[Coco] Multi Pack Replacement

[RETRO Innovations]

On 2/23/2015 12:08 AM, Mark McDougall wrote:
> On 23/02/2015 4:47 PM, RETRO Innovations wrote:
>
>> The problem with your current design is that it's so ambitious.  8
>> slots, tons of embedded functionality, it's hard to get comfortable with
>> the sheer amount of complexity.
>
> It does sound like an expensive design for the functionality you get. 
> As Jim mentioned, you have more-than-modest I/O requirements.
>
> Also questioning why you'd need four physical ports once you've got 
> the floppy and HDC on board... most/all ROMPAK's can be loaded from 
> disk/SDC so I see the usefulness only for non-ROM/proprietary/tinkerer 
> PCB's of which you'd only need one or two!?!
>
> Regards,
>
I'd recommend an "expansion" connector on a 4 port unit that can 
accomodate a daughterboard that has lots (or some) goodies on it. That 
way, the initial simplistic design can be debugged, etc.

Also, as I look at the MPI design, and the Coco design in general, I'm 
wondering if the MPI "slot" needs to mutate into a "meta slot", allowing 
multiple slots to be active when 1 meta-slot is selected. By configuring 
the MPI to enable or disable certain slots when an MPI "meta slot" is 
selected, one would not need to scan the MPI slot bank all the time.  It 
also allows there to be dozens of "slots", some physical (with card edge 
connectors) and some virtual (built into the board or available via a 
daughtercard like noted above). It looks like most Coco items don't 
overlap in the address space, so most should play nicely if there were 
enabled all the time (like a Y cable).

Thoughts?

Jim

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