Coco 4?
Robert Kent
4. At least one person had already started building boards for it.
What happened?
james
I really don't know about boards.
I have proposed several different approaches over the past 6 yrs.
Never felt there was much acceptance so nothing done more than a
feasability study.
james
Robert Kent
"james" wrote in message news:6ugle6ddirs8tat6g...@4ax.com...
james
---
I think any Coco 4 should be in the form of an emulator. There are several
open source Coco 1,2 & 3 emulators available. Start with them and add bits
and pieces of other emulated systems. The code is already written, all you
need to do is piece it together.
Want a Coco 4 with 4096 colors? Cannibalize the code written for an Amiga
emulator. Want a better/faster 6809? The possibilities are endless.
Stephen H. Fischer
The unending discussion about the CoCo4 has heated up again just now.
---------------------
Hi,
It has been quite a long time since a message has been posted to
bit.listserv.coco telling anyone interested that we have moved our
discussions elsewhere.
http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
Has information about the "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" list.
The list is echoed to "gmane.comp.hardware.tandy.coco" on the
"news.gmane.org" server.
Go To
And enter "CoCo" into the search box and you will find the CoCo list
"47007 gmane.comp.hardware.tandy.coco Tandy Color Computer (CoCo) List"
There are several Yahoo groups also.
The number of web sites is amazing including: http://www.coco3.com/
SHF
-------------
"Robert Kent" <rk...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote in message
news:icv9sr$c7o$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
james
Stephen
I read here when ever there is a post. I watch both.
It is quite though. Maybe at times I like that.
I seriously doubt that there ever will be any overwhelming consensus
as to what a COCO4 should be.
james
james
<rk...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
|?
|
|"james" wrote in message news:6ugle6ddirs8tat6g...@4ax.com...
|
|On Fri, 19 Nov 2010 13:25:46 -0800, "Robert Kent"
|<rk...@NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
|
||?About a decade or so ago, there were a bunch of proposals to create a Coco
||4. At least one person had already started building boards for it.
||
||What happened?
||
||
|
|
|I really don't know about boards.
|
|I have proposed several different approaches over the past 6 yrs.
|Never felt there was much acceptance so nothing done more than a
|feasability study.
|
|james
|
|---
|
|I think any Coco 4 should be in the form of an emulator. There are several
|open source Coco 1,2 & 3 emulators available. Start with them and add bits
|and pieces of other emulated systems. The code is already written, all you
|need to do is piece it together.
|
|Want a Coco 4 with 4096 colors? Cannibalize the code written for an Amiga
|emulator. Want a better/faster 6809? The possibilities are endless.
|
Why stop at 4096 colors? 16 bit color is doable by just a few changes
in hardware and roll out a new GIME chip in a FPGA. The GIME chip has
16 pallete registers so set up an array of 16 bit color that is 256
wide. Therefore you have any 16 outof 256 16 bit colrs. Very doable in
a FPGA.
Speed is not all that it is cracked up to be. There comes a point in
hardware and software where data throughput becomes a bottle neck. In
hardware that comes about at 25MHz. The FPGA version of the COCO3 is
pretty much limited to about 25 MHz clock speed. In a FPGA you can do
things with the opcodes to execute faster than the discrete version of
the CPU. In that case you do create some timing issues for code that
was written years ago.
The real issues and concerns of the COCO community is that the older
hardware and chips are repidly becoming scarce. It now has been 20 yrs
since Motorola announced the discontinuation of the 6809. Even thought
the mask sets have been turned over to Rochester Semiconducter, that
does not mean they are cheap and readily available. The last
production run of 6809 chips by Motorola was around week 46 of 1999.
The last run of GIME chips was somewhere in the middle of 1987. Other
discrete chips are no longer available. They are canablized from dead
cocos adn used to repair others. Seen many 5.25 360K floppy drives on
the market lately? Disks are available but some are not realiable.
The real concern is that teh existign hardware is fastly dieing and
there is not much to repalce it with. In time the COCO1/2/3 will ease
into obscurity and a footnote in history.
just my thoughts
james
Stephen H. Fischer
To me the definition of a CoCo 4 is:
A user system actually made and sold to a significant number of persons so
that software developers will write software for it.
The MM1 met that definition and then died, perhaps due to design decisions.
It is hard to follow the CoCo which you connected up a TV or monitor,
connect the power cord and start enjoying.
We have many persons who can program down to the bare machine level and
build hardware.
I do not think that the number of persons not able do this wanting to buy a
system where the real sales numbers are, will do so.
SHF
"james" <bubba@bud.u> wrote in message
news:ppfbf61s9c74ms9gh...@4ax.com...
james
<a_nani...@mindspring.com> wrote:
|A user system actually made and sold to a significant number of persons so
|that software developers will write software for it.
To me being a hardware dude means little.
How do I translate the above statement to actual logic and discrete
ICs?
james
Stephen H. Fischer
It might be just a new emulator and New DECB / OS-9. That is the most
simple,
4096 colors, larger screens and so on. The trick is to make it attractive
that people want to use it.
A hardware version I just do not see happening, but the cost and features
must be low, remember the CoCo was a low cost item.
SHF
"james" <bubba@bud.u> wrote in message
news:6deff6l7631vfa9fb...@4ax.com...
james
<a_nani...@mindspring.com> wrote:
|Hi,
|
|It might be just a new emulator and New DECB / OS-9. That is the most
|simple,
|4096 colors, larger screens and so on. The trick is to make it attractive
|that people want to use it.
|
|A hardware version I just do not see happening, but the cost and features
|must be low, remember the CoCo was a low cost item.
|
|SHF
|
Right.
Emulator is cheap. Any real decent hardware will be easily in the
$200+ range if not more. Right now the DE-2 Coco3FPGA is the defacto
standard. There are a few other boards that may be a second solution
but still they are in the $150 range.
Still the FPGA development boards have some liability. Either the lack
of color depth or lack of SRAM or BOTH.
james
Clocky
What is the point, just run the Amiga emulator and be done with it.