[Coco] [Color Computer] The evolution of the Coco..

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Fri, 2005-04-22 at 13:35 -0400, Mike Pepe wrote:

> The "C-64 on a chip" is probably the better direction to go.
> 

I think the C-One is very cool, but from a cost point of view wouldn't
it be better to emulate the Coco CPU and hardware and use an
off-the-shelf emebedded computer? Just add coco-special hardware like a
cassette relay and a cartridge port and you're set.

You could have it start up with a fairly standard ROM image in
emulation. Then we could add gateway commands to let you get to the
non-virtual hardware and (hopefully minimal OS).


To some extent you could do this with a custom Linux distro that does
very little init except launching MESS full screen. Then you add special
BASIC commands/extensions that can gateway out to the foundation
operating system. Sort of a coco "environment"

Then the question becomes "why," a) because it's cool b) because the
coco is a 6809 and i/o hardware (which all can be emulated well) but
it's also a lot more. It's also about:

1) Accessibility
	Open hardware
	Easy to understand manuals for the beginner
	Easy/comfortable/encouraged to program yourself
	Soothing nuclear green screen
2) Standard
	Everone is running the same, compatible hardware.
3) Community/Support
	Lots of other nice people and vendors
	playing with the same hardware
	(how to make coco popular again? Left for discussion)
4) Low cost
	Don't forget this. Coco4 needs to be relatively cheap.
	


-- John.



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