[Coco] CoCoFEST! is coming... Re: CoCoFEST! call for presentations!

[Mark McDougall]

On 1/02/2017 12:56 PM, RETRO Innovations wrote:

> I am enjoying it.  I picked up a Coco3 at VCF-MW a few years back (a
> bundle deal with a TI 99/4A and PEB), but it sat on the shelf for almost
> a year.  I finally realized that either I needed to force myself to use
> it, or sell it.  As I wanted to learn it, I decided to do something
> hardware related, so I could learn about the machine.

Emulating machines in an FPGA is a good way to learn the hardware 
architecture, without having to worry about soldering irons! ;) I've 
only got a few microcomputers on my wanted list now, one of them being 
the TI99/4A. I have a friend who owns one and is threatening to give it 
to me when he tires of it! ;)

> As I learn more about the HW setups of the various platforms, I
> appreciate different things about each one.

One of the main reasons I started my RetroPorts projects was to learn 
more about each machine. I was, at the time, designing some hardware for 
the Neo Geo and also disassembling the BIOS, and decided a fun way to 
learn more about it was to write some software for it. That kick-started 
things and when Sockmaster released Donkey Kong for the Coco3 it 
re-ignited my interest in the Coco and I started wondering what else 
could be ported to it! I've still got a good 3 or 4 ideas for ports to 
the Coco3... ;)

> Ooh, is the emulation open source?

It was publicly accessible, though I haven't touched it since 2009 so, 
you know, bit rot and all that. The back-end interface is a raw stream 
produced by an on-chip soft-core CPU (NIOS) reading the G64 image from 
SD card. So in that respect it's fiddly to set up and get running 
without intimate knowledge of the toolchain... definitely not a 
'commercial' release in any way, shape or form.

If you're interested, I can email you a copy?

Regards,

-- 
Mark McDougall
<http://retroports.blogspot.com.au>