A New Coco Fujinet Part 2 - State Machine Madness
Timing is everything, and weird timing situations make everything wonky! Come along as we investigate signals and timing to ensure our cartridge rom emulator and I/O ports work properly.
The New England Classic Gaming Meetup
I've found this nifty little retro group that meets a few towns south from me! Come along as I walk through the event—and feel free to come by for the next one!
A New CoCo Fujinet Part 1 - Grokking the RP2040 PIO
In this episode, I'm finally getting started with the full-bus version of the CoCo FujiNet device! This initial foray goes into one of the most potent aspects of the RP2040—the programmable input/output blocks.
USB to CoCo Keyboard Adapter Part 3 : The Second Draft
Let's get that keyboard adapter working! By the end of this video, we should have a fully functioning USB keyboard interface for the CoCo. Feature completion should just be some software away!
Fixing Bugs and Adding Signs
In this installment of the Forth ROM Project, we'll be fixing a long-standing bug, adding signed arithmetic and display, and adding some quality of life issues as well. There are even hints of double-cell numbers!
Do Graphics Stuff for the CoCo (Somewhat) Easily!
There's been work in the CoCo community to make semigraphics modes almost as easy to use as regular graphics modes in Extended Color Basic. I wanted to play with that, as well as play with ways to easily get graphics data created on a modern PC and transferable to the CoCo relatively easily. And the best part: all the tools I use are free!
USB to CoCo Keyboard Adapter Part 2: The Fabbing
It's time to fab up a prototype for the USB to CoCo keyboard adapter. This will involve reverse-engineering the schematic from the breadboard, laying out a printed circuit board, making a lot of mistakes, and hopefully getting something that works!
USB to CoCo Keyboard Adapter Part 1: The Breadboarding
I've wanted to be able to use a commodity keyboard with my CoCo for a while now. Well, it looks like I may finally be able to!
Burning the Forth Rom
Happy SepTandy everyone! For the 2024 celebrations, the Forth ROM is going into real hardware!
Strings And Things
In this episode, we implement the immediate mode string handling and string handling support words. We're getting closer to having all the immediate mode words in the dictionary!
Constants! Variables! Memory! Ha-ah-ah!
The Forth ROM is coming along quite nicely! This time we build out the functionality for variables, constants, and arbitrary data memory allocation.
Composite Mod Marble Deployment
Follow along as I reverse engineer (ish) the old Mark Data Products Universal Video Driver. As usual, mistakes are made!
I Love Writing Error Messages!
Finally! Error messages that function, and a mechanism that can allow for proper error trapping when we get to that point! And as a bonus, it looks like all things scrolling are COMPLETELY FIXED!!!
Fujinet Build Take Two: It Works
Join me in another hardware project! I've put together a Rev000 FujiNet, including flashing the ESP32 and burning the EPROM. This time IT WORKS!
Fujinet Build: Mistakes Were Made
Join me in a hardware project! I've put together a FujiNet, including flashing the ESP32. It should work—but I must've done something wrong somewhere.
Arithmetic and Printing Results
Join me as I fumble my way through manual calculations, discover issues with stack corruption, and even get startled by my phone (again)! By the end of it, though, we've got a working (but very minimal) implementation!
Input Makes Stuff Happen Now!
Gads, this took longer than I thought it would… But you'd think I'd've learned my lesson by now! The first few words of our Forth implementation are in place, numbers are accepted in (hopefully) every base from 2 to 36, and the OS can tell the difference and work with them!
We Can Enter Text Now!
Oh my goodness, but this one took forever! In the third part of building a custom OS ROM for the TRS-80 Color Computer, we figure out how to make things that happen on the keyboard show up properly on the screen!
Keyboard Polling!
In the second part of building a custom OS ROM for the TRS-80 Color Computer, we work out how to poll the keyboard in order to be able to talk to the computer. It might even work!
A Custom CoCo Rom… How Hard Could It Be?
Let's embark on this wonderful journey of bringing up the TRS-80 Color Computer from nothing! It's a simple machine—how hard could it be?
Homebuild D-Pad: Part 2
Let's check some voltages and get this D-Pad finished!
Homebuild D-Pad: Part 1
Joystick? Sure! But a d-pad is much more useful for so many Color Computer games. Let's build one!
Getting Drivewire Up and Running
It should be simple! DriveWire is a PC application that provides server-level support for floppy emulation over the bitbanger port of a TRS-80 Color Computer 1, 2, or 3. All you need is a bitbanger to RS-232 cable… But PCs don't have RS-232 ports these days… Maybe an adapter? Should be easy, right?
My First Video!
Probably the most accessible way for a neophyte to get data into and out of a CoCo is by using the cassette interface. In this video we build a cable that interfaces using a TRRS plug on the other end!