[Coco] Next Gen CoCo Specifications Wiki

[Joel Ewy]

Greetings, all.

We've had quite a bit of discussion lately about (as yet hypothetical)
new CoCo-compatible systems, realized in software and HDL/FPGA.  There's
also been a bit of quite understandable cynicism about the prospects of
any such thing actually coming to fruition.  It seems generally agreed
upon that talk is cheap, and nothing will ever happen unless technically
feasible specifications are actually arrived at, as a bare
prerequisite.  A lot of ideas have passed through this mail list, in
varying degrees of specificity and technical detail.  But they tend to
get lost and remain disconnected to one another as they scroll off the
bottom of the screen.  And sometimes they inflame the naysayers as they
bulk up in their IN boxes.  :)

So I got the go-ahead from Allen Huffman to add a section to the CoCo
Wiki at coco25.com, where all the outlandish ideas and unrealistic
dreams can be collaboratively coalesced into a coherent, concerted
corpus, and eventually perhaps the technical specification for the next
generation of CoCo compatible computers, virtual, physical, or both.

I've seeded it with an introductory text on the rationale for further
developing CoCo technology, and some excerpts from the recent mail list
discussions that seem to me to have both some technical merit and CoCo
gestalt.  What I've posted is still far from a final technical
specification, in completeness, level of detail, and format, but might
serve to prime the pump.  I'm sure I haven't gleaned all the nuggets
from the recent discussion, and admittedly, I've probably chosen the
ideas I like best.  But being a Wiki, the whole thing is up for
revision.  We do need to be polite, and not obliterate others' ideas,
certainly at this early stage.  My suggestion would be that we push
non-specific ideas and quotations from the mail list back to separate
pages referenced from the main sections, as those sections evolve toward
more detailed, technically rigorous specifications.  That way there will
be a trail of hyperlinks outlining the evolution of the standard.

Have at it!

JCE