2018-02-05: Thanks to Dave Chesek, this issue has been solved. He took the wiring diagram below and modified his RS232-to-TTL adapter with a bit of solder. He put a blob connecting pins 7 (RTS) and 8 (CTS), and then soldered together 1 (DCD) and 6 (DSR) then ran a jumper wire from those two over to 4 (DTR). It worked fine. My efforts to do this with jumper wires must not have been making good connection (perhaps one of my DB9 pin holes is not as deep – TX, RX and GND all worked fine with the jumper wires). I will do a bit more investigation to see what the minimum required. Thanks, Dave!
The 6551 serial chip will not receive unless DCD is active. Modern adapters do not provide DCD. I am trying to find a way to do this so I can hook my WiFi device (which only has TX, RX and GND) to the RS-232 Pak.
I have been trying to jumper wires to fake the DCD signal but nothing has worked. I do not know if my Pak is defective, since I have nothing else to connect it to for testing,
Many sites suggest a wiring example like this:
Has anyone done this? Nothing modern has DCD so surely there is a simple solution figured out long ago.
2018-02-05: Added crude drawing showing how I wired things up.
2018-02-25: Fixing board support URL to include “http”.
If you want to get your Tandy / Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo) on the internet (or any other 80s computer with a serial port), here is a dirt cheap way you can do it.
Cheap WiFi: The Early Years
Just a few years ago, adding WiFi to an Arduino meant buying a $60 add-on. My solution at the time was to get a much cheaper Ethernet and then use a cheap TP-LINK WiFi router hooked to it. I later found a source for a $10 Ethernet shield that made the overall cost even lower.
In 2014, the internet lit up with the discovery of the ESP8266 – a complete “WiFi on a chip” solution for under $5! Initially, all documentation was in Chinese but folks managed to figure out how to use it and, as they say, the rest is history.
Today the ESP8266 family of products is used in all kinds of things. There are now internet-enabled light switches, and front-ends for 3-D printers, and many other devices that get online thanks to this low-cost solution.
And, this includes all these retro computing platforms!
Cheap WiFi: How To
If you want to experiment, you can order an ESP8266 development board from Amazon for $8.79. This contains the low-cost ESP8266 module and then runs out all the various connection to pins, and also has a USB-Serial adapter built in. This USB port allows you to plug it up to a Mac or PC and upload new firmware, or use the device directly through a serial connection.
Here is the module I purchased. You can find many variations, some costing more, and others costing less. I wanted one I could get direct from Amazon using 2-day Prime delivery, but if you don’t mind waiting, you can find a similar part shipped from China for about $4.
An ESP8266 development board, available for under $9 from Amazon. (And much less from China!)
Since my 1980s computers do not have a USB port, I needed a way to hook them up to the old-style RS232 serial port instead. For that, I bought a cheap RS232-to-TTL adapter. Here is the one I purchased for around $7, shipped from Amazon with 2-day Prime shipping. I see there are some for a few bucks less which might work just as well, and if you don’t mind waiting a few weeks to get something shipped from China, I have seen them for about .67 cents!
RS232-to-TTL adapter.
Now all I had to do was connect the two modules together using some jumper wires. I needed four wires to connect Voltage (mine needed 5v), Ground, Transmit and Receive. You can buy a bundle of these wires for just a few dollars.
Once connected, it looked like this:
ESP8266 development board to RS232 converter.
I can power the module using a standard micro USB cable and charger (just like you might already have for an Android phone or Raspberry Pi or some models of Arduinos).
After this, all I needed was a NULL Modem cable to connect that DB9 connector to the Serial I/O port of my Color Computer. In my case, I used a “Driverwire cable” which has a 4-pin DIN connector on one end and a DB9 on the other. I needed to use a NULL Modem adapter to get the signals talking.
ESP8266 ESP-12E devkit wired to DB9-to-TTL adapter and connected to a CoCo Drivewire (null modem) cable.
Cheap WiFi: ZIMODEM Software
The final step I needed to do was to install different firmware on the ESP8266. The firmware that comes on the module does allow you to type certain “AT” commands and connect to WiFi and remote systems, but I wanted something easier and more compatible. I found this ZIMODEM firmware:
https://github.com/bozimmerman/Zimodem
This makes the ESP8266 look like an old-style Hayes Smartmodem. Instead of using commands to dial a phone number, the commands will “dial” a remote telnet BBS. i.e., instead of:
ATDT 515-555-1212
…you can dial a telnet connection:
ATDT "coffeemud.net:23"
There are new commands added to display all nearby WiFi base stations, and connect to them. There’s even a command to retrieve a file from a web server! You can find full documentation on the ZIMODEM website.
Any terminal program can be used to make these types of connections. You can also configure it to receive incoming connections, and when someone telnets to your IP address, you will see a “RING” (just like the smartmodems did) and can have the system answer. Yep, it would be very easy to put an old-school BBS on the internet with this!
I was able to use this to connect an old Radio Shack CoCo to a remote BBS using the Greg-E-Term terminal program over the bitbanger port at 1200 baud (oooh, speedy).
Building and Installing ZIMODEM
I got these steps from the Amazon page for the ESP8266 part I purchased. I have edited them with additional notes and links.
Instruction & Steps of How to use:
Download the latest version of the Arduino IDE. Today, there are versions of the IDE that run in a web browser (I have not tried these), as well as ones available for Mac, Windows and Linux. I used one for Windows 10, downloaded from the Microsoft Store.
Install the IDE. (Well, duh…)
Configure the Arduino IDE with support for the ESP8266:
At this time, I do not know what you would use for Mac or Linux.
To test that things are working, in Arduino IDE, look for the old fashioned Blink program (File->Examples->ESP8266->Blink). Load, compile and upload. If it worked, the module will have a blinking LED, indicating it is now running software you build using the Arduino IDE.
Now all you have to do is download the ZIMODEM software, then open the main “zimodem.ino” file in the IDE (the other files will open in different tabs, automatically), and build and load it to the ESP8266.
UPDATE: I did not need step 4 when I recreated these steps on my Mac, so maybe they are not even needed on the PC side these days.
These steps worked for me, but I want to go back through them (as well as finding Mac instructions and Linux if someone can assist me with that) and add photos and more details.
FTP, IRC, TELNET and more! Oh my!
ZIMODEM was created for Commodore computers, and has some special features in it for translating normal ASCII to Commodore’s PETASCII. It also comes with steps on how to use it with a Commodore from BASIC (with some assembly language routines used for high-speed reading and writing to the modem – sound familiar?). They have source code for various internet utilities such as:
WGET (get a file from a website)
FTP
IRC (chat)
TELNET
TELNETD (for connecting to the Commodore remotely and using BASIC over the Internet)
WEATHER (a two player network game from the Commodore PET days)
…and others.
With DriveWire on the CoCo, some of this exists but only for OS-9. It is my hope that we can easily port these BASIC programs (and even replicate the assembly language routines) over to the CoCo and do the same thing.
Last year, Sub-Etha Software “announced” the Sir Sound, a sound add-on for the Radio Shack Color Computer that would plug in to the Serial I/O (i.e. printer or bitbanger) port. The prototype looks like this:
Prototype “Sir Sound” sound module for the CoCo (or anything with a serial port, actually).
The idea was, by making this device “smart”, you could send simple, small commands to it and it would take care of the actual music playing, freeing up CPU time for the program. Since the device was “smart,” firmware could also be expanded with new features added.
The plans will be available for anyone who wants to build their own, and the source code will be posted to my Github repository. For someone like myself, with little or no hardware skills, you will be able to build this just by plugging wires into a breadboard (like the prototype). It’s not pretty, but it’s cheap and easy. And fun!
Various Sir Sound options…
I have contemplated designing a custom board for this, which would have a handful of chips and parts on it as well as a serial port and USB plug. Basically, it would be a board version of the prototype. The cost on this would be pretty low, but since I am not a hardware guy, I likely wouldn’t want to be the one soldering all the parts together.
Another option would be to just make an Arduino Shield that plugs in to a cheap Arduino UNO clone. You can get a good-quality Arduino for around $6, shipped from the USA by resellers on e-Bay. This could make the cost of the “Sir Sound” portion lower, though you’d still need an Arduino. You can buy a fully-made Arduino for less than the parts to build a clone, so this seems like a good way to reduce costs.
So which is better: Full board with everything, or add-on Shield for an Arduino?
I am not sure if the cost of the Arduino header pins is more expensive than the few chips it takes to just make the Arduino circuitry on a standalone board ;-) But, for folks who already have an Arduino, the add-on Shield is a great way to re-use existing hardware (and you can then use it for other projects when you are not hooked up to the CoCo). And, even for for those who don’t already have an Arduino, it might still be cheaper than the fully custom solution.
Sound + WiFi?
But what if it could do more than just sound?
Recently, I started playing with the ESP8266 WiFi chip. This device has a built in networking stack and WiFi hardware. It also has RAM and flash storage, and you can load it with custom firmware. This module is cheap! I ordered a “developer kit” with a USB port for less than $9 from Amazon.
An ESP8266 development board, available for under $9 from Amazon. (And much less from China!)
See those pins on the bottom? These developer modules make all the I/O lines available, it would be possible to make a small board with the sound chip and serial port on it that this plugs in to. This could give you sound and WiFi!
For the bitbanger serial port, baud rate on WiFi and Bluetooth would be limited to a slower speed, but if could also be plugged up to an RS232 Pak for high speed networking.
And, this looks like it would be cheaper than using an Arduino! More features for less money?
And, for a few bucks more, there is a module that adds Bluetooth as well, giving you sound, WiFi and bluetooth!
To be continue…
Let’s just say there are a few prototypes in the works right now… And they are all very cheap.
Sub-Etha Software to attend 2018 Chicago CoCoFEST!
Des Moines, Iowa – January 11, 2018 – Iowa-based Sub-Etha Software has announced plans to attend the 2018 27th Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! The event will be held April 21 and 22, 2018 at the Heron Point Convention Center in Lombard, Illinois.
“We’ve missed a number of years over the past decade or so, but we don’t plan to miss this year,” says Sub-Etha co-founder and current operator, Allen Huffman. “Missing these shows sucks. And this year we don’t want it to suck.”
Sub-Etha Software plans to demonstrate Roger Taylor’s “CoCo on a Chip” FPGA project, as well as a few “vaporware” items from the company’s past, including the CoCo-VR project and CoCo Answering Machine project.
A selection of N.O.S. (new old stock) Sub-Etha items may be available on (probably unreadable) 5 1/4″ floppy disks in original (“vintage”) packaging.
There will not be any Jolt! Cola, because that no longer exists. And there might even be Jolt Cola, because thanks to a tip from L. Curtis Boyle in the comments, it went back in to production in late 2017!
About Sub-Etha Software
Sub-Etha Software was founded in Lufkin, Texas in 1990, as a partnership between Allen C. Huffman and Terry S. Todd. It made it’s first CoCoFest appearance at the First Annual Atlanta CoCoFest in 1990, and it’s first Chicago CoCoFest appearance at the First Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! in 1992. They may be contacted online at www.subethasoftware.com
Can you believe this year will mark 38 years since Radio Shack released the TRS-80 Color Computer (later nicknamed the “CoCo”)? According to the always reliable wikipedia, the Color Computer was announced on July 31, 1980. According to a calendar printed in the July 1987 issue of Rainbow magazine, the CoCo was introduced (made available for sale?) on August 20th that same year:
August 1987 Rainbow, anniversary souvenir calendar: “August 20 – Radio Shack introduces the 4K TRS-80 CoCo for $399. First computer to offer easy graphics and sound programming from BASIC. 1980”
That date always stuck with me because it is my birthday. Too bad I didn’t know anything about computers in 1980, else I might have asked for one. Instead, I didn’t get switched on to computers until a few years later, with my first machine being a Commodore VIC-20 (“the first full featured color computer for under $300”) in 1982.
In my early days of owning a computer, I also owned some computer magazines. I remember Family Computing, COMPUTE! (wow, they published in until 1994), and later COMPUTE!’s Gazette, which focused on the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 (wow again, for them publishing until 1995). Somewhere I still have a box with all my old magazines in them.
When I switched from VIC-20 to Color Computer in 1983, I was still able to make use of some of those early magazines that contained CoCo versions of program listings. I remember being annoyed at seeing the CoCo version rely on BASIC’s single-note “PLAY” command for music, while they had to use assembly language routines to do the same on the Apple 2. If they were using assembly code, they could have done the same on the CoCo and gotten 4-voice harmony music out of the machine! But instead, that “easy graphics and sound programming from BASIC” must have made sticking with one-voice music the easier path. I think that always made the CoCo versions look worse than they had to.
Shattered by a Rainbow
At some point, I learned about an all-Color Computer magazine called The Rainbow. I think my first copy of Rainbow was the November 1983 “Data Communications” issue. I’ll have to dig out my storage box and see how well my memory has held up over the past 35 years!
In a way, it destroyed some of my hopes and dreams. When I made the decision to get a CoCo, part of the reason was because of the small selection of software Radio Shack sold for it. I thought, with such a small software base, it would be a great system to program for! I could become rich in such a desolate marketplace!
The 300+ pages of Rainbow, full of program listings and ads for hundreds of software and hardware items, made me give up those dreams. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. The market was large enough for some programmers to make their living off of it. Even in the late 1980s, I heard about one shareware programmer who helped pay his way through college by writing CoCo software!
In addition to Rainbow, I also learned about two other CoCo-only publications. Color Computer Magazine was published from March 1983 to October 1984. There was also Hot CoCo (Wayne Green Publications), which lasted a bit longer, publishing from June 1983 to February 1986. (Those links lead to full scans of all the issues over at the Color Computer Archive site.)
Although I did buy a few issues of Color Computer and Hot CoCo, the only one I subscribed to was The Rainbow. As a junior high school student, I didn’t have the income for multiple subscriptions, though I wish I had – I expect I would have benefited from the other two publications.
I chose Rainbow because it was the largest. In December 1983, Hot CoCo had 148 pages, Color Computer Magazine had 146 pages, and Rainbow was larger than both of them put together at 340 pages!
I could read through the two smaller ones, and probably find an article of of interest, but Rainbow always seemed to have dozens of things I liked. If I could only afford one, it just made sense to go for the biggest. (At the time, Rainbow was more expensive, with a cover price of $3.95 versus $2.95 for the other two.)
Back to the Beginning
Sometime in early 1985, I must have been contemplating completing my collection of Rainbow because I decided to order a back issue of the first issue from July 1981. I think I spent $2.00 or so for the issue, plus $3.50 postage and handling.
Imagine my disappointment and surprise when it arrived and it was a photo copy of two sheets of paper, printed doubled sided by a dot matrix printer that didn’t even have true descenders for lowercase!
Could this be? Did this nearly-400 page behemoth of a magazine with it’s glossy, full color cover really start out as a two page newsletter?
Indeed it did!
But rather than complain, I ended up writing in to The Rainbow and suggested that reprinting this early issue inside the magazine would be a neat thing to do. In the July 1985 anniversary issue, they printed my letter and included a reproduction of that original two page newsletter:
August 1985 Rainbow, letters to the editor.
Editor: I have an idea for your upcoming anniversary issue that you may like. I was told that THE RAINBOW started off as ·a two~page newsletter. Since many CoCo owners were not a part of that beginning, me included, I thought it would be nice to
see some reprints of the “early RAINBOW.” You may not think this is a big deal, but I would be more than happy to see how the # 1 CoCo magazine got its start. I think others share this curiosity as well as I do. Allen Huffman Broaddus, TX
Editor’s Note: Great idea, Allen. So, for Allen and all of you helping us celebrate our fourth anniversary, we’ve reprinted our very first Issue in its entirety in this issue (see between pages 98 and 99) – a little birthday treat from all of us to all of you!
I think I had at least two other letters printed in the magazine, but this was the one I was most proud of. (Notice my little white lie about “I was told that…” I knew darn well it was a two page newsletter because I felt ripped off paying over five bucks to get a copy of it!)
Let’s do the time warp, again!
The days of monthly magazines with computer programs you could type in is long gone. But, the history of them has been preserved thanks to the efforts of folks willing to scan in old paper and make it available online for a new generation to discover (or for us old folks to use to relive our younger years).
You can find issues at Archive.org, but I think the best collection is at the previously-mentioned Color Computer Archive site:
That link will take you to a repository that contains scans of every issue of Rainbow, from the original two page newsletter in 1980, to the largest of the glossy magazine editions, down to the final newsprint issue of May 1993. Some scans are just images of the pages, but the above link had been OCR’d so you can do text searches on it (mostly).
Until these archives, I had only seen the issues that I owned, from November 1983 to sometime around 1991. I recall ending my subscription in protest because Rainbow had decided to not cover any of the “next generation” CoCo-style machines such as the MM/1. Looking back, that was something I regret. Had we all kept subscribing and supporting them, maybe they could have continued a few years longer.
With all of this said, I have decided to start an interesting project. I plan to read all the issues of Rainbow, starting with July 1981. I’ve actually made it through the first six issues, where it grew from two photocopied pages into the first “magazine style” issue with 19 pages in December 1981.
And boy is it a time travel experiment! It’s stunning to see the tiny thing that birthed the magazine I loved so much.
If you are looking for some retro reading for 2018, why don’t you join me? I bet we (re)learn many things over the course of the year.
It’s quite interesting reading news about Radio Shack working on a “disc system” for the Color Computer, and then reading a review of this new $600 add-on a few issues later. That, and all the mentions of COLOR BASIC, and why you might want to upgrade to 16K or 32K and EXTENDED COLOR BASIC, really take you back to an earlier time.
And I have yet to see the name “CoCo” used. That would come later.
I’ll share interesting tidbits as I run across them. I’m sure I will learn quite a bit about the early years before I was involved. Maybe you will to.
The internet is an interesting place. Quite often, things I am trying to find end up not findable (far too often), but I almost always end up somewhere I didn’t intend to be finding something I didn’t mean to find.
Recently, I went in search for a Chromaset game that was referenced by L. Curtis Boyle on CoCoTalk Live (the nation’s leading weekly Color Computer talk show) episode 17. A reference had been made to this “Zero Gravity” (I think that was the title) game being disassembled and ported to OS-9, and I was curious to see what kind of game it was.
During this search, which was unsuccessful, I ended up at some random home page that had an archive of newsletters in PDF format. The one I found was from 1983, and it contained a review of the Chromaset subscription service (which I think was a cassette tape full of programs you received each month).
It was a fascinating read, including an article talking about rumors that Radio Shack was working on a “CoCo III” model. (That article was a gag, though, but no doubt rumors of a CoCo 3 must have started circulating as soon as the CoCo 2 came out.)
Reading through this newsletter was like stepping back in time. 1983 was when I received my first Radio Shack Color Computer. I remembered newsletters like this.
Today, archive sites like archive.org and the Color Computer Archive do a great job at trying to preserve much of this old information. I have scanned and submitted several newsletters and manuals, myself. One could easily spend weeks going through all that is there, which is why I expect none of us have done it. (I wasn’t even aware of this “ETUG” newsletter until I stumbled on it accidentally.)
Wouldn’t it be neat…
With retro computing so popular these days, wouldn’t it be neat if there were some kind of subscription service that would mail you physical paper copies of newsletters from the past, on a schedule just like they were back then? I’m not talking about anything new, but actually representing a point in time as if you were subscribing to them back then.
All it would take is finding as many of these newsletters as possible and getting them organized by date. Then, when someone subscribed, they’d start receiving newsletters each month, starting with the earliest time available.
Or, you could sign up starting at a specific month (say, the year you first got your computer).
Subscribers wouldn’t be in sync with each other, so discussing the “latest” news would be problematic, but since all of this exists digitally, it would be as simple as…
Hey, I just got the August 1983 issue of CoCo Chronicles out of East Texas. There’s this cool BASIC program that makes sound like a synthesizer with no machine code! Here’s a link to the PDF of the issue…
Think of all the great tips and programs we’d (re)discover this way, as a new generation wades through the cutting edge information of 35 years ago.
There might even be a way to automate something like this, through a service that will print and mail on demand.
Sure, we can all go download any of these for free… But have we? It’s much easier to pay attention to something when it shows up at your house, versus you having to remember to go out and find it. (Amazon, anyone?)
There are some problems, of course: Copyright. Low quality scans of copies that might be hard to read. Zero interest in this…
But if such a service existed, would you sign up? How much would you be willing to pay? Who would have the time to run something like this?
Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I computer. TRS stood for Tandy/Radio Shack, and the 80 came from the Z-80 processor it uses. The Model I came from Tandy’s belief there would be more than one model ;-)
When the TRS-80 came out in 1977, there were already many kit computers, and a few you could order that were assembled. But, none were widely available at thousands of retail locations across America. The TRS-80 became the first widely available home computer.
And they were made in Texas :-)
Radio Shack was soon outselling Apple, and was truly the number one name in little computers (as the slogan said). Keep in mind, back in the 80s there were more Radio Shacks than McDonalds. It was huge.
Many other firsts would come from Ft. Worth, such as the first IBM PC clone that was under $1000 (the Tandy 1000). It was a historic era in home computer.
But soon the market was flooded with other cheap home computer offerings from companies like Atari, Commodore, and Texas Instruments.
I have made it back from the 2017 26th annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! It was a pretty spectacular year with many new hardware items being demonstrated, as well as new software projects. I will try to share some details and photos when I get caught up.
2024-01-01 – Added YouTube video of the Doctor Who logo/music demo.
In 1985, a new game was advertised by Prickly-Pear Software for the Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer:
DR. WHO
Here is the ad found on page 68 of the the December 1985 issue, typos and all:
Dr. Who ad in the December 1985 Rainbow magazine.
As a kid who had watched Doctor Who on the local PBS station in Houston, Texas, I just had to have this game. I had just moved from Houston to the tiny town of Broaddus (population 225) and no longer could receive a PBS station, so this would be as much Doctor Who as I would get while living there.
I do not think I even had a disk drive of my own yet, since I recall ordering this on cassette.
In those days, us kids would go down to the post office and buy a money order and mail it to the company, then wait for them to mail back the software. This really helped build up anticipation.
Finally, the game arrived:
Dr. Who by Larry Lansberry, as sold by Prickly-Pear Software.
It came with a manual, which I have yet to locate. When I find it, I will scan it and upload it to the Color Computer Archive. Fortunately, it at least has some instructions:
Dr. Who instructions, page 1.
Dr. Who instructions, page 2.
And, the promise of many levels of difficulty:
Dr. Who difficulty levels.
I was a bit disappointed to find that the game was written in BASIC. It also included one machine language program called “CTRYROAD.BIN.” This was a multi-voice music file that played John Denver’s Country Roads hit from the 1970s. And it played it while displaying the instructions, so you had to sit there for several minutes until the song was complete.
After this, the game would present some side scrolling text explaining what keys did what. Thank goodness for the manual! The text went by pretty quick.
After several minutes of generating data for the game, you were presented with the main game screen:
Dr. Who main game screen.
And, you also had the map view:
Dr. Who map view.
There were also animated scenes that showed the TARDIS descending to the planet’s surface, but without the manual, I cannot remember how to even get to the planets.
But … the effect was less than impressive. It was a very disappointing purchase from a cosmetic and user-interface standpoint.
HOWEVER, the actual game was quite good. It reminded me of the Star Trek-style games where you moved around a galactic grid in search of starbases and Klingons.
I must have written Prickly-Pear Software because somehow I got in touch with the author, Larry Lansberry, and we exchanged some letters. I recently found some of these letters, so I need to re-read them and see what we discussed. I know he explained the music choice and why the animation style was done like it was.
I always thought this game would be fantastic with a facelift. Perhaps now that it has been unearthed, someone may consider doing an update/remake of it.
You can try it yourself in a CoCo 1/2 emulator. The disk image is available here:
Side Note: I don’t think Zigwald X. Malushi was a real person, and if he was, he had nothing to do with this demo. I used to see that name pop up on random pieces of software, often of the “questionable” nature. Since I was posting a copyrighted tune, I did not want to post it under my name so I used that one. I should find some of the other “Zigwald” programs and make a collection of them. I wonder how many used that name.
NOTE: This is a work-in-progress. Check back for updates. I will note any revisions at the top of this article.
Updates:
2017-03-19 – Fixed a typo (thanks, Roger), and minor clean up.
Cyclone CoCo – Roger Taylor’s FPGA CoCo on a Chip
In July 2015, Roger Taylor began the process of recreating a CoCo 3 system in an FPGA (field programmable gate array). Using a low-cost (less than $80) Terasic DE0-Nano development board and a custom I/O add-on board, he quickly got a virtual CoCo running. He has been continually improving the system and adding more features. His “CoCo on a Chip” Facebook group has documented this every step of the way.
Last year, I had acquired one of these DE0-Nano development boards and the RGB22VGA add-on board from Ed Snider. I was planning on using it to hook my old CoCo 3 up to a borrowed VGA monitor. But, at last year’s 25th annual CoCoFEST! near Chicago, Mark Marlette of Cloud-9 was selling his all-in-one version of this RGB to VGA adapter. I picked on of those up, and never used the DE0-Nano.
Roger recently sent me one of his add-on boards so I can finally put together my own FPGA CoCo. Let’s see how it goes…
Hardware Required
Terasic DE0-Nano Development and Education Board. These list for $79 on the manufacturer’s website ($61 for academic purchasers). It comes with a retractable USB Mini cable, which will be used to program the FPGA.
Roger Taylor’s Terasic DE0-Nano Upgrade Daughter Board. He sometimes has these available completely assembled for around $99 (via his e-Bay store). You can also just buy the bare boards and build one yourself.
SD memory card. Currently, the project does not support SDHC cards, so you have to find an older, smaller capacity SD (SDSC) card like a 2GB. I picked up a Transcend 2GB card on Amazon for about $7.
PS/2 Keyboard (and optional mouse). I have never owned anything that used PS/2, so I didn’t have an old keyboard to use. I found a cheap Logitech Classic Keyboard K100 on Amazon for $11.99.
VGA Monitor. I have one I borrowed to use with my CoCo, but I think VGA ports can still be found on some modern monitors.
USB Power Supply for the DE0-Nano. You can use the included USB Mini cable and use a USB power port, or use a similar USB charging cable with a Mini connector.
A cheap PS/2 keyboard, 2GB SD card, DE0-Nano and Roger’s add-on card.
About Roger’s Terasic DE0-Nano Upgrade Daughter Board
Roger’s add-on board has RAM, two PS/2 style ports, a 1/8″ audio output jack, and VGA port. There are header connectors for plugging in a module that handles the SD card, and ones for WiFi and Bluetooth. My unit has The SD card and WiFi installed. I will be ordering a Bluetooth module for wireless serial ports (they are very cheap).
The card has writing along the bottom indicating which direction it should be plugged up tot he DE0-Nano: “Faces DE0-Nano USB connector –>>”:
Writing on the board points the way to proper installation…
You can also tell orientation by the cutout in the board, which lines up with some small 2-pin connector on the DE0-Nano below:
Cutout in the board allows access to a connector below.
Software Needed
Roger recommends installing the Quartus II programming app. (Smaller than having to install the full Quartus II IDE).
You will also need to install the USB Blaster device driver, which will be found in the install directory of the programming app.
You also want the latest Cyclone CoCo firmware from his Facebook group. He calls it Cyclone CoCo, for reasons that will become obvious once you start using it :)
Installing
It seems the first step will be to install the Terasic software, and then hook the DE0-Nano up and load Roger’s firmware. The software is only available for Windows and Linux. Since I am a Mac user, I will either have to run it via virtualization (I use Parallels Desktop and Windows 10) or find a PC to use. I have several Raspberry Pis running Linux, so maybe that is an option as well.
After that, you will have to install a driver, and lastly you will be able to load Roger’s firmware on to the device and turn it in to an FPGA CoCo. Here are the steps I took:
I am using the Windows version, so my screen shots will be from that version.
Installing the Stand-Alone Quantus II Programmer from Altera.
This will make available a program called “Quartus II 12.1 Programmer” in the Altera 12.1 Build 177 folder.
NOTE: Your version number may be different if you are using later or earlier versions than I have. If you are setting up one of these, I’m sure you can figure that out.
Step 2: Install the USB driver.
When you plug in the DE0-Nano to the computer, Windows should prompt you for a driver. My Windows 10 did not, so I had to manually install it. If yours does, you can skip the next step and go straight to how to browse to the driver.
First, I had to open the Device Manager and find the USB-Blaster in the Other devices section:
Device Manager showing the USB section, missing the driver.
Double clicking on USB-Blaster brings up information about the device:
USB-Blaster needs a driver.
Select “Update Driver…” and then choose “Browse my computer for driver software“. You have to manually tell it where the driver will be found (inside the programmer install directory):
Select the second option so you can browse to where the driver is located.
On my system, I used the default install location and the driver was located here:
C:\altera\12.1\qprogrammer\drivers\usb-blaster\
Browse to the drivers directory inside of the programmer software directory.
Your directory names may be different, depending on what version of the software you install. Browser there, and then click Next:
The system should find the driver and install it.
Step 3: Program the DE0-Nano
Plug in the DE0-Nano to a USB port using the included cable, then launch the Quartus II 12.1 Programmer application.
Quartus II 32-bit Programmer showing No Hardware.
If your Hardware Setup box says “No Hardware”, click the Hardware Setup button and select “USB-Blaster“:
Select the USB-Blaster device.
After you close that windows, you can use File->Open to browse to and load the FPGA firmware image you downloaded from Roger’s Facebook page:
Load Roger’s firmware image.
When it is loaded, you will need to check off “Program/Configure” and (probably optional) “Verify” to enable the Start button:
Firmware loaded and ready to program.
Once those two buttons are checked, you can then click Start to begin programming. After a few moments, you should see “100% (Successful)” in the top right green box:
Programming in progress. It only takes a few moments.
Congratulations! You now have an FPGA CoCo!
Hello, FPGA CoCo!
After these steps, I plugged the device up to a VGA monitor and plugged in my PS/2 keyboard to the left port, and powered it up. It should instantly come to life with a familiar green screen, but if you have not prepared the special SD card for it yet, it will hang, trying to boot from that card.
You can hold down ESCape when you power up to bypass that, and find yourself at a nice virtual CoCo:
Hello, FPGA CoCo!
In the next part, I will figure out how to configure the SD card so I can actually load some software on it, and save any programs I create.
Until then … wow. This was easy! I can’t wait to see what all it can do. Thanks, Roger!
