[Coco] CoCo Progression...

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sat, 2004-09-25 at 18:53, Neil Morrison wrote:
> Couldn't one have a generic USB host that had an 8 bit bus to other devices?
> Something with a processor, ROM and RAM that would need a minimal interface
> to the old 8-bit machine? I can see something that could be hooked to any
> number of old computers, so that they could access USB hardware. And with
> multiple machines being supported, the potential sales might be worth
> considering.

If it has USB and can hold an OS with full USB drivers then you might as
well buy a subnotebook and use it as a peripheral(!). 

I'd say use a PDA, but I haven't seen any PDAs with a USB port.

Mu guess is though when people want to add a USB port to a vintage
computer they are really thinking about added functionality like:

1) Storage
2) Ethernet
3) Wireless
4) Keyboard
5) Mouse
6) Scanners
7) Maybe USB sound card or tv card

At least, those are the main USB applications I notice around.

Of those, I'd say the most useful items for Coco are removeable portable
storage, ethernet, and wireless.

So then you are looking at an MMC, SD, or CF card reader w/ Ethernet and
802.11b. You could imagine interfacing to it over a packet switched
serial connection.

Maybe with this set of options we're back to using a PDA as a
peripheral. Modern PDAs have card slots, that also double as interfaces
to Wireless cards.

As the used PDAs, high end cell phones start to show up on ebay, I think
a software + cable solution to make a PDA a slave to a vintage computer
is a good product idea.

Hence DLPilot and eventually to be born Palm version of DriveWire
server...

-- John.