[Coco] [Color Computer] RE: [CoCo] Atari and Amiga comparison

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Thu Mar 15 11:02:33 EDT 2007


On Thursday 15 March 2007, Joel Ewy wrote:
>Dan Olson wrote:
>>>> I've often wondered what things would have been like if the coco had
>>>> been built around a 68000 unstead of a 6809.
>>>
>>> It would have cost $2000 instead of $200, no one would have bought
>>> one, and we
>>> wouldn't be talking about it.
>>
>> Or Tandy might have named it the Model 16 instead :)  More realistly
>> they would have introduced such a machine in the mid-80s as the follow
>> on to the coco2.  Too bad there was never a 16 bit follow-on to the
>> 6809 that fell somewhere between the 6809 and 68000, similar to the
>> 65816.
>>
>>     Dan
>
>The cool thing is that we're now living in a time when hobbyists can
>design and implement their own CPUs in FPGAs.  We may yet see what a
>CoCo with a 16/32-bit 6x09-compatible processor running at 40MHz would
>look like...

And then, to save development time, we'd have to run linux (m68k version) 
on it.  Which TBT, I wouldn't be in favor of as making it compatible with 
the 6309 instruction set has not been done.  So I think it would be 
logical to actually port nitros9 to it.  Its much simpler and would 
probably run 20x faster than the linux port.

Of course then, we would start porting the ethernet drivers and the tcp 
stack so we could put it on-line.  Then we'd have our first exploit and a 
security model would be put forth & eventually coded.  And by the time we 
had it as secure as linux, it would be as slow as the m68k is on an 
amiga, and that's so painfull its soffocating.  Been there, done that.

Whatever you do, don't restrict its address buss as was done on the amiga 
mainboards.  For m68k linux, that's a peephole that can't be usefully 
worked around.


>JCE
>
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-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
The trouble with a lot of self-made men is that they worship their 
creator.



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