[Coco] CoCo versus the rest of them

[Nick Marentes]

(I just had to rename the subject line to bring it more in line what 
this thread was becoming)

One thing we can all agree on is that Drivewire and Roger's drive pack 
are landmark products for the CoCo that can make the outside observer to 
our community take notice.

I use Drivewire exclusively for my development work, not having powered 
up my floppy drives in months. I haven't used Roger's IDE but those that 
prefer the conveniences of a PC development environment, is also a 
developers dream.

I recall 15 years ago having a Drivewire like device for my Atari 800 
called APE. It connected the Atari to the PC via it's SIO interface and 
as far as the Atari was concerned, it was talking to another real Atari 
disk drive, fully compatible too, no problems with tricky loaders. It's 
progressed since those days with even more features. For those that are 
interested:
http://www.atarimax.com/

Of course, the Commodore 64 is well ahead of the CoCo in being 
redesigned into a single chip. In essence, the Commodore 64 is still 
being sold as a product built in to a joystick with pre-loaded games. 
The hackers of that community have wasted no time to take one of these 
apart and tap into it providing disk drives and peripheral access just 
like a fully blown 64. For those that are interested:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C64_Direct-to-TV

And for anyone who wants to buy a "real" Commodore 64, there is this:
http://www.commodoreusa.net/CUSA_C64.aspx

Let's not even talk of where the Amiga is going! My 2nd favourite 
computer! With the new AmigaOS 4.2 and a return to some innovation that 
the retro enthusiast will love:
http://a-eon.com/

But with all these things happening on the other side of the wall, I 
still prefer my CoCo3 (Not CoCo1/2, crap graphics I'm afraid... no, really!)

Of course as everyone knows, my main interest is games. I don't play 
them, I just like coding them...it's creative. Let's face it, if it 
weren't for games, computers would not have evolved as they have or been 
taken up by more than the tech gurus and spreadsheet junkies?     :)

As everyone here knows, I am trying to encourage the development of a 
retro programming scene for games on the CoCo. No guarantees that I'll 
succeed but as they say, actions are greater than just words.  :)

(Off my soapbox... again!)

Nick Marentes
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/nickma/GamesWorkshop/