[Coco] [Color Computer] Re: 128 or 512?

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that John W. Linville may have mentioned these words:
>On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 11:17:40AM -0500, Roger Merchberger wrote:
> > Rumor has it that John W. Linville may have mentioned these words:
> > >On Thu, Mar 01, 2007 at 06:42:31AM -0800, Jim Cox wrote:
> > >> Why James?  Would the issue be the limited writes of the
> > >> flash cards?
> > >
> > >Because CF cards are not byte-addressable?  They look like a hard
> > >drive, not memory.
> >
> > If I'm not mistaken (which I probably am) I *think* there's a mode that 
> _on
> > reads_ CF cards can be byte-addressed, but I think they can only be 
> written
> > by erasure & reprogramming in 32K or 64K chunks... but again, it's not 
> like
> > the CF spec is bedtime reading to me... ;-)
>
>I really don't want to quibble over terminology here.  The point is,
>CF doesn't look like memory (i.e. LDA and STA don't work to read and
>write any single random byte on the card in any random order).  So,
>it wouldn't be appropriate to use it for a RAM card.

I'm not trying to quibble, either, but what I was trying to say, is I 
_think_ there's a read-only memory mapped mode -- so LDA's *would work.* 
STAs wouldn't, as you'd have to "format" a block & then reprogram the whole 
sucker, but I'm essentially saying that if written correctly the first 
time, you could set it up as a memory-mapped ROM and actually execute 
programs from it, just like any other form of ROM. RAM "functionality," I 
believe, is outta the question, tho.

Not sure what you'd do with a 16Meg removable SECB chip... but technically, 
I think it'd be possible, and for a 1-off hacker-type removable prototyping 
ROM station, might be kinda neat. "Useful" would be an exercise best left 
up to the hacker, but neat nonetheless. ;-)

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger  --  SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
  _±±_                          zmerch at 30below.com
(©||®)  If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
  _)(_   disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.