[Coco] MCC-216

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Jan 2, 2013 at 9:06 PM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Jan 2, 2013, at 8:04 PM, Frank Pittel <fwp at deepthought.com> wrote:
>>> Other than potential mysteries inside the GIME (if there are any), hardware emulation of a CoCo via FPGA seems like the best best, but if it cannot use true CoCo hardware, it might as well be a small X86 box running MESS.
>>
>> There was a time I would have agreed with you. Then I got the DE1 board and got the coco3fpga image. For me it feels like a real coco3. I can't
>> explain why exactly but it's an order of magnitude better then an emulator running on a PC.
>
> Maybe I am not coming across correctly, but it sounds like you and I are on the same page. That DE1 was a CoCo, sans having a real CoCO keyboard, joysticks, etc. which would be trivial so ad, I would think. Some I/O lines, analog input.  I plan to see what all I can simulate using an Arduino from RadioShack, even.
>

Gary made a few I/O boards that added real joystick ports, a
bitbanger/rs232 port and some other hardware.  They plug into the I/O
connection on the DE-1.  I imagine a keyboard would be doable somehow.

The DE-1 + CoCo3FPGA really is everything in a "new CoCo" that I ever
wanted, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit.  It is unfortunate that the
board is now out of production.  However I believe much of Gary's work
could be used on other boards, even if there isn't a great option out
right now.  Maybe another low cost dev board will come out.

One thing that comes to mind is that an "I/O board" that gives
joystick, kb, maybe even cartridge/bus connector is less useful if
tied to a particular board.   If one could be designed to use a
standard interface then perhaps it could work with lots of hardware.
There is SPI on lots of things, including the Raspberry Pi.  Or if USB
could be used, perhaps such an I/O board could even be used with PC
emulators.  I'm not a hardware guy so maybe it isn't practical, but
having the peripheral I/O on a standard type of thing seems to open
many doors if it is possible.