[Coco] Why do we need a CoCo 4? (Long irrelevant rant)

[BookWorm]

Who needs a CoCo 4/5/6/257.3/etc.?

For years people have been talking about the CoCo 4. In the late '80's a survey 
in the MOTD asked what kind of CoCo you had and if it was a 4 where did you get 
it. I still don't know what was considered a CoCo 4 at the time. I thought the 
MM/1 was supposed to be the CoCo 4, but first, if there was a CoCo 4 in 
the '80's, wouldn't the MM/1 be the CoCo 5? That would make all the current 
speculation about a CoCo 6 or 7. Since the MM/1 has a 68k not a 6x09, it's not 
compatable, so how can it be a CoCo at all?

Who cares?

No offence intended, but I don't. I'm very much more interested in getting more 
out of the CoCo 3. It exists. As far as I can tell no actual CoCo 4-8 does, and 
it doesn't look like one ever will. Wouldn't all this daydreaming and 
speculative engineering be better spent on real products that do exist or that 
are worth the trouble of making?

Consider all the software available for OS-9. I thought Home publisher was the 
only desktop publisher available. Then I downloaded Mr. Nukem's archive and 
found Newspaper-09! Ever heard of it? What other CoCo 3 products have many of 
us never heard of?

There are several patches for Dynacalc on RTSI. One is called the "puppo" patch 
or something like that. What is it? I've read rumors about patches for Home 
Publisher, including some for the 6309. Does one of these make it use 
extentions instead of prefixes? What other patches and upgrades are out there 
that most of us could use but few have heard of?

What about Level 3?!

The CoCo 3 is still advancing. The CoCoNet project proves that. I don't see why 
we even need a CoCo 12 or whatever it' not up to now. Let's be realistic. We've 
got the best 8 bit hardware ever made. FHL and Microware got complaints about 
OSk being slow compared to the 6809 version, and that was back in the CoCo *2* 
era! How are we supposed to improve on it now?

A new GIME chip might be practical. So would a web browser. If TCP/IP is to 
much, skip it for now, and just do HTML. With CoCoNet, we can get online 
through a $#%& pee sea, so why not take it a step further and display a page? 
Or use DOS Lynx, like a shell account in the old days?

I don't mean to start a flamewar or something. I'm not trying to be irritable 
or ruin anyone's idea. But I *have* a CoCo 3, and I plan on doing a lot more 
with it, more than anyone has done so far. I don't think a CoCo 63 1/2 is a bad 
idea, just not a relevant one. It's not really going to happen. Lets try 
advancing what we have instead.