of all the
> bickering. More recently, people are showing more concern about the
> diminishing supply of replacement parts. Then I see discussions about the
> community shrinking but wanting to have something that could help it grow.
>
> Seriously, how many newbies do you think you can attract if you can't
> provide a somewhat simple out of the box option for any of these new
> creations? Granted some old timers may jump on it, and a few hacker/techies.
>
> I personally still see emulation or some type of modern hybrid of current
> hardware and emulation being the best option to keep things going. I forget
> who it was that did it, but someone put an emulator on a Raspberry PI and
> packaged into a CoCo case. With all the new super small PC's on a card,
> that seems a perfect way to satisfy the look and feel crowd. For those that
> don't care as much about the case it's in, I still don't see the issue with
> a Rock Solid Emulator, 100% Compatible with some ability to add on new
> features designed to to run on Windows or Linux or maybe all of the popular
> OS and Platforms with the ability to plug in a device with real CoCo ports,
> hopefully from a USB 2 or 3 port.
>
> I don't know about the rest of you, but my space is limited so being able
> to use existing computer, monitor and other connected devices is a huge
> plus. Being able to plug in an adapter to a USB or other external port if I
> need to connect to some CoCo specific hardware is much desired over trying
> to drag out the real machine and find a spot to set everything up hoping
> that everything will fire up without problems. Like most of us, I don't
> earn my living using the CoCo and with my job and other activities, time is
> limited. When I decide to do anything with the CoCo, it's usually on an
> emulator.
>
> There's obviously a lot of experience an knowledge in the Coco community
> to make something work, it just seems like there's going to need to be some
> collaboration and compromise if anything is to happen.
>
> I'd rather see the CoCo saved in a way many can easily enjoy than to fade
> off into the sunset. My 2 cents.
>