[Coco] CoCo monstrosity |was: [OT] Atari 8-bit video card

[John Donaldson]

IMHO, I wonder if a GIME replacement would not be the best thing. it 
would involve having a daughter board approach. where some kind of 
adapter that plugs into the GIME socket and the new chip on a daughter 
board then installs. I am sure that most if not all of the GIME 
functions have been reversed engineered by now. Say a VGA controller 
with on-board video ram that would allow more colors and such. The ram 
on the COCO3 would then be freed up for programming.

John Donaldson
On 6/17/2013 1:52 PM, Steve wrote:
> On 6/17/2013 10:15 AM, Mike Pepe wrote:
>> In theory someone could make a bridge between the CoCo and a PCI-E 
>> slot and you could command a modern video card with the CoCo driving 
>> a modern monitor. It would be an interesting experiment, albeit 
>> something that's probably not at all practical. -Mike
>
> It's just not practical, but shouldn't even be talk about since it 
> could never be made to work.
>
> I've seen some dream-up "pie in the sky" "theories" on stuff to 
> interface a coco to, but this one takes the cake.
>
> It really begs the question, if your CoCo is not doing that you want 
> than why don't you get a computer that does it already?
>
> The CoCo was great back in its day, but that was 25 years ago. 
> Computers have come a long way baby!
>
> I must have Designed/Built/Owned about 250 computers by now.  Only 
> about 8 of those have been types of cocos.  Maybe that's why I'm 
> unwilling to put so much time and $$$ into making the CoCo do things 
> that other computer can easily do because of their more modern design.
>
> CoCo emulators, Floppy Disk drive emulators, FPGA-based Cocos and 
> Driver servers like DriveWire are good additions for CoCo users trying 
> to keep their hobby alive.  But if you want to do more than the limits 
> of a CoCo , there lots of good (and cheap) micro-controllers and 
> computers out there.  (Think Picaxe, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and old PC 
> to name a few.)
>
> I'm not saying to not try and push the limits of the CoCo.  Just don't 
> waste time and money turning a beloved CoCo into a Frankenstein 
> Monster that no one would want to play with.
>
> Steve
>
>
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>