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

[Mark McDougall]

Joel Ewy wrote:

> What about including a controller that would look to the CoCo like a WD
> FDC, but which actually works with CoCo disk images on removable flash
> media, such as MMC or CF?  

That is *definitely* on the cards, and exactly what I intend
implementing in the near future for my own TRS-80 Model I emulation
(only because I'm intimately more familiar with the Model I).

My current WD1793 implementation (which looks exactly like a WD1793 to
the TRS-80) reads from SPI flash. But I now have a hardware platform
with a CF adapter, and a FAT filesystem which I've already got running
on a NIOS for other purposes. One of my next tasks is to emulate the
WD1793 in the NIOS, reading data from floppy disk images on the FAT
filesystem.

Ditto for executing ROMPACK images as well!

It'd be nice to be able to carry around my entire TRS-80 Model
I/III/Coco software + rompacks in my top pocket on a single CF card.

Interesting that no-one has touted a portable version of the Coco
hardware either. Granted you could always run an emulator on a PSP/GP2X,
but you can't plug a real Coco ROMPACK into that either! ;)

Regards,
Mark