[Coco] FPGA the future of coco?

[camillus.b.58 at gmail.com]

Hi, to all coco enthusiasts, and specially to the FPGA guru’s among them.


I have a question or maybe a suggestion, in the aim of preserve the old coco’s I,II,II and as an idea toward a coco IV.


Many ideas are brought forward to make  a new coco, with better performance, better video ( High Res and VGA) and also with more and faster Memory.


Now  I’m not a genius with electronics and have no experience with FPGA then what I red in books, I do wonder what the possibility is to make a FPGA that combine all the things we need. I was thinking if it would be possible, affordable and doable, to have a FPGA programmed to emulate the following items: 


1 or more Extra cpu cores Hitachi or Motorola


All needed RAM 1,2,3,4,5 Meg and Higher 


VGA for LCD support with all modes Coco Modes, 800x600, 1024*724, etc.


sound chips for better( Hi FI and (cd quality )performance 


Ethernet, wireless, USB, Parallel IO, Serial IO, I2c, Can, etc.


Ps2 keyboard, pc compatible Joysticks, touch screen support


SD card, SSD, SATA HD 



This is what I could think of right now. I know it would maybe better to design a complete new computer, but I think that would make the older coco more obsolete. Adding this features in the form of a FPGA would keep the coco alive and more suitable to run along with the modern IT age.


There are many tech among you who can do this with each taking a part of the development for this project.

One or two coordinators to   guide the project could follow up this team. Others who have not so much brains to do tech stuff, can help in writing manuals, maybe imputing code, or if they have a pc they can give computer time and storage in a client/server/cluster way. 


I also know that this can cost money, but I'm willing to spend $25/ month to sponsor this, if just 100 people can do the same we would have $3000 in a year.


I would like to open a think tank ( Google or Facebook group ) for those who would like to participate in this, and do serious thinking about a project like this. 


There are great minds out there who already developed parts of the features in the list above, so now it is just a matter of working together.  Also for the commercial developers like cloud9 and others, there can be participation, in that what would be doable to integrate in the FPGA or making external plug in devices, so there is some gain in this for the ones that develop for living.  What I mean by this is that if it would be easier to design a SD-Card  controller then having more cost to implement this in a FPGA then the favor goes to the controller. The user has to purchase this option then by himself.


If there is already a group with same thoughts then I would like to hear from it. I also know that Mr. Becker had a project in mind but could not found the sources for it, but that was a complete new FPGA based design I thought.    



Hope someone can see something in this and start thinking….LOL


Camillus Blockx  ( please when reply, send cc to my email:   Camillus.b.58 at gmail.com with subject “CocoFpgaThoughts”   ( at = @ )


Thank you all





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