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

[mike delyea]

My 2 cents.  There is something called RISC OS PICO that boots directly
into BBC Basic for the Raspberry Pi.  Maybe some of the more adept
programmers can make it work for coco basic.

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2014/05/01/happy-birthday-basic


On Tue, May 20, 2014 at 11:33 AM, <farna at amc-mag.com> wrote:

> 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.
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------
> 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.
>
>
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>