Tandy Color Computer 3 Emulator Page Last updated April 8, 2005

This program emulates a complete Tandy Color Computer 3 configuration including: MC6809E Micro-Processor running at .89 & 1.79 MHZ 32k Extended BASIC ROM memory 32k Cartridge memory 128k, 512k & 2meg RAM memory options TCC1014 Memory & Video controller (GIME) Color Computer compatible video modes Text 32 x 16 Text SG4 64x32 Block graphics G1C/R 64 x 64 graphics (2 & 4 color) G2C/R 128 x 64 graphics (2 & 4 color) G3C/R 128 x 96 graphics (2 & 4 color) G6C 128 x 192 graphics (4 color) G6R 256 x 192 graphics (2 color) G6Ra 256 x 96 graphics (2 color) Color Computer 3 video modes Text 32 / 64 / 40 / 80 x 16 Text Foreground / Background colors Blinking and Underlined Pixels Colors 160 16 colors 256 2 / 4 / 16 colors 320 2 / 4 / 16 colors 512 2 / 4 colors 640 2 / 4 colors 16 color palette registers Palette of 64 possible colors Composite & RGB color sets 60hz & 63.5ns video interrupts Timer & keyboard interrupts Video is synced with the video interrupts drawing 1 line every 63.5ns and a complete screen 60 times/second. This gives support for multiple video modes and more colors used by some unique COCO & COCO3 software. Standard keyboard Standard joysticks (2) Hi-res Joystick (COCOMAX3 & OS9) Built-in serial port Cassette port sound Creation of real cassette tapes loadable on a COCO CCR-81 cassette recorders:  - Virtual recorder saves & loads from     virtual cassette files  - Wave recorder saves & loads from Wave sound files Fully emulated Multi-Pak Interface  - 4 32k cartridge slots  - 1 cartridge up to 256k Hardware Cartridges Emulated: Disk BASIC & FDC Cartridge  - 100% compatible WD1793 floppy disk controller  - NMI & HALT supported Orchestra-90 Music Synthesizer Cartridge  - Sound output to PC speaker, SoundBlaster    or Wave file Deluxe RS-232 Program Pak  - Uses a PC serial port  - Supports NMI & FIRQ interrupts  - Supports 50-19200 baud Direct Connect Modem Pak  - Uses a PC serial port  - Supports NMI & FIRQ interrupts  - Support 50-19200 baud Glenside's IDE Hard Drive Controller DS1315 Clock Chip 3 double-sided & 1 single sided double-density 80+ track drives In addition to the standard Color Computer 3 configuration the emulator also supports: The following new modes are supported: Pixels Colors 512 16 colors 640 16 colors 64/80 64 colors 128/160 64 colors 256/320 64 colors Actual values can be read from most of the COCO3's I/O memory locations A point & shoot configuration screen with:   - Unlimited configurations selectable at start-up   - All system options and virtual disks saved on exit A point & shoot virtual floppy selection screen with:   - Ability to open and create new virtual disks   - New & powerful virtual disk format able to do     everything a real  floppy disk can do   - Able to read & write other emulators JV1 & JV3 disks   - Ability to boot, read, write & format REAL COCO     floppy disks in a compatible PC drive A virtual cassette recorder control screen with:   - Ability to open and create new virtual cassettes   - Controls just like a real cassette recorder   - Feature to force cassette motor on An Audio/Wave cassette recorder control screen with:  - Ability to open and create new audio Wave files  - Controls just like a real cassette recorder  - Ability to load real COCO tapes using SB line input  - Ability to save cassette port output to Wave file  - Ability to load Wave file recordings of tape programs  - Feature to force cassette motor on Multi-Pak Interface allows loading of up to 4 ROM/Hardware cartridges.  - A point & shoot cartridge selection screen  - Support for up to a 256k ROM cartridge The emulator also maintains a .CAR file for each ROM image that contains:  - Title & description of cartridge  - Label & text color  - Length of ROM image  - Hardware options for cartridge The .CAR file is automatically created when a new cartridge ROM is loaded and is user modifiable. Serial port I/O can be sent to a PC printer, PC file or PC serial port. Emulator can support up to 3 simultaneous serial devices:  - Built-in  - RS-232 Pak  - Modem Pak 2 user selectable fonts (Standard & Lowercase)  - Fonts are files which can be user modified 2 user selectable keyboard layouts (PC & COCO3)  - Keyboard layouts are files which can be user modified    to create custom keyboard layouts The color palette is a file enabling the COCO3's colors to be user modified Ability to save & load system snapshots Ability to save screen to  a .BMP file Ability to load .BIN files directly from a PC directory Ability to load .PAK format cartridge files Ability to drop to a DOS prompt Emulator speeds are accurate to .01% of a real COCO3's for true sound and game play, plus:  - Hot-key speed selection of .447, .895, 1.79, 3.58 MHZ    & Turbo  - Turbo speed is limited only by your PC's speed  - An override speed can be set & locked so the COCO    runs at user selected speeds transparent to COCO OS. Color artifacting option for graphics mode G6R. This option closely emulates colors created on a color TV when in the 256 x 192 graphics mode.  - Option can be disabled    or set for Red/Blue, Blue/Red colors PC mouse, PC joystick & arrow keys emulate COCO's 2 joysticks High resolution joystick emulation Hardware clock (memory mapped) PC mouse support (memory mapped) PC to COCO file I/O (memory mapped) Enhanced instruction set including instructions to:   - Open, close, read, write PC files   - Read, change & display the PC directory   - Execute DOS commands  - 8, 16 & 32 bit multiply and divide functions  - Ability to read and write to PC I/O ports & memory Amplifier for cassette & Orchestra-90 sound:   - PC speaker   - SoundBlaster Pro/16/32 ISA System Requirements:  A Pentium 166mhz compatible system 640k memory w/512k free VGA card  MSDOS 6 or better or Windows 9x/2000/XP EMS 4.x required for 512k & 2meg Note: Hardware emulation that requires access to PC hardware such as: Sound / Joystick / Floppy or Serial I/O are not supported in Windows 2000 or XP. Optional Requirements:  Pentium MMX 233mhz, for 3.58 & 8mhz operation SoundBlaster SB16 or SB32 or 100% ISA/PCI, DOS compatible card  DOS or Windows compatible Mouse  DOS compatible Joystick

All files on this website (including the emulator distribution) are compressed using WinAce.

You will need WinAce v2.xx or above to extract the data from files downloaded from this website.

If you don't have WinAce use the link below to download the free file extractor XAce Plus.

Color Computer & Color Computer 3 Computer Software

I have scanned and preserved a large quantity of Color Computer software and documentation.

Color Computer Software Pages

Color Computer 3 Emulator & Windows 2000/XP

The new COCO and COCO3 emulators have limited support in Windows 2000 & XP.
This is because the emulator is written in 16bit DOS mode and accesses the PC's hardware directly (Floppy, Sound, Serial, EMS & Video).
Windows 2000 & XP cannot support 512k because EMS is not supported

Windows 2000 and XP have very limited support of 16bit DOS mode so they greatly limit the COCO emulators functionality.

The ideal platform for the emulators is a dedicated PC, 233-333mhz, 4megs of RAM, 20meg or greater hard drive, 512k video card running MSDOS v6.xx.or greater.
(easily found at a thrift store for $5 to $25, or maybe in your closet)
For a total COCO experience add a SoundBlaster 16 Compatible Sound Card, 5.25" 360k floppy drive, mouse and joystick.

With mouse and sound drivers, a CONFIG.SYS file with HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE and a batch file you have a PC that boots in seconds and automatically starts your favorite COCO emulator.

Color Computer Emulator Documentation

The documentation should answer most question about the emulator's functions.

The following link will take you to the Color Computer emulator on-line documentation:

Enhanced MC6809 Instructions

The emulator has a set of enhanced MC6809 instructions. These instructions allow COCO programs to interface with the PC's disk drives, ports, memory and other hardware. These instructions also add high level math functions to the MC6809 instruction set.

There are currently no COCO utilities for transferring files between the COCO and PC worlds. There are also no COCO drivers for using the hardware clock or accessing a virtual hard drive. These utilities can be written on the COCO using the enhanced instructions available in the emulator. Anyone wanting to develop COCO utilities and drivers will find the enhanced instruction documentation very helpful.

NOTE: These instructions are only available in the emulators.

The following links contain a list of the enhanced instructions and documentation for each instruction.

Enhanced Instruction Documentation (on-line)

Enhanced Instruction Documentation (Microsoft Word 96k)

Color Computer 3 Emulator News

Version 2.10

Version 2.10 of the COCO3 emulator has some changes, enhancements and a few bug fixes.

• Added IDE virtual hard disk support

  • Push [Shift F9] to bring up IDE drive selection screen

  • New program added to distribution: MAKEIDE that creates blank virtual IDE hard disks

  • IDE & Clock cartridge added to distribution.

• Added support for Hi-res Joystick (CoCo Max 3 & OS9)

• Added support DS1315 clock chip (emulates & uses Cloud-9's clock chip drivers)

• Added 6309 CPU support.

• Fixed error in GIME timer function that cause loss of or improper sound in some games.

• Fixed errors in COCO3 mode's keyboard table. Also when using the COCO3 keyboard the PC's ALT & CTRL keys are F1 & F2.

• Changed the 128k option to use conventional memory.
  The COCO3 emulator requires Expanded (EMS) memory to emulate 512k & 2meg COCO3 systems. If EMS memory is not available the emulator forces 128k and uses conventional memory. This allows the COCO3 emulator to run in 128k mode on Windows 2000, XP and MSDOS without installing EMS drivers.

• Added UMB memory option.
  The emulator can now use Upper Memory Blocks for emulator memory. The blocks D000 to EC00 can be selected independently to be used for COCO3 memory. During emulator startup, memory blocks that are enabled and contain RAM are used for COCO3 memory.

WARNING:
This option is disabled by default and is not required 99.9% of the time. The only time this option may be required is when running the emulator in MSDOS and there is limited conventional memory available due to the loading of drivers (EMS, Mouse, Sound... etc).
IF YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND UMBs DON'T ENABLE THIS FUNCTION.

• Added non-documented 6809 instructions and corrected EXG & TFR instructions to give proper results with invalid register combinations.

• Faster 6809/6309 instruction set.

• Changed snapshot functions. Pushing [F7] now brings up a snapshot function screen.
  This screen allows:

  1. Loading and saving of snapshots (saved machine state)

  2. Loading of .BIN files from the PC directory

  3. Loading of cartridge .PAK files

  4. Saving the COCO screen to a .BMP file.

• Added screen capture to emulator. Pushing [F7] and then pushing [F9] when the snapshot screen appears will return to the emulator screen and save the current COCO3 screen to a COCO3-xx.BMP file, where [xx] is a number from 00 to 99 starting at 00 each time the emulator is started and incrementing by one each time a screen is saved.

• The memory format of snapshot files has changed so snapshots from previous versions are not compatible with this version.

• Snapshots now contain emulator type and version info. This info should help prevent the loading of non compatible snapshots.

• Fixed error with MUX that caused joystick to not work in some games.

Version 2.00

Version 2.00 of the COCO3 emulator has some major changes and a few bug fixes.

• Added full COCO3 memory support.

1. 256k cartridge support in slot 0

2. 32k cartridge support in all slots

3. 128k, 512k & 2meg RAM support

Note:
This version requires EMS memory. EMS is normally enabled in a Windows 9x/ME/XP DOS window. In stand alone DOS, HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE must be loaded.

• Added hi-res joystick support (COCOMAX3).

• More adjusting to video interrupts for HICOLOR & COCOMAX3.

• Added new 6809 & I/O mapped instruction to set and get the video refresh rate. The default rate (set in the option screen) is restored upon COCO reset.

• Added ability to enable/disable enhanced M6809 instructions.

• Added ability to enable/disable I/O mapped instructions.

• Corrected problem reading JV1/JV3 disks that were not zero filled out to their defined track length. The emulator will now return a zero filled sector instead of reporting "record not found".

• fixed error that occurred when reset was pushed during the playback of a buffered Orchestra-90 file that caused Orchestra-90 buffering functions to quit working.

• Fixed error that deactivated SoundBlaster sound after a shell to DOS command.

• Fixed error that prevented a SoundBlaster on DMA #3 from functioning properly.

Version 1.10

Version 1.10 of the COCO3 emulator has some changes and bug fixes.

• Fixed error in MMU memory mapping that hasn't caused problems but should have. If a MMU register changed from a RAM/ROM page to it's opposite the emulator treated the new page as if it was the previous page's RAM/ROM type.

• Adjusted video interrupt timing & video routines to properly display GIME demo programs (ex. BOINK & DEMO by SockMaster).

• Fixed COCO3 text display routines to use 128 character fonts. Routines were displaying gibberish when values above 128 were poked into video memory.

• Corrected FDC timing that may have caused floppy read errors.

• Reset now clears 6809 registers (as it should have all along).

• Changed FDC routines to properly read side 2 of a REAL floppy disk when using a FD520 disk controller ROM.

• Included a new FDC controller ROM that accesses side 2 of a REAL or virtual floppy when drive 2 or 3 are accessed.
  (drive 2 = side 2 of drive 0, drive 3 = side 2 of drive 1)