[Coco] The CoCo-Pi project latest community edition

[Steve Strowbridge]

For those not aware of the "CoCo-Pi" project, it's something Ron Klien has
been working on since probably around 2016 following in the footsteps of
Chris Hawks and other folks at the Glenside Color Computer Club who started
showing off Color Computer emulation on Raspberry Pi devices.

Over the years the CoCo-Pi has continued to evolve, it's always been hyper
optimized to run the CoCo well, even on a Raspberry Pi3, with custom built
and compiled versions of MAME optimized for Color Computer emulation, etc,
etc. etc.

Fast forward to 2021, there is a new universal "community image" that can
run on the Pi3, Pi4, and Pi400, download and burn this to an SD card and be
up in running with an extremely user-friendly color computer emulation
experience.

A dedicated website, https://coco-pi.com exists where you can download the
image to burn, see some setup documentation, and see a series of short
videos on how to perform the various set up steps, and in the future,
perform more advanced things.

Not only does it let you "plug and play" a variety of CoCo machines from
the CoCo 1-3, MC-10 and Dragon family, it has emulation for DriveWire via
PyDriveWire which also supports the EMCee protocol for the MC-10, you can
use this to not only furnish disks to emulated machines, but real ones via
a serial adapter on the Pi and cable to your CoCo, but there are
development tools, compilers, editors, and so much more.

The CoCo-Pi project is a great way to experience a variety of Color
Computers utilizing a ton of different hardware configurations, operating
systems, controllers, etc.

If you don't already own a Pi, my suggestion would be to get the Pi400
"kit" it's a Pi400 which is a self contained Raspberry Pi with keyboard,
mouse, power adapter, HDMI cable, manual and included MicroSD card and that
runs about $120, a very cost effective way to experience color computing.

Check it out at https://coco-pi.com and let us know what you think.



Steve "Stevie Strow" Strowbridge

Casual CoCo enthusiast