[Coco] CC-Five (was Re: Pseudo CoCo4???) (LONG)

[Mark McDougall]

Joel Ewy wrote:

> CPU:  There is enough use of the 6309 in existing CoCo systems that it
> Video:  Even at much higher clock rates, the CPU in the CC-Five will be
> RAM:  The memory interface should be able to use some kind of reasonably
> Firmware:  Here I guess we would have to take a cue from the emulators

You forgot one thing that's going to be the make-or-break of any such
project - namely Software.

Without software you can't make use of a new MMU or expanded memory.
Without software you can't access the new peripherals; storage devices,
sound chips, mice.
Without software you can't make use of the new graphics modes. There
will be *NO* application software that can use these new modes. New
versions of BASIC(/09) will have to be written. New paint programs. New
text mode drivers for enhanced text modes.

Writing all this software is going to be a majorly time-consuming task.

And I can foresee other problems:

* Who decides what's "in" and what "out" of a community-based spec?
Design-by-committee is historically plagued by failures.
* Hardware development is expensive. And technology is moving so rapidly
it very quickly becomes obsolete. Just look at the C-one - only about
1/2 the initial production run has been sold with little prospect of
selling more; who wants to pay hundreds of dollars for an FPGA-dev board
with little more power than modern CPLDs, when you can get much more
powerful devices on a $99 board these days?

It's a noble vision - don't get me wrong - but I question the
practicality of 'selling it to the masses' - at least in a
shrink-wrapped form. HDL source packages that can be adapted to various
platforms may indeed prove the solution, but there's always the question
of software support IMHO.

Regards,
Mark