[Coco] Software offer and Drive Pak solution

[Andrew]

I'm just going to throw my two cents on this fire, so ignore where 
appropriate.

First off, I want to say thanks to Roger, Cloud-9, and anybody else who 
has helped to keep the CoCo alive for far longer than I ever expected; I 
started out with my CoCo 2 when I was 10 years old; here I am 27 years 
later, somehow. I may not have my CoCo "up and running" at this moment, 
but someday I'll bring it back on-line again.

Now, Roger, I know in the past I have asked you about porting the 
Rainbow IDE to Linux, etc - I won't rehash that with Phoenix. While it 
would've been nice to see something done in a more cross-platform manner 
(wxWindows/wxWidgets and GCC, perhaps? Or Java?), it is what it is, and 
your choice, ultimately.

What I don't want to see, though, is a future date where, should 
development on these platforms need or want to be done, it can't because 
the software only runs on a version of Windows that is no longer 
supported, and may not even run on the hardware of that future date 
(because perhaps the hardware isn't even based on 80x86). Of course, 
maybe I am worrying for nothing; perhaps at that time nobody will be 
around to care, much like there aren't many today crying in their beer 
over not being able to run their IBM/360 code or something like that...

I do wish I had some way to do CoCo development on my Linux box; not 
that I currently have the time or a project in mind, much - but knowing 
I had that option would be nice. Maybe the Rainbow IDE would run under 
Wine? Or, maybe Phoenix will work with Mono (have you had a chance to 
try?). As it is, my best bet would be to run SDL-MESS and dev directly 
on the emulated CoCo using CoCo tools, and then re-test with actual 
hardware (and other emulators). Not the ideal situation, but possible.

I'm not really griping here - as I've noted, I don't have any projects 
or need for doing CoCo dev at the moment, and I don't even know if I'll 
have that need in 5 years, let alone at any sooner. I'll just continue 
to sit back, and see what comes up in the CoCo community (and honestly, 
I would rather see the fruits of labor that come from using your IDEs, 
rather than the IDE alone - games, and other fun stuff of that nature).

Thanks again...

-- Andrew L. Ayers, Glendale, Arizona