[Coco] Just a thought

[Hugo Dufort]

There was a point in the History of personal computers where all the 
major companies making computers based on Motorola 68--- chips could 
have started working together and come up with some common architecture 
for peripherals, coprocessors and formats. Amiga and Atari couldn't 
manage to work together and were bitter enemies. Tandy abandoned the 
Morotola architecture to switch to Intel, and trying to offer PCjr clones.

But imagine for a moment that these companies (Amiga, Tandy, Atari) 
start working together, developing a common "M68000 compatible" 
platform. Tandy could have offered a Coco3 backwards compatibility mode 
through some 6809 expansion card that you switch on and off, for 
instance. Program packs are quickly phased out, although some 
third-party company sells an adapter for the Coco4/Tandy68+ computer 
line. Eventually OS9 could have imposed itself, merging with AmigaOS, 
keeping the best of both worlds and becoming the dominant OS for the 
68000 line of processors. Eventually, sales figures help Motorola 
develop the next-generation PowerPC chip that dominates a domestic 
market where Intel/IBM struggles with failing sales figures... and where 
Apple is just another "Motorola compatible" PC maker. :p
And generations of programmers are happy because you know, Motorola 
chips are really, really nice!


Hugo

Le 2015-03-26 15:38, Bill Pierce via Coco a écrit :
> This turned into a Coco4 thread long before anyone answered the original question...
>
> I think the original question was NOT what you wanted in a Coco4, but what would a Coco have looked like had TANDY continued to make it until now....
>
> Personally, I think it would have looked like year before last's PC model as Tandy was always 2 years behind because they spent half the developement time trying to shave costs and by the time they released it, it was 2 years too late. It's one of the MANY reasons their computer department eventually failed.
>
> It would still have floppy drives and IDE hard drives. An SD card reader would be in the works but not yet released until they shaved the costs down some more (ETA 2 years). SATA drives would be on hold until they could update the Tandy 10,000 to SATA first.
>
> It would still boot up in 32X16 and have the old MS BASIC (copyright still in place).
> The new Super HiRes Graphics would be accessable from BASIC via the Microsoft patch to the Linux patch to the Microware patch to the Microsoft BASCI roms.
>
> The 6809 support would be on a PCI card only available from special order and not in the catalog even though the ads for The "Super Coco" say it's 100% backwards compatable. The 6809 card would actually have a 6309 on board but not officially supported by Tandy.
> Graphics would be handled by the "GIMEYCC" (Gimme Your Credit Card) chip.
>   
>
> Bill Pierce
> "Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
>   
>
> My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
> https://sites.google.com/site/dabarnstudio/
> Co-Contributor, Co-Editor for CocoPedia
> http://www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
> E-Mail: ooogalapasooo at aol.com
>
>
>   
>


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