[Coco] Re: OS-9 as Replacement for DECB.

[Glen VanDenBiggelaar]

Maybe in the US, compact flash is cheap, but here in Canada, mail -in 
rebates are the biggest scam in the book. I can walk down the street anyday 
(except Sunday) and pick up new floppies and drives. But in Canada, you 
might as well wait for the sun to burn out before you see any rebates.

Yes, I did re-read the threads, and I still can't see any reason for USB. I 
mean if you want a compact flash adapter, cloud 9 SELLS them and has for 
years!! Why would you want to hook up a laser printer, when you still have 
to write drivers for it. What was wrong with the printers we already have? I 
know my little DMP-106 isn't that fast or great, but it is running fine and 
it serves the purpose. Like I said before, Cloud 9 SELLS a keyboard adapter! 
why spend even a day porting over a USB driver- seems like a total waist of 
time to me, why not make a cable to link your coco and your Intellivision 
together? that seems like the same waist of time. The energy going into 
making a USB adapter should be spent elseware (why not make a cheep VGA 
adapter, so you can hook it up to a VGA monitor?)-That seems a 1000% more 
productive than USB!
The only viable reason for compact flash is to replace eproms (like in the 
other thread) compact flash still has a life span on the number of lashing. 
If e-proms weren't hard to get and you could get a programer for less than 
$10, thern flashing e-proms would be a solution.
>
>On Thu, 2005-09-01 at 11:28 -0600, Glen VanDenBiggelaar wrote:
> > Mayby,
> > But the price of compact flash just isn't there yet. I can pick up a 
>brand
> > new 3 1/4 drive for less then $10 Canadian and a box of 100 floppies for 
>the
> > same. Compact flash still is way out of reach of that price range.
>
>Free after rebate is close enough to free... and with 32Meg+ on each
>one, how many do you really need? Yes, I like to keep separate CFs for
>different projects, but that is self-limiting.
>
>Each of my CF cards I got cost of shipping (< $5) after sending in the
>rebate.
>
> >  Also, it
> > doesn't have the same "feel" as using floppies.
>
>Yep. But CF are the physically biggest cards so it's close enough for
>me. I don't like the itsy-bitsy SD cards.
>
> >  Maybe in 5 years, compact
> > flash will be at the price point where its viable, but to me, its like 
>using
> > an emulator on the PC.
>
>Nothing like that for me. It's just a storage device, not the computer.
>Any more than hooking a laser printer to a coco is like using an
>emulator.
>
> >  it just does not have that "feel" of using the real
> > thing.
>
>
> > I am not looking forward to the USB. it will just be used for mostly
> > mice and keyboards and reduntant stuff we already have. just go back and
> > look through the threads "It will be easier to port this stuff over" is 
>the
> > main argument.
>
>
>I was involved in those threads. I guess you might benefit from
>rereading them, but allow me to repeat myself:
>
>Keyboard and mouse would probably be the FIRST (ie, not the LAST) things
>to be tested, the reason being that a) there's already code for atari to
>do this and b) they are projects that could be done in a day or two.
>
>In embedded systems circles we call this "bringing up the board." You do
>something simple/easy to verify that things are generally peachy. For
>example, if there's a LED on board the first thing I do is to write a
>little program that boots the board, and blinks the LED.
>
>Just because it's the first thing a programmer does, does that mean that
>the hypothetical board is just for blinking lights? Nope. It's just a
>means to an end, a way to build confidence in the hardware, and that you
>know how to build simple software for the board that works.
>
>The real value is to implement usb storage, usb-rs232 drivers, etc. No
>one is interested in coco-usb for the purpose of hooking up keyboards
>and mice to coco. We can already do that!
>
>Some applications:
>
>usb storage - flash, hard drives, floppies
>usb->rs232 usb->parallel
>Game controllers
>maybe even usb audio controllers or ethernet (though it is quite likely
>coco can't keep up with such high-throughput devices).
>
>I will admit however, that at the pace of the (two, now) coco-usb
>projects that it is not clear that there will ever be one released. As I
>understand it, hardware-wise at least, this is supposed to be a slam
>dunk given the embedded USB chips of interest.
>
>
>-- John.
>
>
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