[Coco] CoCo 4 (or 5) perspectives: close hardware emulation?

[Fedor Steeman]

Hi all,

Given the mere mentioning of a CoCo4 gets so many people off their chairs
and starts them musing makes me wonder why this has not been realized a long
time ago. For me too, a CoCo 4 would be a dream come true. Just to prove
that the CoCo *is* able to go this little push further. What most of us want
is after all a more advanced computer that can to a more than the CoCo3, but
still has the same 'feel' and backwards compatibility.

Basically, we want a genuine CoCo that can beat the snot out of an Amiga
2000!

It should be possible to canalize all that energy, enthusiasm and know-how
into a concrete project with results. Problem, as always, is agreeing on
something and spending coordinated time on it. What should the next
generation CoCo be able to do? Would software emulation be good enough or
will only hardware emulation be satisfactory? For many, emulating a CoCo4
(5) would not be satisfying, because without hardware limitations you are
basically entering the realm of fantasy. You can make a CoCo4 (5) do
anything you like, which spoils part of the fun.

In the end, it would be nicest to have some piece of stand alone hardware
that is not dependent on other systems or platforms. But that would be a
hard goal to achieve.

BUT! We could of course design the hardware for the new CoCo as closely as
we can by emulating the precise specifications for its hardware components.
So instead of adding anything or making anything up, we stick to existing
hardware limitations and see if we can make them work at least virtually?
Object-oriented design and programming in C++ could do the trick and if you
would use SDL it could run on many platforms other than Windows too! When we
have a satisfactory product we could eventually implement it in hardware
using existing raw materials or custom made FPGAs.

I am not so very experienced when it comes to hardware, but I would
certainly be able to contribute to the object-oriented software design. Just
as long as the hardware guys tell us what can and can not be done, this
could actually work!

Just my 50 eurocents...

All the best,

Fedor