[Coco] MCC-216

[Allen Huffman]

On Jan 2, 2013, at 8:04 PM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
>> Other than potential mysteries inside the GIME (if there are any), hardware emulation of a CoCo via FPGA seems like the best best, but if it cannot use true CoCo hardware, it might as well be a small X86 box running MESS.
> 
> There was a time I would have agreed with you. Then I got the DE1 board and got the coco3fpga image. For me it feels like a real coco3. I can't
> explain why exactly but it's an order of magnitude better then an emulator running on a PC.

Maybe I am not coming across correctly, but it sounds like you and I are on the same page. That DE1 was a CoCo, sans having a real CoCO keyboard, joysticks, etc. which would be trivial so ad, I would think. Some I/O lines, analog input.  I plan to see what all I can simulate using an Arduino from RadioShack, even.

>> From what I understand the commodore joystick was developed with on an fpga and the commercial product was done with an asic.

The lady that designed it was on a TWIT podcast a few years ago talking about it. I should go back and listen, but it makes me want to track her down and see if she wants to tackle a CoCo sometime. If it can do all the SID and sprite stuff in a C64, it seems the CoCo would be easier?

		-- A