[Coco] Becker port

[Bill Pierce]

Jim, for whatever intents and purposes, that's where the "Becker Port" originally started... Gary Becker's Coco3FPGA. Actually, it was the "Boisy/Becker Port" as Boisy did the DW work and Gary did the FPGA work (I think).
 
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: go4retro <go4retro at go4retro.com>
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Tue, Apr 23, 2019 5:51 am
Subject: Re: [Coco] Becker port

I think most people would refer to the 2 i/o registers as the “Becker port”.  If Gary is transforming an Fdc call into dw behind the scenes that is great and folks should grab that code but I would not call that the “Becker port”.

Jim

Jim



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On Apr 22, 2019, 11:04 PM -0500, Bill Pierce via Coco <coco at maltedmedia.com>, wrote:
> Jim, that's exactly what Gary Becker did with the Becker Port on the Coco3FPGA. Unless you use the "Becker Port" versions of NitrOS9 with the Coco3FPGA, the unit will use a standard DECB or OS-9 FDC driver, which the FPGA converts (in the background) to use DriveWire. No modification is needed to the OS as it thinks it's accessing the drive. Of course to use the other features of DriveWire, you need the Becker versions of the OS to access the virtual ports and such.
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: RETRO Innovations <go4retro at go4retro.com>
> To: apple2 <apple2 at markoverholser.com>; Mark D. Overholser <marko555.os2 at gmail.com>; CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Sent: Mon, Apr 22, 2019 9:16 pm
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Becker port
>
>     The Idea of the Becker Port has a lot of merit in the Hardware
>     realm..
>     Each of the above Hardware devices plus other USB devices like the
>     FTDI
>     chips...
>
>   I disagree.
>
>   With the CPLD/Arduino/etc. functionality that would be required to
>   integrate an ESP8266 or some other peripheral to $ff41/42, one can just
>   as easily implement enough of the 6551 register set to emulate the
>   RS232, or implement enough of the WD1773 to emulate the FDC, etc.  In
>   fact, if you added emulation for those two items, you would have a
>   piece of HW that supported the interface of your choice without needing
>   a custom or patched OS.  Both options require the same amount of
>   hardware, and the latter offers more compatibility (and can do
>   drivewire on the back end, if you want/need that).
>
>   Jim
>
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