[Coco] Including an SSC (was: CocoSDC)

[Al Hartman]

As has been explained, making any changes to the board will require drawing 
up a new board, prototyping and testing it. Delaying OUR CocoSDCs for a 
month or more.

I don't want that functionality, and don't see the need to make us wait for 
it.

It sounds reasonable to you. but it's not what I want, and I'm sure many 
others don't want it either.

If you want to get together with a hardware designer and design a super 
cartridge for the Coco. Go do that. But don't hold the rest of us up.

Implementing a new sound spec sounds like a good idea until one realizes 
that most of the games for the Coco have already been written, new games are 
not being written to any great degree, and even adding a new sound 
capability is not going to get people to write new games.

Nobody is going to go back to re-write/update old games to use a new sound 
card.

I just don't see the point right now.

-[ Al ]-

-----Original Message----- 
From: Nick Marentes

The CoCo has always been seen as having a limitation in the sound
department. Many have said that the CoCo should have had a sound chip.

The SSC accomplishes that at the expense of the requirement to have a
multipak and the resultant kludge of hardware tacked on making the CoCo
look "unprofessional" to many.

The other problem with the SCC is that it was always an extra which few
owned and therefore few programs supported and fewer fully utilized to
it's maximum potential.

The sample playback system I mentioned can create vastly better sound
with *no* CPU overhead.

But, implementing it on the SDC should only be done if it is easy enough
to add anexpansion header to the design to allow for this future
expansion option.

I know there are people there who have no interest in sound and games in
general but the header opens the door to other expansion options such as
RS-232 boards, real-time clock, and maybe even a USB interface.

But without a header for expansion, the buck stops there.

Nick


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