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

[Mark McDougall]

Dan Olson wrote:

> While I'm on the subject, call me crazy, but if I were building new 
> hardware, even with FPGAs, I'd want a bus, with a video card, I/O card, 
> mass storage card, etc.  I know it would cost more, but I just like 
> having the option of adding/upgrading hardware this way.  Plus you could 
> use many small FPGAs instead of one large one :)

Well, that's the beauty of an FPGA - you don't *need* a video card, for 
example - the video can be driven directly from the FPGA. As long as you 
choose a suitable DAC, you can design in anywhere from 8 to 16M colours. 
Ditto for mass storage - you just need the appropriate connectors.

That's the idea with the Coco "personality" adapter module - it's really not 
much more than a physical interface board, with a bit of analogue circuitry 
if required.

Regards,

-- 
|              Mark McDougall                | "Electrical Engineers do it
|  <http://members.iinet.net.au/~msmcdoug>   |   with less resistance!"