[Coco] Minor 'Fest announcement (LEDs)

[L. Curtis Boyle]

I mentioned something similar in the YouTube comments. When Bill and I did the TC-9, we “took over” some of the AT keyboard lights - Capslock on/off was obvious, but we used another one of them for keyboard mouse on/off. Since the VTIO driver knows the state of those for each window, they would change to the appropriate settings as you CLEAR’d your way through different windows (whether graphical or text based wouldn’t matter.  That I would find useful. As you mentioned, power on/off as well since the Coco doesn’t have one built in (the TC-9 did).

L. Curtis Boyle
curtisboyle at sasktel.net



> On Apr 1, 2023, at 10:13 AM, Francis Swygert via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com> wrote:
> 
> Date: Fri, 31 Mar 2023 15:46:09 -0500
> From: RETRO Innovations <go4retro at go4retro.com>
> 
> Gotta admit, that is extremely cool.? After viewing, I *had* to look at 
> my case, and I see the same thing.? Awesome.? They fit perfectly!
> 
> If you're interested, I'll whip up a way to control those LEDs from the 
> CoCo, free of charge.? Your choice on design.? I can whip up a 
> microcontroller to do some cylon lights or blink or something, or I can 
> make something that can be programmed from the CoCo, wither by RS232 or 
> something that sits under the CPU socket. I might be able to pull 
> something together by fest time.
> 
> Either way, impressive.? If a list of parts is available, that'd be 
> awesome as well.
> 
> Jim=====================================
> What would be nice is if the LEDs did something, not just for looks. Power on (well, since they run off the Coco 5V power that's obvious), maybe cassette relay active (not sure how useful that would be), etc. I don't know what would be useful that you could pull from the motherboard. Disc activity would be nice, but no way to pull it. Could probably have the CART select line light one, but can it be done easily without interfering with the signal? 
> 
> 
> Frank Swygert
> Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
> 803-604-6548
> 
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