[Coco] Looking for non working coco case.

[Steve Bjork]

If you knew more about PC hardware then you would not be so confused by 
Ben's message.  For a while there has been a number of complete PC 
boards smaller than CoCo 2 board.
I've even seen a PC put inside a model of the Millennium Falcon from 
Star Wars and the first Nintendo Game system case. These cases had much 
less room than a CoCo.

Small PC called Net-Tops are the big item right now in the computer 
market.  (Along with Net-Books)  I just installed a MSI  Net-Top 100 
with an Intel Atom 330 and 945GC graphic chip set for one of my 
clients.  It's less than 12" by 9" by 3" with a 3.5" hard drive and DVD 
drive and was hidden in a desk drawer.  While not small enough to fit in 
a CoCo case it does show the direction of one of the PC markets.

Last January at the CES, Nvidia demonstrated their new Ion platform base 
on the Intel Atom 330 and Geforce 9400M graphics chip set.  Not only 
does this platform have more power that the MIS Net-Top 100, (it can 
drive a home theater) it's only 6" by 5" by 1.2" with hard drive and all 
interfaces.  (Both DVI and VGA out, Audio and 4 USB ports.)  By the way, 
the new Mac Mini is based on the Ion system.

Both Ion and the CoCo 4 I/O board will fit inside a CoCo 3 case. With 
the optional I/O board you can plug your CoCo joysticks, cassette, 
serial port hardware right into the CoCo 3 case and use that stuff with 
the CoCo 4 emulator.  But the best trick is the 40 pin cartridge port!  
Plug in your Floppy Disk Controller, Speech Sound Pak, Multi_Pak, Game 
Pak and more and use them just like a real CoCo.  Even the Power and 
Reset buttons along with the Keyboard work just like a real CoCo.  (Fun 
Note: Turn off the power in the RF output mode will give you white noise 
(static) on both the screen and audio out just like a real CoCo hooked 
up to a T.V.)

It's true that a DVD drive will not fit in case with all that other 
hardware.  But, the Coco's floppy drives were external units too.

As you now see, what Ben is doing it real and no need for confusion.

Steve Bjork

another steve wrote:
> I'm totally confused by this.
>
> Are you wanting to build a system that uses one of the emulators to run 
> CoCo software on the PC or Mac but put it in the case? Or, are you wanting 
> to make your own hardware to emulate a CoCo using a CoCo case?
>
> I'm assuming the later is not the case. So, the question is, why on earth 
> would you try to build a computer into a CoCo case to run an emulator that 
> would run on any PC under Windows, Linux, or on a Mac running Mac OSX.
>
> Here's why I'm questioning it...
>
> The CoCo case is fine for handling CoCo hardware that it was designed for. 
> But, a PC or Mac requires more hardware, powersupply, etc and all of the 
> ports are different than what the Coco case is built for. My point is all 
> that hardware is not going to fit into a CoCo case, and should you get it 
> to fit, it's going to be gigantic mess.
>
> Anyway, I'm really curious to have more detail on what you are trying to 
> do.
>
> Steve
>
> ----------------------------------------
>
> From: "Ben Jimenez" <ben_jimenez at yahoo.com>
> Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 1:04 PM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: [Coco] Looking for non working coco case. 
>
> Hi, 
>
> I'd like to build myself an emulated COCO using any old color computer 
> case. I'd prefer to get a coco3 case, but anyone will do. Please contact me 
> at ben_jimenez at yahoo.com . Thanks.
>
>