10/7/2025 3:40 AM: -- Breadboard CoCo - Part 4: Breadboard Planning

Initial Breadboard Planning Stage

Trying to get my head back into the CoCo. I still want to master the CoCo1/2 and CoCo3 circuits. And interfacing them to FPGAs and/or microcontrollers.

So after a year and a few months off this project, I am trying to get back into it and make some progress. After all, I still want to create that CoCo4 that should have been! Before I kick the bucket! HA!

So I’m not really going to get into this very deep this time… but I am using a rather nifty program called DIYLC to plan the layout and all the wire connections before I actually build it. What you see here is the start of using the app to plan it out. It may take a couple of iterations to get a good layout. I’m basically using all the main chips of the CoCo1. The rest of the circuity will be implemented in the FPGA. When I finish it, I will make another blog post where I’ll go in depth into the theory of it.

Also I may backtrack still and build a handful of test circuits interfacing these chips with the FPGA by themselves so I can fully understand what is going on at the signals level. Specially the 6847 and the 6883. Eventually I’d like to intercept the data flowing into the 6847 and convert it to a VGA output directly w/o having to convert the analog signals coming out it.