[Coco] New Coco software and hardware

Tue Apr 7 02:25:15 EDT 2015

Hi Vincent,
Welcome to the CoCo List!  I thought I'd let you know what I'm up to lately.  I'm raising funds to go to this year's CoCoFEST to be held at Heron Point Inn in Lombard, IL by making available several PCBs.  
I have completed receiving confirmed orders for an RGB2VGA Converter PCB that mates with an Altera DE-0 Nano FPGA development board to convert 15KHZ VGA/RGB video to the current 31KHZ VGA video.  I do plan on offering more in the near future.  Details about the design can be found at the following link.
<https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/rgb2vga>
I have been also offering a Wordpak2+ 15KHZ Video Display Controller that can work along with the RGB2VGA Converter to enable the Wordpak2+ to connect to modern VGA monitors giving the user the capability of getting 80x24 text screens out of the Coco 1 & Coco 2.  Though the RS-DOS/NitrOS-9 drivers for the WordPak2+ display 80x24 text screens only, drivers could be written by folks on this list to utilize the many text and graphic screen modes that the on-board Yamaha V9958 Video Display Generator chip on the Wordpak2+ has available.  Downloadable files can be found at the following link.  The Wordpak2p.zip file contains details and drivers for this card.  
<https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/dropbox>
I am also in the process of finalizing details for an 8-Chip 6809/6309 Single board Computer (SBC) I'm calling the Kipper SBC v1.  It is a great little PCB to begin learning 8-bit level microprocessor hardware interfacing.  
It has a 50-pin expansion connector implementing what I'm calling the Kipper Bus making it possible for the user to interface whatever they can imagine to the 6809/6309 microprocessors.  It is based on Grant Searle's 6 Chip 6809 Computer and has 3 memory maps instead of the original single memory map of the original design by Grant.  
The 1st memory map gives the user 32KB of static ram with the possibility of having 40KB of ram total and 1 RS-232 Serial I/O port with no further I/O expansion possible.  
I didn't like the limitations of this original memory map so I designed in with the help of a friend a 2nd memory map to have the I/O moved up to the $C000-$CFFF range from the original $A000-$BFFF range giving the user address space for up to 48KB of ram.  
The I/O range is reduced from 8KB to 4KB of memory address locations and the Serial port is further decoded to $C000-$C3FF giving 3KB of open addresses for the user to utilize for more I/O devices.  
The Eprom address space is reduced from 16KB to 12KB still giving plenty of space for the original on-board 6809 Extended Basic Interpreter Grant Searle provided which is a modification of Extended Color Basic straight from the Coco 2.  The original Extended Color Basic has been modified extensively since this is a minimal 8-chip 6809/6309 computer therefore the color graphics, Coco Keyboard, sound, joysticks, and cassette functions have been removed because the hardware for those functions don't exist on the Kipper SBC v1 PCB.  
The 3rd memory map is I think the most interesting and versatile since it opens up the entire 64KB of addressable memory space to be used however the user wishes turning the Kipper SBC v1 in the Kipper CPU Board v1.  For details on the original 6-chip 6809 computer the Kipper SBC is based on the design detailed in the following link.
<http://searle.hostei.com/grant/Multicomp/>
I'm hoping to at least have a demo of the Kipper SBC v1 operational at the CoCoFEST.
Here is a tentative rendering of the Front and Back of the PCB.
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/5xv266jjnxle11b/Kipper%20SBC%20v1%20-%20Front.png?dl=0>
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/2z3bvqbmufqroqg/Kipper%20SBC%20v1%20-%20Back.png?dl=0>
I'm also offering a 512KB Static Memory upgrade PCB for the Coco 3 which runs very cool giving the user a full 512KB of ram for NitrOS-9 (an upgrade to the original OS-9) with over 400KB of usable memory to work with.  Here is a rendering of the Front & back of the PCB.
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/sl69amixrb1k0y1/512KB%20Static%20Ram%20Memory%20Upgrade%20Final%20-%20Front.png?dl=0>
<https://www.dropbox.com/s/7v3icr1t3rf3dfb/512KB%20Static%20Ram%20Memory%20Upgrade%20Final%20-%20Back.png?dl=0>
The current order for the RGB2VGA converter is full and I'm completing work on the PCBs now.  
The Wordpak2+ PCBs are also in work at the moment as well.  
I'm accepting orders for the Kipper SBC v1 and the 512KB Static Memory upgrade PCBs now.  The prices are tentative at this point as I have not received any quotes from overseas PCB fabricators yet.  
If you have any questions, feel free to ask.  I hope to update my wiki page soon with full details on the Kipper SBC v1 and the 512KB Static Memory upgrade PCB. Take care my friend.

Kip Koon
computerdoc at sc.rr.com
http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Kip_Koon

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Vincent Tran
> Sent: Monday, April 06, 2015 2:22 PM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: [Coco] New Coco software and hardware
> 
> Hi all -- Can someone give me a list of all the latest hardware and
> software being developed by this group?  I've been trying to gobble up
> everything I can find for the Coco and just heard about Fahrfall.  I would
> love to get a copy of Fahrfall if they're not all sold at CocoFest - which
> I'm sure they will be.
> 
> Thanks,
> Vince
> 
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