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

[Roger Taylor]

At 02:09 PM 1/25/2007, you wrote:
>That's a really great idea, but I'm thinking all the external hardware
>to control that pseudo-floppy is expensive. Wouldn't it be cool if the
>CPU core had an alternate register set and memory space? Like a
>user/supervisor mode- you hit a hotkey and the normal processing is
>suspended, you get an on-screen menu to mount/unmount floppy images with
>names and descriptions (instead of a number on an LED display) then you
>can just resume normal operation. Kind of like how MESS works. It would
>probably be less costly from a hardware perspective I would assume.

Ah, the ole CoCo 4 subject that never dies.  :)  Even after 10 years 
of ideas like these, I think we've pretty much already got an 
advanced enough CoCo 3 to nickname it a 4 if you like.  With all of 
the Cloud-9 hardware products, it's more modern than it probably ever 
will be.  Now all we need is a new GUI for Disk BASIC that can be put 
in the empty bytes of the DECB ROM and possibly in the Ctrl-Alt-Reset 
image area of the CoCo 3 ROM.  Of, wait, there was a C-Windows sold 
in the past that gave a GUI for Disk BASIC?

I would like to see if a patch can be made for OS-9 Level Two and 
NitrOS-9 Level Two for Sock's HiColor graphics mode, but mainly for 
MultiVue to give the CoCo 3 an appearance of being a CoCo 4, if you 
like, since the video would be awesome compared to the present 
limitations.  Ofcourse, if HiColor does horizontal scanline updating 
of the palettes then this might not be possible in any OS-driven 
environment where you want to do something besides just stare at a 
high color picture, as in picture viewers.