[Coco] Announcing the Color Computer Starter Kits (MS-DOS)

[farna at amc-mag.com]

Bill, my take on this is that it's a lot easier to set up an old 486
computer with a stripped down version of DOS (maybe FreeDOS) to boot up as
a CoCo directly. It would boot up faster and have a lot less overhead, so
should work better on old hardware. I'm sure there are those that will
counter that running MESS with Puppy Linux or DSL stripped down a bit
could be as fast and efficient though. Not having Drivewire capability is
a definite downside though. There isn't a Java for MS-DOS??

I'd like to see a "CoCo Linux" that has a minimal Linux setup that will
boot up as a virtual CoCo3+ (with  the recent enhancements) on a live CD.
Just put it in and boot -- with the option to install as the entire OS.
One could dual boot a system as a CoCo or Windows (or regular Linux)! It
would be a virtual "CoCo4".

I really think the FPGA system with the current enhancements (and the
emulators which have those enhancements) should be referred to as the
"CoCo4 enhancements" (not exactly the same as just "CoCo4"). I think those
enhancements (Drivewire, extra memory, Becker, and the extra color mode)
are about as far as the CoCo3 hardware model can be enhanced and still
retain backwards compatibility with real CoCo3 hardware.


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Date: Mon, 19 May 2014 13:40:42 -0400 (EDT)
From: Bill Pierce <ooogalapasooo at aol.com>

Andrew,
I don't know if making the kits for the old MSDOS emulators would make any
difference other than the files all being n one place. The have no DW4
capabilities,
limited HD support, (usually) require a dos box of sorts.. Just too many
"outside"
setups would be required on modern systems and not enough people with
MSDOS capable
machines to justify all the work. On the other hand, Vcc, Mess, and XRoar
are widely
used by Windows users and more people are finding ways to run Vcc under
Linux and
Mac. XRoar and Mess can both be found for Linux and Mac.
The MSDOS emulators (for most people) have to be run in some sort of "dos
box" and
it would probably be hard to implement that type of installation, though
it may be
possible and I'll look into it when I get a chance.
I liked the dos emulators as well. I starting using Jeff's Coco 2 emulator
from the
time he released it (95?). I also purchased Jeff's Coco 3 emulator right
after it
was released (serial #0007C). I also like David Keil's emulator a lot. To
me, it had
the best GUI of all the emulators past and present. I just wish he would
upgrade it
to run on Windows Vista, 7, & 8, as he's still active in the Coco
Community. It
wouldn't be hard (I wouldn't think so anyway).
But all of those emulators require a lot of setup that's internal to the
programs
and make it hard to implement a "turnkey" system. Again, I will check into
it as I
know lots of people still use them.