[Coco] The next coco3.....wish list

[Nick Marentes]

On 5/10/2014 10:54 AM, George Ramsower wrote:
>  I think that is basically what I was saying when I began this thread. 
> Just a Coco3 with improved video for a modern monitor and a faster 
> clock speed. It would have the expansion slot and the ports originally 
> provided on the Coco.
>
>  Just a basic Coco3 on a new platform with faster clock speed.
>

Even recreating the GIME chip and all it's functionality is a big 
project with the best way to undertake this would be using an FPGA. And 
since an FPGA is software programmable hardware, adding features to go 
beyond a CoCo3 would then be easy('er).

But wait a minute! That's what the CoCo3FPGA project is! Your wish has 
been answered!

Now go buy a DE-1 FPGA board, download the CoCo3 core and you're set. 
That's what I did and have a 25Mhz CoCo3 with extra color capability too.

Seriously, it sounds that all you need is a CoCo3 (from Ebay) and one of 
the scandoubler circuits out there now. Add the CoCoSDC and you can 
ditch the floppy drives and use SD cards and Drivewire (I did and have 
never looked back).

All that you can't get is more speed because of the way the 6809 is tied 
in with the GIME chip timings although upgrading to a 6309 will give you 
a bit more with improved instruction execution speed (Nitros9).

Nick

Nick