[Coco] graphical CoCo emulation environment

[LM]

Roger Taylor wrote;
>We've talked about this subject before: the idea of a graphical
>representation of a real CoCo system being emulated on a PC, where you
can
>drag and drop "floppy disks", "rom paks", "cassettes", insert "cables",
and
>everything else you'd normally do with a real system (well, almost).

That sounds really nice.

> The hardest work would probably be in the graphics department, 
> keeping everything pretty and in
> proportion, etc.  Even that is not that hard to do.

Would be curious to hear what you end up using to program the
graphical representation part.  Have had a long time interest in
portable GUI libraries.  Since MESS works on Windows and Linux,
you should be able to get your system working on both as well,
depending on what you use for a GUI library.


Since the subject of MESS got brought up, is there a way to get 
the keyboard working through MESS so you don't have to keep 
flipping between the emulated and natural keyboards to get quotes 
working properly for loading programs and the other keys working 
all right while running programs?  If I didn't have to keep 
flipping keyboard types, MESS would make a really convincing 
substitute for a CoCo screen (though still not quite as good
as the real thing).  The only other thing that I'm having 
trouble with on MESS is the joystick support.  Guess you need 
a real joystick to get decent behavior out of it.  Tried setting 
joystick firing buttons to work with my mouse, but it couldn't 
recognize the right or left click on the mouse.  Anyone tried 
moving their CoCo joysticks over to the PC and getting them working?  
Is it possible?  I have a nice CoCo track ball I would have loved 
to be able to get working on my PC.


Sounds like a great project.  Hope you'll keep us up to date on
the progress.

Best wishes.

Laura