[Coco] CC-Five (was Re: Pseudo CoCo4???) (LONG)

[Mark McDougall]

Joel Ewy wrote:

> 1.  Does the CoCo care what kind of microcontroller is in the S/S Pak as
> long as it does its job in the expected manner?  I wonder if one could
> sub a PIC core (or maybe a 68-something) and then also make it a more
> general-purpose I/O processor.  

Probably not, so you could in theory use a different uC, but you'd have to 
port the ROM software. I think it's better to stick with the original 
architecture.

In an FPGA you can run any number of uP cores (space permitting), so I don't 
see much advantage in multiplexing either the 6809 or the S/S Pak uP...

> 2.  How hard would it be to combine the Orch-90CC and the Speech/Sound
> Pak?  I'm not real clear on how the S/S Pak is set up, or where the
> dividing line is between analog and digital on it.  But surely an
> amplifier is common to both, though the S/S Pak is perhaps just mono? 
> Putting a stereo amp in the external hardware would just make sense. 

That's the beauty of an FPGA. You can add both Orch90 and S/S Pak, and mix 
them digitally internally to send to the one analogue output.

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"