[Coco] The Tri-Annual CoCo 4 Thread

[Al Hartman]

Every 8-Bit computer "failed" as technology passed them by. There was no 
engineering problem with the Coco 3 I'm aware of that affected its sales.

No information on how to program the Coco 3 is being lost. I still have all 
the books I used to have. Most of them have been scanned and are available 
from various places on the web.

There are no "blueprints" for a Coco 3 to be lost. The schematics are in the 
service manual that has been scanned in and is available on the web.

I want disk drives on my Coco. They are not that rare. There are several on 
eBay at any given time. You can use 5.25" or 3.5" drives. I think most CoCo 
users ought to have at least one drive to read in old floppies. After that, 
DW works just as well for most needs.

The Coco 4 you specify already exists. It's called a PC.

I would like a Coco 3 replica like the Replica I Apple I clone from Briel 
Computers. I would like it to have a cartridge slot I can attach a disk 
controller to if I choose. Once a Coco 3 clone is built and debugged, it 
could then be enhanced into a Coco 4. A Coco 4 doesn't need to run Linux or 
any other PC operating system. It needs to run OS-9/NitrOS-9, and DECB 
either natively or in Coco 3 Emulation. If you want a PC, go buy a PC.

I'd just like hardware to replace my aging Coco 3 which will become useless 
when the keyboard finally dies. At that point, either I buy Cloud 9's 
Keyboard interface, or hope to buy another that still works.

-[ Al ]-

-----Original Message----- 
From: Michael Robinson

The COCO 3 failed commercially because of an engineering problem if I'm
not mistaken.  The mistake made the COCO 3 too costly for Tandy.  A COCO
4 needs to get around that engineering issue to be a viable and
successful machine.

The biggest problem I see for the COCO, information on how to program
them is being lost.  Another concern, didn't Radio Shack destroy the
COCO 3 blueprints a long time ago?

Products that seem to be non existent that are badly needed are kindle
editions of programming extended color basic.  People will probably want
to program in assembly, Pascal, C, C++, etcetera on a COCO 4 as well.

Color computer disk drives are becoming rare and old 5 1/4" floppy disks
aren't the most reliable anyways, yet outfits like Cloud 9 still insist
on people having a disk drive.

The color computer was the people's computer and compared to the IBM XT
and early IBM AT, easier to program.  The assembly language of the COCO
is more popular I understand than the assembly language used by XT's and
IA32 machines.

A COCO 4 should in theory run: Linux, Syllable, MenuetOS, and ReactOS.
This means 32 bit is a requirement and direct memory access hardware
as well as memory protection hardware are a must.  The COCO 4 should
have a gigabyte of ram minimum and run at up to a gigaherz minimum.
In the era of multicore computing, one could embed the 6809 and the GIME
chip as a single core and add hardware support for emulation.  For that
matter, one could experiment with adding a Commodore core as well since
the Commodore had excellent sprite support.  In addition to a single 8
bit ISA style expansion port, a 32 bit COCO 4 should probably have 32
bit PCI slots, (though a slot that won't take standard PCI cards is
probably in order).  Things that were primitive or non existent on the
COCO 3: multi channel surround sound, sprites, direct memory access, a
multi port expansion bus with a sophisticated interrupt system...  A
COCO 4 needs to be able to slow down to COCO 3 speeds.  For downward
compatibility, support for coco 3 compatible rom paks is needed.  The
biggest challenge is going to be developing the OS for a COCO 4.


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