[Coco] Super I/O cartridge

[Nick Marentes]

 > From what I understand, there is someone else working on a FDC
 > emulator. While not at the level my design (his words), it was a
 > solution to the problem of dying hardware like floppy drive and disks.

Life just isn't the same as when we were "young and free".   :)

Floppy Drive emulation has become a very popular project on many retro 
platforms. If one types "floppy emulator" into Ebay, they will find a 
plethora of ready made devices available. These involve replacing the 
drive itself with an SD card that attaches to the disk controllers' 
connector.

What we're doing here is a bit more... emulation of the FD controller 
itself and the drive, creating a compact all-in-one device (cartridge) 
containing our entire library of disk software. Really cool.

 > I hope he continues on his design and you bring your project back to
 > life. That way at lease one of these three devices will get in the
 > hands of a CoCo user.

I'd love to get back to it. I'd always wanted to learn about PIC 
programming and this was an ideal project to do this. I have begun a few 
other projects that fill in the limited spare time I have.

Creation of the Game Workshop website and it's associated Forum, the 
hope being to establish and grow a small Game Development "scene" on the 
CoCo as is for other retro systems.

And, I have begun the development of my most ambitious game programming 
project yet with the start of my new game, "Fortress". Free time will 
determine how I prgress with this but steady progress is being made.

Maybe, when I complete this, I may return to the Super I/O cartridge but 
hopefully someone else will have done this in the meantime.

 > I was going to use your idea of a wave file playback (since I had your
 > blessing) but the goal now is to keep the project from being weighted
 > with too many extras.

I don't mind anyone taking the wave file playback idea, even expanding 
on if they wish.

I agree, don't weigh down the project. Set a few achievable goals and 
stick with them, complete the project and then see about expanding the 
design, else one will never reach the end.

Nick