[Coco] How much of a CoCo makes it a CoCo?

[Steve Batson]

I know some people like the actual appearance and feel of the real 
hardware, I know that most probably do, if for no other reason than 
Nostalgia, and that's fine. Still, I'd accept an emulator as a replacement 
if it ran 100% like the real thing and if I could add the necessary 
hardware to it such as game controllers that worked well. My only real 
gripe about the emulators, is that I haven't found one that can actually 
run all the CoCo software just like the CoCo at true normal speeds and 
sound emulation has been mediocre in my opinion. To, me that's the only 
real thing that turns me off on the emulators. If one was designed and 
running on hardware inside a CoCo case that I couldn't tell the difference 
if I came up and started using a game or program on it, then I'd be ok with 
using it instead of real hardware. I've yet to see that. Games like Zaxxon, 
Grabber and some others just don't play as well on the emulators as the 
real thing. Some are ok, but speed always seems to be an issue and they 
don't always feel as responsive. I've recently unboxed my CoCo 3 because of 
that.

I'd also be ok with a small unit as someone else suggested since today's 
technology would easily allow that. 

That's my 2 cents.

Steve

----------------------------------------
From: "Aaron Wolfe" <aawolfe at gmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 4:00 PM
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] How much of a CoCo makes it a CoCo? 

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 6:07 PM, Bob Devries  wrote:
> Mark McDougall wrote:
>
>> IMHO, if it can still run Coco 3 software, it's still a Coco 3.
>
> You may want to add "natively" in there. By that statement, my PC is a 
Coco3
> since it runs coco 3 software albeit in an emulator.
>

To me, it needs to "feel" like a CoCo, which is difficult to put into
words.  Something special, you know when you have it, and you know
when it's missing.  Emulators don't feel right, I've tried them all,
and I use them in writing software for the CoCo, but even that doesn't
feel right until the software is running on a real CoCo.  The
CoCo3FPGA gives me the same happy smile that a CoCo always does, it
just feels right.  Even though it isn't completely cycle accurate and
can't interface with every piece of CoCo hardware (yet?), it's a CoCo
to me.

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