[Coco] COCO4 Emulator

[James Hrubik]

So what is the point of emulation?  It has to run on a PC  or Mac.   
At this point, both are Intel based.  If you skip the emu part, the  
64K (maybe now 64G) question is -- can Nitros9 be ported to run from  
boot off an Intel machine?  If so, you have your CoCo 4, 5, 6, ad  
infinitum.  Yes, you would then be in direct competition for fans  
with Linux, but it would be one more OS option for modern computer  
users to play with, write apps for, experiment with.  I think that if  
released under GPL, there would suddenly be thousands of programmers  
looking at it, many who never heard of the CoCo.  Imagine the next  
CoCoFest.  It would be like the resurrection of the CoCo... but on a  
different chipset.  And I'll bet it would run blitzin' fast, too.   
Imagine an OS designed for economy of address space, running on a  
dual core machine.  Think of all the timing loops you'd have to use  
to run old CoCo software---

[falls off barstool. laughing]

On May 5, 2006, at 8:20 PM, John Donaldson wrote:

> What I would love to have is what I call a COCO4 emulator program.  
> There are three COCO3 Emulators (JC/JV, Kriel, nd Mess), which are  
> being used. I believe that any or all of them could be modified to  
> include the items that I think would make a COCO4 emulator.  
> Something along these lines.
>
> COCO4 Emulator
>
> 1. Add 640X480 and/or 800X600 screen support.
> 2. Extend the number of colors that can be used at the same time.
> True 256 colors.
> 3. Increase the memory to 2 or 4 MB for both DOS and NitrOS9. Make  
> it fully accessible for
> programming, not just for RAM disks and such. Mabey not for DOS,  
> but cn be done for NitrOS9.
> We already have the 2M mode in the JC/JV Emulator, but I don't  
> think it is all avalible for
> programming.
> 4. Change the memory mapping under NitrOS9 to 2K blocks instead of  
> the 8K blocks. Too many
> times I have seenwhere a 8K block had to be allocated and have 6K  
> of it wastied. IFRC, I once
> read that Motorola had a Memory Manager chip for the 6809 that did  
> run in 2K blocks.
> 5. Extend the boot process in NitrOS9 so more drivers can be  
> loaded. I think Boisy figured out how to
> make NitrOS9 L3 use a larger boot file.
> 6. Add support in NitrOS9 for using Ethernet Cards, sound cards and  
> etc. Chris Hawks now has a CDRom reader program for NitrOS9 L3,  
> with the expanded memory, larger boot file, why can't a IP Manager  
> be written? Letting the emulator run at CPU speed should speed up  
> the access IMHO.
> 7. Optimize the emulator speed to take advantage of the PC CPU  
> speed. That is allow it to run as
> fast as possible.
> 8. Make the PC floppy drives Read/Write/format real DOS and NitrOS9  
> disks. I think Kriel's already
> does this.
>
> With the faster CPU’s of today and letting the emulator run at full  
> PC speed, it should be fast enough to handle all of these items.  
> Mabey not all of theses are feasible but some, if not most should  
> be. The expanded screen sizes and colors should not be a problem if  
> the memory is expanded to 2 or 4 Meg.
> For those COCO3 programs that would need to run at standard COCO3  
> speeds, a switch could be included to slow it down. I fully believe  
> that it can still be backward compatible to a standard COCO3.
>
> John Donaldson
>
>
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco

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