[Coco] General question for the fpga guru's out there

[camillus Blockx]

Well Frank, it sounds that this could be a nice project that just needs a
coordinator to start with. If one person writes down what board to produce
then all the HW gurus can start making schematics of just one part of the
board. After all the parts of the schematic are done I volunteer and
hopefully a few more to put this in eagle and make our own board. Could
take awhile agreed, but still would be a nice project. The board would not
have any unnecessary HW on it and the fpga can be chosen. It is a project
than needs more then one person though IMHO.

If anyone see this as an challenge maybe we can start with a project group
to poll who like the idea.

cba


On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 10:03 AM, Frank Swygert <farna at amc-mag.com> wrote:

> Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:47:35 +1100
> From: Mark McDougall<msmcdoug at iinet.net.**au <msmcdoug at iinet.net.au>>
>
>
> The Minimig (Amiga), OCM (MSX) & Zet (8086 PC) (as well as a few
> lesser-known) projects all target the DE1 board, so it's going to remain
> popular for a while yet. The DE1 has been superceded by boards with larger
> devices; it's a pity because it was unique in that it had 24-bit VGA,
> Flash, SRAM, SDRAM and SD slot. It also had two 40-pin IDE expansion
> connectors which, whilst not strictly 5V tolerant - could be used to
> interface to custom peripherals.
>
>> The companies thatmake these boards are in the business
>> of making and selling FPGA?s.
>>
>
> Agreed, they're simply not that interested in moving eval boards. The
> revenue would even register as a blip on the radar - they may even be
> making
> a slight loss.
>
>
> I've mentioned this before; my colleague & I were working on a Coco
> motherboard replacement project before rather sad circumstances drew that
> to
> a close. However, if I ever found myself with enough spare time, I'd
> certainly like to resurrect it. The emphasis would be on providing an
> enhanced Coco experience with full legacy peripheral connectivity, and a
> drop-in replacement for a Coco motherboard. It wouldn't be cheap, but it'd
> be cool! Of course, I make no promises and it could well be 5 years away -
> if ever.
> ------------------------------**----
>
> Why not make a board that is a bit more generic than the CoCo, but
> optimized for computer emulation. Something similar to the DE-1, but
> optimized with the right I/O and support for most classic computers. You
> wouldn't need two 40 pin expansion connectors (something more like the GPIO
> connector on the RPi and Arduino boards), one programmable for whatever
> should be fine -- maybe a few more pins (44 is more common as far as
> connector availability). Then SD card, serial and/or USB connectors (could
> be USB connectors, programmable through the FPGA for serial/joystick/USB --
> would just need to make cables/adapters for serial/joystick). You might
> have a market for a generic computer emulation board whereas a CoCo
> specific market would be small. I'd think that a generic emulation targeted
> board would be good as a general FPGA experimenters board as well, though a
> board designed as an accessory board, maybe with just power and a couple
> GPIO headers so it can link to the emulator boar
> d through the single GPIO header as a programmable expansion unit, would
> be a good product as well. That one could be used for anything!
>
> --
> Frank Swygert
> Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
> www.amc-mag.com
>
>
>
>
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>