[Coco] Generic Hardware Pak

[Allen Huffman]

I'm not saying I am working on this, but...

If someone were to bring out a generic hardware cartridge that had software-selectable addressing, and had some simple coprocessor like an Arduino AVR or PIC chip, and a connector that ran out TTL level UART signals, I2C, and SPI...

...a to of dirt cheap off-the-shelf modules could be hooked to it. There are real time clocks, RS232 interfaces, cameras, sound modules, etc. There are also a bunch of chips that could be put on custom circuit board modules that could be plugged in, with these modules costing a fraction of the cost of building a whole cartridge.

But the main thing is it would let someone like me, who has no skills to design a CoCo cartridge, be able to easily wire up add-on modules.

http://subethasoftware.com/2018/03/06/proposing-preciouspak-the-one-pak-to-rule-them-all/

Maybe some day...