[Coco] atari USB device

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Wed, 2004-11-17 at 21:52, David Hazelton wrote:
> John~
> 
> 	Doesn't the ROM on a CoCo3 sit in RAM to add the Microware stuff. 
> Can't get the USB ROM instead of Disk Basic, then get Disk Basic.  Since 
> ROM is in RAM the USB ROM drivers could test for keyboard, joystick or 
> mouse and then overlay the joystick and keyboard polling system calls 
> with USB ones.  I guess one could over write the floppy code in Disk 
> Basic...but that seems to be work.
> 

Yes.

It's all work. But if USB storage is possible on a Coco3, then I think
ROM patches are just a matter of desire and time. With 512K->2Meg of
RAM, and ample ROM or externally connected flash, there certainly is no
reason the drivers couldn't be loaded somewhere.

It is not a given yet that USB storage can be done. One big part of that
would be porting a VFAT file system implementation to Coco, since that
is what flash is usually formatted with. However, it would be a probably
be a considerably easier task if we reformatted with a Coco file system.

But there may be other issues there due to the slow speed of the CPU
relative to typical modern devices. But there's no way to know till we
get into it.

-- John.