[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Louis Ciotti]

Michael,

The main problem with this is that no computer user of today actually WANTs a computer that that have to sit down and program in basic, C, assembly, have( or take you pick of programming language) for hours just to make it do anything.  You have to understand the coco and similar computers were popular then because computers we NEW technology, and now that computers have basically became another appliance to 95+% of the 1st world population anything that was like a CoCo that booted to an OK prompt and require you to actually program it to do anything will not sell to a large enough population to make it worth any corporation to actually build them.  It is like suggesting someone start a company to build pay phones, or CRT televisions because they are “easy” to use.

When people have come to expect a phone to be able to browse the internet, do e-mail, instant message, text, a calendar, and oh yea be a phone there is no way a modern incarnation of a computer that is “like” the original CoCo will fly.

I am moving on now.


On Feb 13, 2014, at 2:49 AM, Michael Robinson <deemcr at robinson-west.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 2014-02-12 at 23:44 -0500, Louis Ciotti wrote:
>> You do also realize how many lines of code it would take to implement all of the items on your list here?
>> 
>> It is good to dream big, but what you describe here is a PC with a BASIC interpreter.
>> 
>> 
>> On Feb 12, 2014, at 11:17 PM, Michael Robinson <deemcr at robinson-west.com> wrote:
>> 
> Well, would a COCO clone take off if it wasn't essentially a PC with a
> basic interpreter?  I am not describing a PC per se as I am not
> suggesting an IA32 processor, but an enhanced version of the 6809E and
> the GIME.  Unless running Nitros9 makes a COCO a PC technically ;-)  
> 
> Name a present day computer that emphasizes programming the way the
> color computer did.  Consider that Chromebooks are sub $200, a COCO 4
> needs to be equivalent at least to a Chromebook in order to succeed in
> the market place.
> 
> As far as ethernet, I thought one could get an expansion pak that
> provided ethernet.  I know that modems were made for the cartridge 
> port.  In principal, a COCO 3 can be outfitted for an ethernet 
> network.
> 
> There seems to be a lot of angst concerning the COCO 4 topic and where 
> I have added to that I apologize.  A COCO 3 clone can be made using
> perhaps 8 bit PIC micro controllers.  A 4 Mhz version of the COCO 3
> should be a lot easier to do than say an 800 Mhz version.  I suppose 
> an 8 bit computer should be able to address 256 megs of ram which is
> really a lot of memory for an 8 bit computer.
> 
> I'm being accused of dreaming too big, but why?  Who does it really hurt
> if someone really goes for it and tries to modernize the COCO?  I would
> like to see hardware diversity come back to the computer industry.
> There aren't enough different kinds of computers based on truly
> different hardware and software designs.
> 
> 
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