[Coco] Hidden 256-color mode

[Nickolas Marentes]

JDAGGETT WROTE:

In a large enough FPGA you can do the whole Coco 3.

The GIME is about 70% coded in VHDL.

If everything goes as hoped, I should have the GIME section coded by the 
end of August and start testing it for the next several months.



NICK REPLIES:

I'm really looking forward to this "CoCo3-in-a-chip" design. Maybe once 
completed, a few extra functions could be squeezed in to make it qualify 
as a CoCo4?

Any plans for an expansion bus? Maybe a small "microbus" 
idea...something that allows for expansion cards but takes up little 
space and uses a small connector (IDE type connectors)?

I guess the easy route would be a drop in replacement motherboard to a 
standard CoCo3 case and to finish the job...a replacement case badge 
that says "Color Computer 4"!

I'd wanna be one of the first in line to buy that!



MIKE PEPE WROTE:

The way you're supposed to enter this mode also makes no sense to me. 
Unless the designers intended this feature to never be discovered, 
there's no reason to make it so complicated. It may be some clever state 
machine hack, but again it seems illogical to make this mode's selection 
such a bizarre hack.


NICK RELIES:

Your quite right, it doesn't make sense to have such an arkward way of 
entering this mode....but as I said, this isn't the way the mode was 
meant to be entered originally. It's qirky because it was meant to have 
been removed and the designer would have made it like this as a sort of 
"back door" or "cookie"...much like is done which software.


Nickolas Marentes