[Coco] What do people want?

[Francis Swygert]

I've got an easy one -- a core for the MCC-216 (http://www.arcaderetrogaming.com/shop/page/7?sessid=QqJ1zuKEnN451RaDIhCEsWsbQVFvJGlHqJHH5tTLX27b1KLc1cqWJN9gyzxKXdT7&shop_param=).  The only problem I have with it is that there is no I/O except for the joystick ports (there is an SD card slot, two PS/2 ports, and  a pair of USB ports, VGA and S-video) -- I mean usable for something other than standard I/O -- no serial port. There is, however, a GPIO port (pin header) on the inside that could be configured, and one of the USB ports is a host interface (the other is a device interface) "for future use", and an internal (pin header) JTAG interface. So it could be configured to use the GPIO or maybe the JTAG as a serial port for Drivewire. Not sure if the Host USB could be configured for that or not. It needs a general/multi-use I/O port though. Those things are only $129-149 now, so they aren't expensive and could be configured as a CoCo3+ -- they support
 C64, Amiga 500 (68K processor!), ZX Spectrum, Atari 800 XL, and Apple II now. It would be great for running existing games, but if you can't print it's not much use for anything else. With DriveWire it could print and have file I/O, albeit through a host PC. With a serial port you can have everything the CoCo has except a floppy disc, but the SD card handles that!  If someone can shoe that they are serious and have the capability the MCC guys might loan you one for development...


Oh, another thing (you said two)!! A simple Windows and Linux utility that will read an SD card from the CoCo FPGA/SDC/MCC-216 core. A simple text menu util would do, with selections to read the directory, navigate it, copy files back and forth between the PC and CoCo SD card. Printing the file would be nice, but if you can transfer if can be saved as ASCII then loaded into a WP and printed from the PC easy enough. But a simple print util (for file listings and such) would be nice too, while we're just wishing!

 
Frank Swygert 
Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service 
803-604-6548