[Coco] MM/1 and friends (was: "Historic" CD-i development systems...

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that KnudsenMJ at aol.com may have mentioned these words:
>
>As many as 100 or 150 MM/1 units may have been sold.  About 3 or 4 are  still
>known on this List.

I was actually published in "World of 68 Micros" where they were 
advertised... needless to say, 1 lowly article didn't get me much of a 
discount... ;-P

> >This  is why I'd wondered why nobody ever (and something I wouldn't have
> >minded doing, except that I'm not smart enough) ported OSK to the Palm
> >platform... I'd bet it would just *rock* on my Sony Clie  NR70.
>
>Geez!  You mean the Palm processors (like in my little Pilot IIc) are  based
>on 68K architecture?  So the 68K isn't dead after all?

Well, they are now -- The platform is now ARM based (which is now owned by 
Intel, pfft. :-/ ) but until the switchover, then the Palm was 68K based. A 
lot of Atari ST people did a lot of wild stuff with 'em... And if you meant 
IIIc, yes, they're 68K based, and I have one of 'em, too. Only bought the 
Sony because the battery fizzled in my 3c (and the back case was cracked); 
and at the time they were $80+ to replace. Now I can get 'em on ePay for 
under $20. I should really get 'er running again... ;-) 'Course, now my 
Sony's battery is gettin' wiggy...

Is there any way to flash that sucker externally? If so, it might be fun to 
make a cute little development system out of 'er; (or what I was planning 
on until life got in the way was a dedicated DLPilot station - I didn't 
know Sir John was working on a DriveWire port as well... Hrm... ;-) ) 
Hopefully life will fix itself in a few weeks...

If it runs Palm OS 5+, it's ARM based; if it runs 4.x or below, it's 68K 
based. IIRC, my NR70 was the fastest 68K palm released, at 66MHz. It was 
overclockable & underclockable (if you wanted to go faster or save battery 
life) with a program called FastCPU - it would go up to 74MHz, but it was 
nearly unusable at that speed due to the short battery life, and certain 
program incompatibilities. 320x480 screen (the nicest one I've ever seen on 
a palm computer) and a thumb-keyboard built-in.

> >But  this is getting *way* off-topic... ;-)
>
>Not really -- any discussion of the MM/1 or other "Coco4" boxes, and
>possible ports of OS9 or the like, is fair game for this group.

Ah, that I was not aware of... I was thinking it was pretty much "CoCo 
only" (well, I'd figured questions about the Dragon wouldn't be frowned 
upon...) but I can see where topics like this could stray pretty easily.

Anywho... back to work. ;-)

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Bugs of a feather flock together."
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers |           Russell Nelson
zmerch at 30below.com          |