[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Feb 9, 2014 6:57 PM, "Mark McDougall" <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> On 10/02/2014 10:20 AM, Steve Batson wrote:
>
>> I hear a lot about the low number of CoCo enthusiasts compared to other
>> platforms. Attracting new users that aren't super CoCo savvy with a
>> simple and easily used solution such as Good Emulators could be a way to
>> grow those numbers.
>
>
> I agree with your sentiments but I just don't see any solution being able
to attract new users, regardless how cheap, simple or even sexy it is. You
either know what a Coco is, and are still interested in tinkering with it,
or you are completely and utterly disinterested.
>

I also agree in the long term, but I think there is actually real potential
for the coco hobby community to grow significantly beyond its current
numbers in the short term.

There are two group of people where "new recruits" can (and sometimes do)
come from.

First, you have the relatively massive group of people who had a coco back
in the day.  Perhaps this should really be considered two sub groups: those
who owned a coco as an adult, and those who were introduced to the coco as
a kid.  We have a fairly good representation from the "had a coco as an
adult" types, with a decent number of both users and developers  active on
the list and so on.  Certainly there are more out there that might become
re-interested, but I'd say they easily dominate the membership of club
coconut.

I'm one of the "coco was my first computer as a kid" types.  There are
several of us around too, but I think we are underrepresented compared to
our numbers.  Lots of us went on to pursue careers in computing in no small
part due to our early experiences with the coco, so there is a strong
"bond" with the machine :)
In the past few years I've seen a handful of people with this background
join the group but I am certain there are many more who might join.  (By
many I mean dozens, not thousands.. I'm not *that* crazy).

Then you have the second (or third, who's counting) group, which is largely
untapped.  These are the folks who maybe had no or little experience with
the coco, but are involved in "retro computing" on other platforms.
The 6809/coco are still great machines for experimenting.  If you're doing
retro computing at all, it is an appealing platform.  Some will always be
devoted to the platform that they had back in the day, but others are more
flexible.   A good example is a group who came to last year's cocofest.
They were c64 guys iirc, but some of us spent time talking with them and
they had genuine interest in learning about the coco.

I don't think our group will ever be 10 times larger, but I also think it
is reasonable to say it *could* grow significantly given the right
conditions.  An awesome FPGA or emulator with low barriers to entry might
be part of that.

BTW cooperation with the Dragon group would be awesome and I think fun for
everyone.  Also, the best maintained emulator for cocos is currently XRoar,
which is the best Dragon emulator too.  Plenty of common interests.