[Coco] Hello!

[Joel Ewy]

Welcome to the group, Ty.

Some things to check out if you haven't been using the CoCo in a while: 
Sockmaster (AKA John Kowalski) has done some amazing things with the
CoCo.  What I find particularly impressive is his Hi-Color display
program, which produces, IMHO, the best quality image display I've ever
seen on a CoCo 3, though it's more of a demo, and less of a finished
product, and the image processing takes an eternity (but processed
images can be saved for much quicker load times). 
http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/hicolor/hicolor.html    For a very
polished, general-purpose image viewer that includes good quality
high-color modes, check out Roger Taylor's Projector 3.  (Can't find a
link at the moment.  Roger's coco3.com site was hacked recently...)

In a very impressive performance, Sockmaster has ported the original
Donkey Kong arcade machine code (or at least the underlying logic) to
the CoCo.  I'm not personally a big fan of DK myself, but you've got to
run this program yourself if you want a feel for what can be done on the
CoCo by a talented programmer. 
http://www.axess.com/twilight/sock/dk/index.html

If you want to see the state of CoCo hardware development, your first
stop must be Cloud 9:  http://www.cloud9tech.com/  They have great new
products for the CoCo.  I might highlight DriveWire and the SuperIDE
interface, but they're just starting points.

Finally, if you want to see where the CoCo may go in the future, don't
miss Gary Becker's CoCo3 on an FPGA development board.  I'm saving my
pennies for a Spartan 3 starter board, because I really want to have a
CoCo running at 22 MHz.  There's lots of potential for future
development there.

JCE

Ty S wrote:
> Good evening,
>  
> I'm new to this mailing list and wanted to send a proper "hello" to everyone here.  I first owned a CoCo3 when I was around 8, and I feel it gave me a large push in the right direction.  (What a great machine!)  My original CoCo is long gone, but I've recently come into possession of another one -- there's so many fond memories here!
>  
> I'm a hardware/software/electrical engineer with big hopes for my CoCo -- once I'm back into the CoCo groove, my expertise is at this group's disposal.  I have a few small ideas for my CoCo3, including an EEPROM programmer and a single-step hardware debugging unit.  Would anyone be interested in such things?  My original intention was to release any material I create to the community, but if someone objects (as their livelyhood depends on similar, competing projects for the CoCo), I'll of course not publish schematics and docs.
>  
> I'm looking forward to tossing my hat in the ring!  :)
>  
> Ty
>  
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