Coco 1 memory upgrade question

[Dnaurez]

Hello all!
I apologize in advance for what is probably a beat horse question. I recently acquired a TRS-80 Coco 1 with 16 kb standard. Booted once then Sam ic died. Replaced the ic with one from ebay and swapped out 2 bad 4416's. Then confirmed proper operation with a diag cart. Cool! Obvious next step is a ram upgrade right? Here's the dumb question part. Is it possible to upgrade beyond 64kb? Is it possible for this machine to run 128k carts? Google says no and that a Coco 3 is required. I'm not very familiar with the TRS-80 machines. I found an upgraded card for my Atari 400 that was a game changer. Went from 16kb to 1024k. Thanks in advance!

 

[brain]

The only released >64kB upgrades I am aware of is BankerBoard and one other I forget the name right now. Neither are produced any longer and neither were well supported. A few folks, including myself, are working on 2MB+ upgrades for the CoCo1/2 and/or Dragon, which uses the same architecture, but none are in production yet.

the CoCo1/2/Dragon can run any size cart, as long as it is bankable in 16kB chunks. My CoCoFLASH did that, as did others.

Jim

 

[Dnaurez]

The only released >64kB upgrades I am aware of is BankerBoard and one other I forget the name right now. Neither are produced any longer and neither were well supported. A few folks, including myself, are working on 2MB+ upgrades for the CoCo1/2 and/or Dragon, which uses the same architecture, but none are in production yet.

the CoCo1/2/Dragon can run any size cart, as long as it is bankable in 16kB chunks. My CoCoFLASH did that, as did others.

Jim

Thanks so much for the reply!
Your project sounds awesome! You had me at CoCoFLASH. Is your cart still available? Obviously flash carts are the way to go. Heck, I'm still trying to find one for my vic 20, Ti‐99, and now the TRS-80. When I purchased this CoCo 1, I didn't have any carts to test. I ended up ordering Robocop and Predator carts (because...yea) and then realized the memory incompatibility. I do alot of console mods so a mod on this machine makes sense. I just leaped blindly into this one for sure

 

[brain]

I am working on the timing for a new run of CoCoFLASH. I want to wait until the new CoCoSDC comes out, because I think it will offer a lot of the same functionality, and it's SD card based (runs cart images from RAM loaded from the SD card, from what I hear). So, I'd first see when CoCoSDC 2 comes out. I understand the design is done, not sure about production.

FOr VIC-20, I am making a new rum of UltiMEM, which is an 8MB ROM/1MB RAM cart for the VIC. Should be available soon in the store.

 

[Dnaurez]

That sounds like exactly what I need for the CoCo. Before I found out about the ram requirements on the game carts, I was planning on upgrading to 64k by replacing all the ram chips (or piggybacking if necessary). Any idea if the cpu in the CoCo 1 will run those carts? Sorry for the noob questions, this is my first TRS. The cart you mentioned for the VIC 20, is that an extended ram cart or a flash cart? I have an actual extended ram cart for it but was curious if there was a flash cart (with sd slot) to load roms/programs from.

 

[Dnaurez]

I forgot, I picked up one of these for the VIC 20 a while back. Never installed it or picked up any ram though.