[Coco] The CoCo Flash lives!

[Ron Klein]

Hi Barry,

This is exciting news -- I remember you telling me about this product a
little while back.  Very interested to see your demo.  How soon will you
and Jim be taking orders and any idea on cost?

Thanks!

-Ron



On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 2:21 AM, Barry Nelson <barry.nelson at amobiledevice.com
> wrote:

>  It has been a while so I thought I would post an update here for the CoCo
> Flash reprogrammable ROM cartridge project. At the CoCo Fest show, Jim
> Brain updated my prototype with the new firmware with features I had
> discussed with him. Some of the new features include:
>
> Support for 64K, 128K and even 256K cartridge ROM images. Note that to my
> knowledge, no 256K images exist yet. I have successfully tested both 64K
> and 128K ROM images.
> SPI interface support. (Not yet tested)
>
> Other already existing features include support for ROMs from 2K to 32K.
> Note that 2K ROMs will occupy 4K of space. Software rewritable on the CoCo
> 1, 2, and 3. Supports startup mode for both cart interrupt cartridges (most
> games) and DOS cartridges like HDBDOS/Drivewire. Customizable menu software
> written in Extended BASIC which loads directly from ROM bank 0. The sample
> menu runs on both CoCo 1/2 and CoCo 3. The board fits into a standard CoCo
> ROM cartridge case. The programming software is written as machine code usr
> subroutines and a BASIC program and can program up to 16K at one time. ROMs
> larger than 16K can be programmed by dividing them into 16K pieces and
> writing the pieces to sequentially adjacent ROM banks.
>
> I currently have 29 different ROM images programmed into my cartridge. I
> will try to post a video soon demoing the cartridge.
>
> Hardware I/O ports
>
> $ff58:
> 0 = LED
> 1 = autostart
> 2 = SW0
> 3 = SW1
> 4 = SPI Select  (set to 0 to select the SPI port)
> 5 = Offset (1 = on)
> 6 = ID Flag (1 = show the ID values in the bank register)
> 7 = PGM Flag (1 = program mode)
>
> $ff59:
> IDFlag=0: bank_data_low
> IDFlag=1: mfr_id = $11
>
> $ff5a:
> IDFlag=0: bank_data_high
> IDFlag=1: dev_id = $10
>
> $ff5b:
> SPI_Data
>
> When offset is on:
>
> $ff40 will contain a 4 bit offset, allowing 16 16k banks, or 256K total
> cartridge size.
>
> The bank will be set by:
>
> bank + A14:A12 + (offset*4)
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>