[Coco] CoCo 3 Plus in an FPGA

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Sat, Sep 5, 2015 at 3:01 PM, Salvador Garcia <
ssalvadorgarcia at netscape.net> wrote:
>
> Some one correct or confirm my response :-) No, the FPGA does not have
the 40 pin expansion slot and it does not have the same ports as the Color
Computer line of computers. The FPGA implementation uses the Terasic DE1
which is a field programmable gate array. The gate array is "programmed" so
that it emulates a Color Computer 3. The ports that are available are those
that are inherent to the FPGA.
>

This is essentially correct.  However, the DE1 dev board does expose a
number of IO pins which can be used as the interface to (some) standard
CoCo ports, *if* you add the required supporting circuits.

Gary Becker built a couple I/O boards that plug into the DE1 and provide
standard CoCo ports such as joystick ports and a bitbanger serial port.
Cassette would probably be doable if someone built that.  Making a
functional coco bus connector is quite a bit more complex.  AFAIK noone has
tried that yet, and it may simply be beyond the capabilities of that board.

Note: These IO boards are not something you can purchase anywhere or expect
to be a consumer level product, much like the CoCo3FPGA project itself.  I
suspect Gary would be happy to share information about the ones he made
though.

-Aaron