[Coco] coco3 on a stick auto booting into a hard drive image with Sidekick for navigation

[Kandur]

I agree with you Francis, particularly as you mentioned,
Being able to use the joystick ports....
In 1992 I designed and supervised the installation of a hospital nurse call system, using dozens of Coco-2s, utilizing the Coco's AtoD converter via the joystick ports.
> Great news! You've done a lot of good work, thanks for sharing. Between you,
> Ron Klein's CoCoPi image (along with Chris Hawks pioneering CoCoPi work) and
> the CoCo4 FPGA, it looks like the community has a way forward
Just for the few of us, who cares about prices, let's make a price comparison between the 3 emulators you had mentioned. My impression is that both the coco3 on a stick and the CoCo4 FPGA, cost twice, if not more then the CocoPi. Please forgive an OT pushing the 80s, if I'm wrong.

Kandur

Friday, January 5, 2018, 4:10:22 AM, you wrote:
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2018 15:50:08 +0000
> From: rietveld rietveld <rietveldh at hotmail.com>

> Yes    will release a complete .zip with all pc boot files and a complete coco hd image

> ________________________________
> From: Coco <coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com> on behalf of Francis Swygert <farna at att.net>
> Sent: Thursday, January 4, 2018 7:35:09 AM


> Real nice, especially the "shift-boot-OS9"! I'm assuming that's actually
> NitrOS9?  Are you planning on offering that image for others to download and
> install?  Just post the model number stick you have and instructions to load... Frank Swygert



> -------------------------------------------------
> Great news! You've done a lot of good work, thanks for sharing. Between you,
> Ron Klein's CoCoPi image (along with Chris Hawks pioneering CoCoPi work) and
> the CoCo4 FPGA, it looks like the community has a way forward as original
> equipment ages and gets increasingly hard to find and less reliable for just
> playing around with. Interfacing to other things, like project boards that
> plug into the CART slot, is still an issue, but few are doing such things any
> more. Being able to use the joystick ports and such for small custom interface
> projects was a big draw for the CoCo, I think, or would be. But there are
> Arduinos and such for that now that are easier to get and much cheaper. With
> the added video and sound the FPGA is closest to a "CoCo4". Would be nice if
> those enhancements were added to the Pi and Stick CoCo emulations... assuming


> I do think it's important to have the SAME added capabilities across
> platforms... or keep it CoCo compatible only. Different added features for
> each would just make it harder to share software across them. Of course the
> three solutions do have different capabilities, so maybe it's not THAT
> important to keep them the same. Would just be why one is chosen over one of
> the others. As long as they maintain a backwards compatibility to at least a
> CoCo3 (I don't think CoCo1/2 compatibility is that important any more, but
> that's just my opinion) software can be made to run on all three. Might be
> some added features (such as 2MB RAM) that they can all share. Enhanced video
> and sound across all three would be really good to see though.