[Coco] [Color Computer] The evolution of the Coco..

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 15:21 -0500, Boisy G. Pitre wrote:
> 
> On Apr 22, 2005, at 12:35 PM, Mike Pepe wrote:
> 
> > I'd like to see a faster CoCo in the future. The stuff Cloud9 is doing
> > is impressive but I think it might be in the wrong direction.
> 
> While I understand what you are driving at, let me say this:  the scope 
> of the SuperBoard is to give CoCo 3 users a quantum leap from what they 
> can do currently.  As the Cloud-9 motto says: "Cool Stuff For Your 
> CoCo" is exactly what we are creating here -- nothing more, nothing 
> less.  To say it is a wrong direction is not correct; I would call it a 
> migration path to a better machine without removing its heart and soul.
> 

Yeah I wouldn't take these kinds of comments too personally.  There are
two camps -- those interested in souping up their cocos, and those
interested in making a new coco. Both are cool, fun goals, and there is
no reason to consider them as mutually exclusive. Some people like
myself fall into both groups.

> I would never refer to a CoCo 3 with the SuperBoard as a "CoCo 4".  At 
> most, I would call it a CoCo 3.5, or a CoCo 3+ :)
> 

Yeah I consider Coco 3 enhancements/ new hardware as separate from a
Coco 4. The coco 3 is what it is, and it's cool to add new stuff to it.
I prefer to use a Coco 3 for Coco 3 vintage computing.

A new Coco 4, would be a successor to the Coco 3 so decisions could be
made about how to get compatibility with the Coco 3.

> I like the post that Glen made about using an emulator.  I agree with 
> him -- if  you're going to CoCo, then why not use the real thing?  That 
> said, I've also made room in my development for the use of emulators; 
> I'm working with the MESS team to bring SuperBoard functionality to the 
> CoCo 3 emulator as a means of testing my system code for mouse and 
> keyboard drivers.  And I do use Linux (and MacOS!) to do my cross 
> development.
> 
> > The "C-64 on a chip" is probably the better direction to go.

> I think that this can a viable solution.  The problem, as has been 
> pointed out many times, is implementing the full functionality of the 
> GIME.  I'm sure this can be overcome with some time, and I believe 
> there are a few on this list (James Daggett comes to mind) who are 
> charging ahead with this.
> 


Reconfigurable computing is cool for many reasons. But what's the
difference if you emulate in software vs. emulate in hardware? At Coco
speeds it may not matter which way you do it as long as you're willing
to spare the cycles of the main CPU on emulation overhead.

It's still an emulator, just a different means of implementation.

-- John.



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