[Coco] Including an SSC

[Brian Blake]

Nick,

Cloud9's SuperBoard, unless I'm mistaken, will be plugging into a CPU
socket, and I believe the memory expansion headers. With everything else
that's supposed to be on that particular upgrade, I'd doubt there's room
for a sound chip. Unless Mark has been quietly making improvements we
haven't heard about yet...

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On 12/10/2014 4:29 AM, Simon Jonassen wrote:

> WHY NOT include SSC.....
>
> Then maybe we could have what we have been missing all these years....
>
> Anyone who doubts the AY chip:
>
> http://ay-riders.speccy.cz/
>
> /Simon :-)
>
>

Certainly impressive for a 30 year old sound chip! The AY has a bit of a
tiny "LoFi" sound quality to it and I believe all sound is square wave
based but it goes to show what good software can do to push the hardware.

I think it's too late for any header option in the CoCoSDC (if it was at
all possible). With 80 boards now in production, the chances of a hardware
revision are slim and any hardware add-ons to the CoCo will have to go the
multi-pak route.

I wonder if there is another way to interface hardware to the CoCo?

I can think of 2 possibilities:

1) With many having upgraded their 6809 CPU to a 6309 with the installation
of a socket to the motherboard, maybe a board containing the CPU and
additional hardware can be connected here? This severley limits the
potential user base though since it requires the CPU to be socketed first,
not an easy mod for everyone.

2) The construction of a cartridge slot internal expansion/extender.

What I'm now toying with is the idea of a small board that plugs into the
cartridge port, brings out a header duplicating the bus and then
immediately goes to another cartridge edge connector. This means that the
CoCoSDC (or any cartridge controller) will protrude an extra 1 inch from
the CoCo but at least the CoCo bus connections are made accessible for an
expansion card internal to the CoCo. This is essentially a Y-cable but made
very compact with much shorter connections and still maintaing a rigid
connection to the CoCoSDC.

The CoCoSDC uses a FD502 cartridge case which is shorter than the previous
FD500 cartridge case so although it will protrude more than before, it
won't protrude any more than that old controller (or an SCC or Orch90).

While I would personally prefer the least amount of protrusion, this is a
good compromise for adding hardware (such as sound) to the CoCo.

Anyone with PCB skills with an opinion on this idea? Do'able or another of
my pie-in-the-sky ideas?   :)

Nick

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