[Coco] Software offer and Drive Pak solution

[gene heskett]

On Saturday, September 18, 2010 10:41:09 am Andrew did opine:

> 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; 

Ah, but we do, and I have used it for a while now, its called toolshed.  
Works well, could use more docs, but it works.  Its docs are in the form of 
a .pdf manual of about 20 some pages.  That, the mamou assembler, and your 
fav linux editor and you are 2 minutes (on this machine anyway) from 
closing the editor to having a loadable .dsk image, or a loadable module 
built that you can sz to the coco and make into a new boot disk with the mb 
scripts in the nitros9 distribution.  I usually do the latter using sz.

If you go to my web page, there are links to the nitros9 I have here, or it 
can be pulled from sourceforge too.
<http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/nitros9/index.php?title=Main_Page>
<http://gene.homelinux.net:85/gene>
The only diff (I think) is that the serial mouse driver on my pages is 
newer.  I worked on that some about a year back.

> 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



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Platonic Shadow:
	A nonsexual friendship with a member of the opposite sex.
		-- Douglas Coupland, "Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated
		   Culture"