[Coco] General question for the fpga guru's out there

[Frank Swygert]

Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2013 12:47:35 +1100
From: Mark McDougall<msmcdoug at iinet.net.au>

The Minimig (Amiga), OCM (MSX) & Zet (8086 PC) (as well as a few 
lesser-known) projects all target the DE1 board, so it's going to remain 
popular for a while yet. The DE1 has been superceded by boards with 
larger devices; it's a pity because it was unique in that it had 24-bit 
VGA, Flash, SRAM, SDRAM and SD slot. It also had two 40-pin IDE 
expansion connectors which, whilst not strictly 5V tolerant - could be 
used to interface to custom peripherals.
> The companies thatmake these boards are in the business
> of making and selling FPGA?s.

Agreed, they're simply not that interested in moving eval boards. The
revenue would even register as a blip on the radar - they may even be making
a slight loss.


I've mentioned this before; my colleague & I were working on a Coco
motherboard replacement project before rather sad circumstances drew that to
a close. However, if I ever found myself with enough spare time, I'd
certainly like to resurrect it. The emphasis would be on providing an
enhanced Coco experience with full legacy peripheral connectivity, and a
drop-in replacement for a Coco motherboard. It wouldn't be cheap, but it'd
be cool! Of course, I make no promises and it could well be 5 years away -
if ever.
----------------------------------

Why not make a board that is a bit more generic than the CoCo, but optimized for computer emulation. Something similar to the DE-1, but optimized with the right I/O and support for most classic computers. You wouldn't need two 40 pin expansion connectors (something more like the GPIO connector on the RPi and Arduino boards), one programmable for whatever should be fine -- maybe a few more pins (44 is more common as far as connector availability). Then SD card, serial and/or USB connectors (could be USB connectors, programmable through the FPGA for serial/joystick/USB -- would just need to make cables/adapters for serial/joystick). You might have a market for a generic computer emulation board whereas a CoCo specific market would be small. I'd think that a generic emulation targeted board would be good as a general FPGA experimenters board as well, though a board designed as an accessory board, maybe with just power and a couple GPIO headers so it can link to the emulator board through the single GPIO header as a programmable expansion unit, would be a good product as well. That one could be used for anything!

-- 
Frank Swygert
Editor - American Motors Cars Magazine
www.amc-mag.com