[Coco] "My" CoCo 4 project

[Al Hartman]

I can tell you that I built last summer an ISA based floppy controller that 
reads and writes all 5.25" and 3.5" TRS-80 Model I/III/4, and Coco disks as 
well as IBM PC disks I threw at it.

It was one of these, and it was not hard to build at all.

http://www.malinov.com/Home/sergeys-projects/isa-fdc-and-uart

I now have this system available with a 486 processor, a 40gb hard drive, a 
360k drive, a 1.44mb drive, and various DOS based TRS-80 and Coco Emulators 
to help me with disk imaging and testing.

I don't have a cartridge port/joystick add-on which would make it nicer. 
But, I have my real Coco 2/3 for that.

-[ Al ]-

-----Original Message----- 
From: farna at amc-mag.com

From: "Stephen H. Fischer" <SFischer1 at Mindspring.com>

----------------------------------
Tuesday, March 26, 2013 11:15 PM
Gary, you are in good company.  My CoCo 4 project was killed because of
all the griping over it.  (They took the fun out of the project.)

==================================================

That just doesn't go for me. While others opinions can be valuable at
times, you never get a good product when designed "by committee",
especially in a timely manner. So listen to opinions and input, but do
what you want, it's YOUR project. Letting people who aren't directly
involved (not actively helping -- either in hardware or code) is...
unwise. The MM/1 was designed that way, and eventually came out --
hobbled. While Frank Hogg's TC-9 and 68K machine (forget the name of it)
weren't real successful either, they came out rather quickly with fewer
compromises. Not a lot of OS-9/CoCo compatibility with the TC-9 as was
hoped, but there was NONE with the MM/1, as was also promised... (IIRC...
long time ago now!). If you're dedicated to your project DO IT then see
how everyone reacts. If I had the time and more importantly, the
programming ability, I'd have done the same thing. One of the problems
with my own small PC based idea is no real good CoCo3 emulator with source
code available. Not that I could do anything with C++ or any other source
code...   Using available PC hardware is just a good idea. A hardware card
with a CoCo compatible cartridge slot and maybe joy stick ports is a good
idea, but not necessary IMHO because all the hardware can be emulated
using available PC hardware. I do believe all the current (and in the last
10 years) PC disc controllers won't run older 360K or smaller drives
though, that would be a hurdle for many. All the other hardware issues can
be overcome, but having the cart port for experimenters at least as an
option would be nice. A parallel printer port is two way on many lines and
can be programmed though. It could be set up at least as a limited cart
port -- by that I mean use it to emulate some lines of the cart port if it
can't handle all, and have the emulator translate commands from the CoCo
to use the parallel port as if it were the particular cart port lines.
While few modern PCs have a parallel port any more (do any? maybe some
industrial machines?) such ports are available on PCI cards rather cheap.
That would be far more cost effective than creating a specific hardware
card. I know many want all the CoCo hardware to be available to any "new"
machine, but it's just not cost effective. If that ever happens it will be
because someone has the ability and desire to build the machine then makes
the schematics and maybe PCBfiles available.