[Coco] The Coco3FPGA - Bringing the Color Computer 3 into the new Millenium!

[Ron Klein]

Hi Frank,

I used to think the same thing (real Coco 3 vs CoCo3FPGA) as far as the
real hardware being a bit less expensive.  I can tell you, at least for me,
it's not the case.

I'm just using some price examples here:

Coco 3 (128K)   $100
Triad 512K RAM   $50
Ed's 2 slot MPI  $80
Orchestra 90 cartridge   $35
RGB to VGA solution (various available)    $100

If you don't want to add for a CoCoSDC (as comparible to the SD card slot
on the CoCo3FPGA), Drivewire will save you a bunch so I'm not including a
storage device cost.
If you are a NitrOS9/OS-9 person, the extra RAM on the Analog board can't
easily be matched for a real Coco 3, though I think there's discussions
about Ed or possibly Jayeson offering something in the future.

When going the CoCo3FPGA route, everything is new.  Thanks to Cloud-9, Ed
and others you can get most hardware new when using a real Coco 3 ((other
than the Coco 3 itself) so that's a plus.  In the end, going either route
is expensive and I don't see any significant savings from one over the
other.  There are always exceptions with great deals, but those are not
always easy to come by.

The most important thing to me is the fact that there are many options now
for using a Coco and I think that's a good thing!

-Ron




On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 6:09 AM, Francis Swygert <farna at att.net> wrote:

> The only issue with the CoCo FPGA is the relatively high cost. It's
> $250-300 (with the expansion board), and no case, PS, keyboard, etc. Of
> course those don't add much to cost. There are a few advantages over a real
> CoCo3, but you can get a CoCo3 setup for about the same, many times
> cheaper. Getting it on the currently produced DE2 will be a help though.
> The site posted has DE-1s available for $150 though...Terasic - DE Main
> Boards - Cyclone - Altera DE1 Board
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> Terasic - DE Main Boards - Cyclone - Altera DE1 Board
>  By Terasic Technologies - Cyclone II EP2C20F484 with ~20,000 LEs - 8MB
> SDRAM, 512K SRAM, and 4MB Flash - Audio/Video interface, RS232,...  |   |
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>  The emulated version is more a complementary item than a competitor. I
> would like to see a canned version on an SD card that boots off the card
> right into CoCo mode... or a menu that has the different CoCo models to
> select before booting. A Live version on SD card would function at a
> reasonable speed on most modern computers, might need to directly install
> on an old system.
>
> The only thing I'd really like to see is parallel development of the two
> as far as any enhanced capabilities. I could see the hardware FPGA version
> taking the lead here, as there are more limitations in hardware than in
> emulation. I think you can emulate just about any enhanced feature you can
> think of, as long as it's in the capabilities of a modern computer. Might
> need a newish computer to do it is all. Enhanced features on one that
> aren't on the other will cause a split in software, something a small
> community doesn't need.
>
>
> Frank Swygert
>  Fix-It-Frank Handyman Service
>  803-604-6548
>
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