[Coco] Coco interfacing, running a coco from 12 volts and more.

[Andrew]

Check December 1986 - February 1987 of the Rainbow magazine - it's a 3 
part series called "CoCo ROS" (Robot Operating System) by Dennis H. 
Weide; it uses two 8255 PIAs, a 74LS32 and a 74LS00 to interface with 
the ROM port, plus some 74LS244 octal buffers between the 8255's and the 
"outside world" for interfacing. The article series shows how to hood up 
to relays and transistors, etc; as well as programming it. The author 
apparently used it to control the motors in a Robotix toy (construction 
kit).

Another possibility is to interface the microcontroller via the 
bit-banger serial port or via an RS-232 cartridge - not quite the same, 
but could be a powerful combination...

Good luck, hope this helps!

-- Andrew L. Ayers, Glendale, Arizona


> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 6 Feb 2012 19:42:51 -0500 (EST)
> From: haywire666 at aol.com
> Subject: [Coco] Coco interfacing, running a coco from 12 volts and
> 	more.
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Message-ID:<8CEB3488E6E48EA-C30-22FFB at webmail-m070.sysops.aol.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> I'm new to this mailing list. I used cocos for ages back in the day, ages past everyone else moving on too.
>
>
> Lately, I've been working on a mobile robot project of sorts. I was going to use a micro controller for controlling it but I
> remembered how great the analog inputs (joystick ports) were for sensors and things like that and I decided to try and use a coco.
>
>
> I got some old cocos I saved out of some bins in my basement, but so far things have progressed very slowly.
>
>
> I need info on using pia chips to get digital i/o lines in and out of the coco. After goggling for ages, I found very little on the subject of
> interfacing with a coco, which is a shame, I'm sure I remember tons of projects like that in rainbow and other coco magazines.
>
>
> I also need info on running a coco3 from 12 volts. Right now I'm using a voltage inverter and its terribly inefficient. I'm sure running direct from the
> 12 volt gell cell would add tons of run time.  Right now the battery gets drained pretty quick!
>
>
> If anyone has any old magazine articles that they could scan, or can give me ANY info on these things I would sincerely appreciate it.
>
>
> If I don't find the info I need I will have to use a microcontroller I guess, but I would REALLY love using a coco for this.