[Coco] CoCo3FPGA, FPGA Development, and GIME replacement

[Stephen H. Fischer]

Hi,

The good news is that the escape codes used for OS-9 Windowing have used
little of the graphics address space.

> So maybe a FPGA CoCo should also have a custom 6809/6309 core with a 32bit
> address line?

That's what would be discovered with a deep analysis and an emulator that
could be configured to look at the possibilities. And learn what parts of
the software need to be changed.

Perhaps just the Windowing system needs to switch to 32 addresses.

The 64K limit comes into play in many places

Some of us would have fun just using a bigger graphics canvas with more
colors even if no hardware was ever available.

It's great that more colors can be added, the hardware folks are doing
great.

But I see NO sign that the software folks are doing anything (Well except
for one very private project.).

Without software, the hardware is just a PG&E dummy load.

SHF


----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Nick Marentes" <nickma at optusnet.com.au>

To: "CoCoList" <coco at maltedmedia.com>

Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2011 2:45 PM

Subject: [Coco] CoCo3FPGA, FPGA Development, and GIME replacement


> > Does the DICTATOR sound any better now?
>
> Before there is a Dictator, there is a Leader. A good Leader knows his
> boundaries and avoids stepping into the "Dark Side". :)
>
> > Adding colors, a larger screen size and other features will run up
> against
> > the 64K limit in several ways.
> > With a 6x09 processor it may not be possible to bypass it.
>
> I agree with you here. Even developing big graphics games on the CoCo3,
> the 64K barrier is a problem. A big speed increase can be had if one
> didn't have to shuffle 8K MMU blocks around just to access 512K or more.
> I'm sure it would help with OS-9 too in a big way.
>
> So maybe a FPGA CoCo should also have a custom 6809/6309 core with a 32bit
> address line?
>
> Nick
>