[Coco] COCO FPGA

[Aaron Wolfe]

Converting from serial to SD card (when you don't have to) will give
mediocre results, as seen in existing products that use that
technique.  Since the FPGA board has the SD reader built in, it makes
more sense to implement support directly.  Gary has done some work
towards that goal.

For "real" CoCos a small device that plugs into the bitbanger and runs
DriveWire is nice.  You can do this now with a Linksys NSLU2 or a
Nokia N800, and probably any other small device that runs Java, I have
only personally tested those 2 devices.  The "plug computers" like the
Guru Plug are other possibilities.  I have been watching the Raspberry
Pi project with interest, as this tiny and cheap computer should run
DW fine and would allow something even smaller, perhaps even something
that fits inside a ROM pak.

As for hardware like the Speech/Sound pak, don't forget that these can
be implemented right in the FPGA.   While the FGPA boards do provide
I/O pins for interfacing with add on hardware, there isn't always a
need to build it when FPGAs are so flexible and powerful.

-Aaron
On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 11:23 AM, Frank Swygert <farna at att.net> wrote:
> I agree, but this means that another computer must be used with the
> CoCo3FPGA for any storage. That makes it a bit less desirable as a CoCo
> replacement, but since the CoCo can't connect directly to the internet I
> suppose another computer will always be necessary to some degree. I think it
> is still imperative that the computer be able to function without another
> computer. Emulating floppy and/or hard discs with the SD card slot is
> probably the best way to do that -- just not currently implemented. Maybe
> going through Drivewire (since that's built in, I think) to the SD card
> would be possible? Is there a way to detect when an SD card is present? I'm
> not familiar enough with SD card electronics to know. Would be nice if
> Drivewire could be programmed to look to the SD card when present instead of
> the serial port.
>
> Hmmm.... how hard would it be to make a small stand-alone board that could
> access an SD card and plug into the serial port? Could that be done cheaply
> enough with something like an Arduino? It would have to run a version of DW
> in order to work, so that would have to be ported/written, but that might be
> the easiest to implement stand-alone storage. Then one could plug into the
> SD card box or a regular computer. Or could something like this be
> programmed into the FPGA on the DE-1 board and use the SD slot already
> there??
>
> --------------------
> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2011 20:00:31 -0600
> From: Frank Pittel<fwp at deepthought.com>
>
> The coco3fpga connects to a computer via drivewire so things like the
> SuperIDE, and other floppy controllers aren't of much use.
>
> --
> Frank Swygert
> Publisher, "American Motors Cars"
> Magazine (AMC)
> For all AMC enthusiasts
> http://www.amc-mag.com
> (free download available!)
>
>
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