[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Frank Pittel]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 06:24:34AM +1000, Nick Marentes wrote:
> On 14/02/2014 5:58 AM, Bill Pierce wrote:
> >Frank (and anyone else),
> >As far as "already done". I was more referring to what HAS been done.... SuperIDE, DriveWire, IDE HDs, VGA adapters, Keyboard interfaces, 8-16 meg Memory, 4mhz clock, SD card readers.... etc.
> >
> >The way I see it, with just what little bit of the new technology I can afford for now, the Coco 3 sitting in front of me IS a Coco 4.
> >
> >
> >So keep playing with ideas for a Coco 4... I'll keep playing with my Coco :-)
> >
> >
> 
> I have my DE1 board and while I haven't had a chance to load the
> CoCoFPGA software yet, reading the documentation, I can agree with
> Aaron... this is the future "CoCo4" or "Super CoCo" as I would
> prefer to call it.
> 
> Those who haven't followed the CoCoFPGA should consider these features...
> 
> 1) Backward compatible with CoCo 3 (and therefore CoCo 1 & 2.
> 2) Built in scandoubler for direct connection to a modern LCD monitor.
> 3) 4096 color palette (16 solid colors on screen selectable from 4096)
> 4) A true 256 color mode (colors selectable from 4096)
> 5) a highres 640x450 resolution mode
> 6) SD card interface for drives (using DSK files)
> 7) Faster at 20Mhz!
> 
> And Gary is still perfecting and adding to the design!
> 
> All it takes is a Altera DE1 board. A board half the size of the CoCo's.
> 
> Maybe later down the track, a custom "CoCo4" board with Altera
> Cyclone II FPGA could be had.
> 
> I'll repeat a previous post I did that got drowned out by the recent
> distraction of bogus information regarding the $2000 internet
> enabled CoCo3...
> 
> 
> "Looking at ebay, I found this Altera FPGA board...
> 
> http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Altera-CycloneII-EP2C5T144-FPGA-Mini-Development-Board-Module-AU-Local-Shipping-/200955760964?pt=AU_Hardware&hash=item2ec9e59144
> 
> 
> I wonder if a "CoCo4" could be built by utilizing a board such as this to
> act as the main FPGA board plugging into a "CoCo I/O main board". This
> board would provide all the CoCo specific I/O. The FPGA is already made and
> could be upgraded."

Nick,

I'm with you in terms of the direction I'd like to see the "coco4" and beyond go.
There are some issues with getting it to run some coco software but for the most
part it's an amazing clone of the coco3 (with a few extras) and to me "feels" more
like a real coco. I'm not sure how to describe it but you'll find out soone enough!
:-)

The Other Frank