[Coco] 1 or 2 meg upgrade

[Nick Marentes]

I'm must say that I'm in agreement with Aaron... "512K should be enough 
for anyone!".   :)

But I do understand that OS-9, being a "real OS", can work better with more.

Having said that, I don't necessarily think that is a good thing. We all 
use to complain how Windows was a memory hog and nothing but "bloatware" 
but here with OS-9, we turn our heads and say that it's good.

I'm interested efficiency and that is an area I have high praise for so 
when I hear that 1Mb is great having more video display space or that 
one can run more text editors and load more drivers, my mind starts to 
spin and I start asking why? Is OS-9 that inefficient?

I personally don't feel one needs more than 512K on a CoCo but I do 
understand that OS-9 could use it. Then again, I don't see OS-9 as being 
a part of the CoCo (my opinion). The CoCo is just another 6809 based 
platform for running this OS.

It was designed for engineers and embedded applications. But as a 
mainstream level OS running multiple general user applications,  it 
really seems to me like a multitasking version of CP/M with the DOS 
level complexity of old Unix.

Not a bad thing if you're into that (and I suspect many on this list 
are) but for an application developer developing commercial grade 
applications (me), it doesn't spur my creative interest.

Having said all this, even though I said I can't really see a use for 
more than 512K on the CoCo, if 1/2Mb could be done easily, it would be a 
nice novelty for CoCo users and certainly great for the dedicated OS-9 
users.

Just a technical sidenote (will someone yank this guy off the air!), 
couldn't 1Mb be used as 2 x 512K memory banks and using a spare bit 
somewhere to switch between the two? What about the unused bit on the 
RGB port?

Nick