[Coco] Multi-Pak Interface question.

[Ryan Pritchard]

It would be my understanding that any patent (if any existed) on the  
MPI would be expired at this point, leaving only a potential for copy- 
write issues.  Though my thought is if one can buy the PAL fix for the  
CoCo 3, then one merely has to assemble said parts from a schematic  
and voila MPI.

On the flip side there was mention of Chris Hawk who is still on this  
list that previously made a compatible/comparable device called the  
SlotPak III, as was pointed out by Tom Seagrove.  Maybe he would be  
able to release details on that device if they still exist such that  
we could see these manufactured again, or at least people could choose  
to make one themselves.

Regards,

Ryan Pritchard
Fun Extends All Basic Life Expectancies



On 3-Mar-09, at 6:56 PM, Phill Harvey-Smith wrote:

> Rick Taylor wrote:
>> Has anyone ever made Multi-Pak clones?
>
> I believe there are a couple of designs that I have seen, after all  
> it's not really rocket science, really just a buffered bus expander  
> with some selection & arbitration logic really.
>
>> Would it be legal to do so?
>
> I'm not a lawyer so all IMHO :)
>
> Literal hardware clones, probably, but wether it would be a problem  
> would depend on wether Radio Shack where interested in persuing it,  
> considdering that the Dragon 32/64 where a virtual clones of the  
> CoCo, I'd say probably not. Also considdering the age of the  
> hardware in question it would probably not be worth it.
>
> Logical clones using the same registers at the same IO locations and  
> custom designed hardware using say LS logic or a CPLD should be fine.
>
> As an example look at all the IBM PC clones there where, which where  
> functionally identical, and IBM couldn't do anything about them,  
> unless as was the case with some of them, they ripped off the IBM  
> bios, rather than coding their own.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Phill.
>
> -- 
> Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general  
> eccentric !
>
> "You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco