6 Sep
2002
6 Sep
'02
8:04 a.m.
Roger Merchberger wrote:
I had forgot about them.
Define "real" -- Admittedly, the CoCo1's
chicklet keyboard sucked
bigtime, but The CoCo2/3's keyboard is as good as anything made
nowadays... (that's why the newest keyboard I use on any PeeCee is an
IBM "klackety" keyboard from '84 or so... and wouldn't mind having an
interface for these on my CoCo...) and although they were a little
harder to upgrade than today's machines, they were easier to hack &
interface to. Sure, they weren't on par to the minis & mainframes of the
same timeframe, but that's true today; and it was still a very capable,
affordable & expandable computer in it's own right.
Not really a general purpose computer more like the game console box of today.
The C64/Coco/Apple was the quick and simple computer - 8k rom - 64k D-ram
and a graphics chip and CPU. It was the cost cutting that got ya like none of
the common 8 bit computers had a serial port. Even the AT was too cheap to
drive the IRQ open collector.
[whew... just had to get that out of the way;
6809's being my favorite &
all... ;-) ]
That was a toss up for me between the 6809 and the PDP-8. Needless to
say I
working a 12/24 bit CPU that reminds you of the 6809.
http://www.jetnet.ab.ca/users/bfranchuk/index.html
Nobody in the
USA made a nice 6809 machine.
Huh? That's where I beg to differ with you! I *lusted* over the ads in
HotCoCo & Rainbow mags for the Chieftain (methinks... weren't many of
those ads), and even more so, the Gimix... The Gimix was one *bitchin'*
box - ran OS-9 level 2 (wasn't there a level 3 for that?), it could take
512K of RAM if you wanted it to, and this was by '83 or '84... It truly
was a mini, as it was designed to run multiuser apps on multiple
terminals with no problem... I dunno if they ever made a video card for
it.... No, it couldn't - it was a flat memory space.
However, with the right
SAM, bank switching was available & with some "creative memory
accounting" it worked quite well, especially with OS-9.
I suspect one could
decode the opcodes since you get instruction fetch
information with the 6809..
That's my story, and I'm stickin' to
it...
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
Mind you with fast ram now days and programable logic a nice OS-9
machine could be built. Finding a fast 6809 chip is the problem.
Boy I wish OS-9 was open source.