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

[Mark McDougall]

On 9/02/2017 5:35 AM, RETRO Innovations wrote:

> Is there a reason no one has created a specific HW platform for the
> Coco3FPGA?

Seems everyone has forgotten Gary's ill-fated Coco-X Kickstarter 
campaign that raised just %12 of its goal.

Personally, I believe the Coco community isn't quite at the critical 
mass required to support such a costly development. You need to consider 
the size of the entire community, then eliminate all those that either 
aren't interested in, or can't afford, a new platform - not to mention 
those that want different or extra features, so decide not to buy in.

There's also only a handful of people within the Coco community in the 
position to take on such a project. And they're already busy pursuing 
their own developments; Gary w/Coco3FPGA and Roger w/Coco-On-A-Chip. We 
know there are other capable hardware engineers amongst us, but how many 
FPGA developers?

I was actually involved in a project several years ago to develop an 
FPGA-based Coco3 replacement motherboard. Three of us were about half 
way through the schematic entry when the driving force behind it very 
sadly passed away way too early.

The TerASIC DE1/2 isn't a bad board, but somewhat dated now. As Bill 
suggested, the MiST is a popular alternative, and supports over 40 
retro-computer/arcade game cores. Although it lacks flash and SRAM the 
main advantages are an external MCU for I/O (including SD card access) 
and a USB host controller. It also has a larger FPGA than the DE1 (the 
same one as DE2).

I've been tempted to buy one in the past but can't justify the expense 
when I already have about a half-dozen FPGA development platforms, 
including a DE1 with the Coco3FPGA Analogue board. If I did end up 
getting one, I'd port my TRS-80 Model I/III and Coco2 cores to it 
immediately! ;)

Regards,

-- 
Mark McDougall
<http://retroports.blogspot.com.au>