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From: jejones@mcrware.UUCP (James Jones)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.m6809
Subject: Re: Future of Coco
Message-ID: <567@mcrware.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Nov-87 19:47:45 EST
Article-I.D.: mcrware.567
Posted: Sat Nov 21 19:47:45 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 23-Nov-87 05:24:27 EST
References: <821@cblpf.ATT.COM>
Distribution: na
Organization: Microware Systems Corp., Des Moines, Ia.
Lines: 36
Keywords: Coco OS9
Summary: Some of those things can be done now...

----------------------------
Some of the things Mike King mentions can be done now.

(To avoid all uncertainty--all that follows are my personal opinions,
which have nothing to do with any opinion held by any organization.
Indeed, I know nothing of any opinion held by any organization.)

The stock floppy device driver in OS-9/6809 Level II for the CoCo 3
looks at the device descriptors, so that you can use 80 track drives. 
(I use them myself on Imogene III [if Jerry Pournelle can name his
computers, then so can I :-].  The trick is getting the first bootable
80-track disk.)

The CoCo's I/O deficiencies are being made up for by third-party sources.
Sardis Technologies, and according to a RAINBOW article, soon Disto, now
make reasonable floppy disk controllers.  Real-time clocks and parallel
ports can be had from various sources, as can serial ports that aren't
Henny Youngman fodder. 

I doubt that I would think it worth extending the 6809 the way whatever
the heck that MPU in the Apple IIgs is an extended 6502.  (I *do*, though,
wish that I could run one of those Hitachi 3MHz 6809s at 3MHz in my CoCo.)
I'd either go to a 680x0 (or maybe *add* a 680x0) or improve the GIME. 
By "improve" I would mean allow for more than 512K, use a reasonable unit
of allocation as opposed to 8K, and allow more bits per RGB component. 
I wouldn't *mind* more palette registers, but if I had to choose, I'd
want more colors to pick my 16 from.  (Display a few GIF files and
you'll see what I mean.)

Physically, I agree with you--the sooner the MPI goes, the more I'll
like it.  There are third-party boxes like Hemphill's or the QT CoCo,
but the problem with them is that I might want to use something like,
say, a Speech Systems MIDI port (if they'd just write OS-9-based
software for it)--can I plug that into a QT CoCo?

		462DUMHOUmpl