[Coco] CoCo Video Player

[Mark Marlette]

Andrew,

I disagree with you and with Roger's comment. Now I don't want to shock anyone, but his wouldn't be the first time that Roger and I have disagreed.

This has nothing to do with anything other than this statement.

Being a hardware guy, the hardware sets the pace for the software. Software can be good or bad but if the hardware does not support the cool features which the software is pushing, then NONE of it would be possible. Another way to look at it is that the software can only make the hardware goes as fast as it was designed in a optimized environment. If it was up to the software, the CoCo would be running at 100GHZ today...... :)

I think we all can agree that the CoCo3's hardware was ahead of it's time. A dream machine and to this day we are all trying to make the most of it. Now that is the FUN part! :)

Going to lab central for the weekend so I'll be offlist....Please don't consider this an attack on Roger as it is not. Hate to put disclaimers on my posts..... :)

Regards,

Mark
Cloud-9



----- Original Message -----
From: "Andrew" <keeper63 at cox.net>
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 10:25:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo Video Player

Steve's slams aside (come on Steve, show at least a -little- love! :) ), 
I have to say I too was impressed that it was able to do as much as it 
could. Roger's comment of "proves that software is more powerful than 
hardware" is spot on, but it also says something else:

What are we missing today? What will we see tomorrow?

The only reason such "video" was "impossible" back around 1986-1991 was 
mainly because:

a) "we" didn't have the software chops or knowledge of 20-odd extra years
b) we didn't have the storage that video requires

Even if we had "a", "b" would've ultimately prevented it, but there are 
a ton of things we have seen since Radio Shack stopped making the CoCo 3 
that -would- have been doable, had we had the knowledge of how to code 
it properly (things like "Gate Crasher", the other various and myriad 
demo code out there, etc). One we "had" - but the opportunity was 
dreadfully missed (the 256 color artifact mode); the original find was 
published in the "wrong" magazine, instead of the Rainbow, and the one 
article about using the 640x192 color mode to gain more colors focused 
on color blending, and no one seemed to think about artifact colors on a 
TV (I played with the code in that article a lot - but mainly only on my 
CM-8!). I think maybe a lot of people missed it, because most were 
enamored of switching from a TV/composite monitor to a "crisp" RGB 
monitor...

So - what kind of super-duper things are we missing today, that we just 
can't "see" for one reason or another; what are the things that are 
"obvious" - right in front of our faces, that we'll hit our foreheads in 
20 years and think "duh!"?

Of course this is unanswerable, but it is something I find fascinating 
to think about - mainly because if you are able to think of such a 
thing, it's like pulling the future closer to the present (though you 
really haven't changed anything - since it was possible for you to think 
about it, it becomes today's tech, not tomorrow's, so there are still 
"obvious" things out there!).

I really wonder about how much power is wasted in today's PCs and 
machines; how much every year society throws away into the "garbage" 
computing power we almost would've killed for 20 years ago. Today, it's 
seen as nearly worthless by most, even though we know by this CoCo video 
player demonstration that the real power hasn't even been touched...

Ah well.

-- Andrew L. Ayers, Glendale, Arizona

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