[Coco] Just a thought

Thu Mar 26 23:20:35 EDT 2015

The whole "PC compatible" (also called "clones" back then) industry 
started when IBM let other companies reverse-engineer and create 
machines that were equivalent to their own de-facto standard. The most 
important parts of the standard were the CPU, the ISA bus 
specifications, and the BIOS functions/interrupts. CDP reverse-engineer 
the BIOS and soon enough, the specs were "public domain"-ish. It didn't 
take long before the industry started pulling in all directions, but 
standards emerged and they even started working together (VESA 
standards, etc.) Without this rather "benevolent" attitude from IBM, the 
PC/XT platform would have been "closed" and the PC industry would never 
have bloomed.

Now imagine a similar dynamic in the industry, but with the Amiga (or 
any other 68000-based machine) as the reference architecture.
At some point Tandy chose to build PC clones for the family market, but 
it was not the only option available at the time.

Hugo

Le 2015-03-26 20:11, Steve Batson a écrit :
> I guess if you are to dream or imagine, you may as well go all the way. Companies have never worked well together back then or now, unless there was something in it for both. A bunch of competitors don't get together and design the next great thing that they will all compete on. Creating standards and agreeing on something that all can benefit from is one thing, or creating a technology that all could use is nice. But expecting several companies to work together with their competitors to create the next thing that they will compete with each other isn't reasonable. They could love each other, but giving away secrets and information to the competitor is just not wise.
>
> But, dream on. ;)
>
>
> On Mar 26, 2015, at 4:37 PM, Hugo Dufort <hugo at seshat.ca> wrote:
>
>> There was a point in the History of personal computers where all the major companies making computers based on Motorola 68--- chips could have started working together and come up with some common architecture for peripherals, coprocessors and formats. Amiga and Atari couldn't manage to work together and were bitter enemies. Tandy abandoned the Morotola architecture to switch to Intel, and trying to offer PCjr clones.
>>
>> But imagine for a moment that these companies (Amiga, Tandy, Atari) start working together, developing a common "M68000 compatible" platform. Tandy could have offered a Coco3 backwards compatibility mode through some 6809 expansion card that you switch on and off, for instance. Program packs are quickly phased out, although some third-party company sells an adapter for the Coco4/Tandy68+ computer line. Eventually OS9 could have imposed itself, merging with AmigaOS, keeping the best of both worlds and becoming the dominant OS for the 68000 line of processors. Eventually, sales figures help Motorola develop the next-generation PowerPC chip that dominates a domestic market where Intel/IBM struggles with failing sales figures... and where Apple is just another "Motorola compatible" PC maker. :p
>> And generations of programmers are happy because you know, Motorola chips are really, really nice!
>>
>>
>> Hugo
>>
>> Le 2015-03-26 15:38, Bill Pierce via Coco a écrit :
>>> This turned into a Coco4 thread long before anyone answered the original question...
>>>
>>> I think the original question was NOT what you wanted in a Coco4, but what would a Coco have looked like had TANDY continued to make it until now....
>>>
>>> Personally, I think it would have looked like year before last's PC model as Tandy was always 2 years behind because they spent half the developement time trying to shave costs and by the time they released it, it was 2 years too late. It's one of the MANY reasons their computer department eventually failed.
>>>
>>> It would still have floppy drives and IDE hard drives. An SD card reader would be in the works but not yet released until they shaved the costs down some more (ETA 2 years). SATA drives would be on hold until they could update the Tandy 10,000 to SATA first.
>>>
>>> It would still boot up in 32X16 and have the old MS BASIC (copyright still in place).
>>> The new Super HiRes Graphics would be accessable from BASIC via the Microsoft patch to the Linux patch to the Microware patch to the Microsoft BASCI roms.
>>>
>>> The 6809 support would be on a PCI card only available from special order and not in the catalog even though the ads for The "Super Coco" say it's 100% backwards compatable. The 6809 card would actually have a 6309 on board but not officially supported by Tandy.
>>> Graphics would be handled by the "GIMEYCC" (Gimme Your Credit Card) chip.
>>>   
>>> Bill Pierce
>>> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>>>   
>>> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
>>> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
>>> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
>>> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
>>> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>>>
>>>
>>>   
>>
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>

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