Tandy's Little Wonder (1993)(Farna Systems).pdf - TRS-80 Color ...

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tion started showing up on the BBS about a Videotex modificationallowing an exit to BASIC by pressing the resetbutton, thereby preserving the text buffer. Download capabilitywas not too far away.ROM to RAM. Steve would surely have gotten an "F" for hisspeculation that the Exatron disk system would be the"standard" disk system for the Color Computer, possiblysurpassing even Radio Shack’s.The SDS80C from The Micro Works was the ColorComputer’s first editor/assembler. Although marketed inAugust ’82, it had been a reality since June. It should bementioned that Cer-Comp of Las Vegas, in a letter datedJune 1, 1982, stated the availability of their editor/assemblerwhich may make it actually "the first". The MicroWorks, however, did get theirs to market first. Other notablereleases in August included Mark Data’s first two adventuregames Calixto Island and Black Sanctum, TallgrassTechnologies' disk system and 64K RAM adapter board,and THE FACTS, a Color Computer technical manual fromSpectral Associates.Barry Thompson, Tandy’s Product Line Manager, in hiscolumn for Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Microcomputer News,replied to Mark Grangers "PCLEAR 0" inquiry with thisexplanation: "...THERE IS NO WAY TO RELEASE THATLAST PAGE OF GRAPHIC MEMORY....". Had Mr. Thompsonread The Rainbow’s second issue, he not only would havefound out about the PCLEAR 0 trick but, he would have heardfrom a "very high placed source" that a Radio Shack disksystem would be out within 2 months along with a 32Kupgrade. Hadn’t we heard those stories before?September is a time to return back to school. A time forlearning, and learn we did. We learned from Radio Shack thatthe much rumored 32K upgrade was finally a reality. Althoughnot mentioned, the upgrade included both the new E-board and 1.1 Basic ROM. One discovered that the firstColor Computer word processor, C.C. Writer, was availablefrom Transformation Technologies. We were taughtby C.J. Roslund that the PCLEAR "bug" could be fixed witha simple "reverse reference", and our homework assignmentwas to read Clay Abrams’ documentation for another ColorComputer first, his RTTY/CW communications software!The Sep/Oct issue of CCN debuted a column which quicklybecame one of the most popular: Comment Corner. Writtenby Andrew Phelps, author of The Micro Works’ CBUG,80C Disassembler, and SDS80C, each column took an indepthlook at one of the Color Basic ROM routines.A first this month (September) from Computerware wasthe Color Computer’s first alternate language: PASCAL.Computerware also started marketing Magicube (a Rubick’sCube game), and Color Data Organizer. Steve Odneal’sFLEX had, by this time, been converted to operate on thenewly released Exatron system and, it worked like a "champ":.According to Steve, the Exatron expansion board was thekey, as it allowed the ROMs to be turned off and RAM turnedon. Steve, while converting FLEX for the Radio Shack disksystem, doubted the system would be capable of switchingThe month for trick or treating, October, saw the first detailsabout the Radio Shack disk system, the debut of Bob Nay’sColor Computer Users Notes in 68 Micro, plus therelease of Aardvark-80’s first 7 games. Another Octobertreat was Dennis Kitsz’s article detailing a modification thatwould deliver "true" lower-case instead of those unsightlyinverse characters. This was the first lower-case board forthe Color Computer, and was also available in kit form fromMSB Electronics. Marketing began on Soft SectorMarketing’s Master Control, the first single key entryutility. If you ordered immediately you were told "...someproblems have cropped up and we’ll be a few weeks late indelivering it...". Not again!!! Jorge Mir wrote an articledescribing how Videotex could be modified to return toBasic upon reset, thereby giving the Color Computer its firstBBS download capability (the buffer content could be savedto tape).Although there were a few bulletin boards which supportedthe Color Computer, The Ark appears to be the first thatactually ran on a Color Computer. "Barefoot" John Griffen,the sysop, operated the BBS from his houseboat in Portland,Oregon. Callers included Steve Den Beste, Shawn Jipp,Bob Rosen, and Ed March.Mike Wolf started marketing his Color Computer diskcontroller around this time (October). Unless one hadeither inquired or ordered his WOLFBUG monitor, chancesare one didn’t hear about it because the controller wasmarketed only through direct mail. With a price tag ofaround $350.00, the unit included an 80 column card, realtime clock, and parallel printer port. In a phone interview,Mike said that a Michigan Computer Club was responsiblefor the sale of about 10 pieces.The name "TRS-80" stands for Tandy Radio Shack and the 80was a result of the Z-80 cpu in Tandy’s first computer, theModel I. Because the CoCo uses a 6809 cpu, maybe itshould have been called either a TRS-68 or a TRS-09 ColorComputer, but what’s in a name? Some nicknamed it theTRS-80CC, other the TRS-80C, still others the 80C. It wasDave Lagerquist who first used the name COCO inOctober’s Chromasette Magazine. This innocent enoughaction set off a "name calling" debate lasting for severalmonths throughout the ever growing "CoCo" community.Some things in the November winds included a tip to reduceinternal heat produced by the 32K "piggyback" upgrades bypainting the inside of the CoCo’s top cover flat black, arumor that Radio Shack was using half-good 64K chips in its32K upgrade, and an interesting article about CoCos beingused to control Mr. Walt Bolden’s solar heated home inTandy's Little Wonder page 9
Washington state. The computers were set up by HomeComputer Systems, Inc., of Seattle. November also broughtthe first review of the Exatron disk system, the ProgrammersInstitute’s tape magazine, TRC, but still no Super"Color" Writer.Nelson Software may have been dragging its feet, but notCognitec. Within a couple of months of its Novemberrelease, Telewriter was the talk of the CoCo community.Telewriter was the first "world-class" CoCo word processor.To this day, Telewriter is probably the most used CoCoword processor- nearly every Color Computer owner hasused Telewriter in one of it’s variations.after his BBS) in January and his first advertised CoCoproduct was Colorcom/E. Although Eigen ran his own separateads, Bob’s BBS probably accounted for a majority ofinitial sales. With every BBS sign-on being accompanied bya little "commercial", word spread very quickly, as thepopularity of both Colorcom/E and the BBS grew rapidly.Truly a marriage made in computer heaven!1982 marked the start of CCN being published monthly. Italso witnessed the debut of DSL’s ML Rabbit, SugarSoftware’s Silly Syntax, Martin Consulting’s SmartTerm, Moses Engineering’s Light Pen, Tom Mix’s MoonLander, and Frank Hogg’s CCFORTH.Although it was possible to do primitive Videotex downloading,Colorcom/E from Eigen Systems was light yearsahead. It supported on-line/off-line scrolling, cassette filetransfer, automatic or manual data capturing, off-line printouts,and selectable RS-232 options. When MarkDavidsaver's Colorcom/E was ready for shipping, he mailedflyers to those who had responded to his "put your Basicprogram on a ROM" ad (June ’81). Bob Rosen, upon receivinghis flyer, immediately phoned Mark. Colorcom/E becamethe first major software sold by Bob’s Connection-80BBS. The rest, as they say, is history.... for both Bob andColorcom/E.December saw not only the release of Computerware’sPac Attack (the first of many PAC-MAN clones) but areview of the Tallgrass Technologies disk system. This wasprobably the only disk system ever which would run in 4K!As 1981 drew to a close, reviews and comparisons werebeing made between the new Radio Shack disk system andthe Exatron system. The consensus of opinion seemed to bethat Exatron’s single density format was its biggest drawback,as it stored less information on a single diskette thanthe Tandy double density format.With third-party support growing dramatically, and evenRadio Shack waking up, the CoCo’s future seemed securebut, into each life, a little rain must fall...page 10THE COLOR COMPUTER IS DEAD!Now, when most of us hear rumors, we usually consider thesource. The more reliable the source, the more accurate the"information" is likely to be. Although it had been rumoredfor a while that Tandy was dropping the Color Computer, therumor takes on special significance when, in January, itappears in Wayne Green’s 80 Micro editorial. Since thebeginning, critics had always pointed to the CoCo keyboardand snickered. A Dennis Kitsz article put a stop to all that byreplacing the "chicklet" keyboard with a Model I keyboard(what would Dennis do next?).Bob Rosen started his company, Connection-80 (namedTandy's Little WonderIn February, resumes were being accepted for the sysop ofa Color SIG (Special Interest Group) which would soon bestarting up on CompuServe, while in New England theCoCo was being used at the University of Vermont. Otherevents taking place at this time include the disk version ofTelewriter undergoing final testing, Steve Blyn (soon tostart Computer Island) marketing his first educationalsoftware, and violently negative reactions to Wayne Green’seditorial started surfacing. Wayne sure didn’t make toomany friends that month!CCN’s February issue was probably the best issue of anyColor Computer magazine ever published. The issue wasspecial for several reasons. If you were looking for a methodof transferring your tape files to disk there was TPTDSKfrom Jack L. Aker, Tony DiStefano’s article on runningmachine language programs from disk, and C.J. Roslund’sarticle on disabling the BREAK key. What really marked thisissue worth its weight in gold, however, was the articleappearing on page 23... 32K RAM FOR FREE!!!, by FrankHogg (see FHL story for more on this).After Radio Shack’s 32K upgrade became available, rumorhad it that the "32K" chips used were, in fact, half-bad 64Kchips. Frank Hogg’s article detailed the steps required toenable your Radio Shack 32K CoCo (not "piggyback" 32K)to go into the "all RAM" mode, thereby giving the CoCo aneffective 64K of RAM. Frank speculated (correctly) that,although very early 32K Radio Shack upgrades may havecontained the half-bad 64K chips, most 32K upgraded CoCoscontained prime 64K chips. Radio Shack’s 32K upgrade alsoincluded the E-board and 1.1 Basic ROM. Although FrankHogg didn’t perform (or even make available) the first 64Kupgrade, his article did bring to the CoCo community theinformation required to double the computer’s effectivememory and, in so doing, created a base for his FLEXoperating system.In March, Kraft’s new joystick (available within 2 months),Type-N-Talk from VOTRAX, and George Associates’ Z-80 based CP/M interface were three new CoCo productspreviewed at the West Coast Computer Fair inSan Francisco. Data-Comp debuted their FLEX operating
Page 1: Tandy's Little Wonder,The Color Com
Page 6: Introduction...Alfredo Santos, Dece
Page 9: The Micro Works had its CBUG, 80C d
Page 13 and 14: ticle describing the installation o
Page 15 and 16: A new CoCo magazine, 68 Color Micro
Page 17 and 18: pitched carrier tone but by a "disc
Page 19 and 20: With desktop publishing so popular,
Page 21 and 22: What better time to advertise new p
Page 23 and 24: plugged into the CoCo. A separate p
Page 25 and 26: ceived 20 hours of on-line time. It
Page 27: Technologies. This computer had bee
Page 30 and 31: issue (sore spot!) for many adverti
Page 32 and 33: the missing September OS-9 Undergro
Page 34 and 35: 1985 (continued)26-1275 - $299.00 -
Page 38 and 39: Operating Environments and Programm
Page 40 and 41: The CoCo 3 DOES NOT support the fir
Page 42 and 43: ADOS... Arts' Disk Operating System
Page 44 and 45: Compiled BASIC...BASIC is normally
Page 46 and 47: When you LOAD and RUN a BASIC progr
Page 48 and 49: the CPU to the number 1 and put the
Page 50: With all these modules and processe
Page 54 and 55: * Connecticut -NAME: South Eastern
Page 56 and 57: * Texas -NAME: CoCoNautsADDRESS: 16
Page 58 and 59: NAME: Rick's Computer EnterpriseADD
Page 60 and 61:
National Bulletin Board/Database Sy
Page 63 and 64:
Current PublicationsThere are still
Page 65 and 66:
Past MagazinesThe Color Computer de
Page 67 and 68:
The next video type to consider is
Page 69 and 70:
Co., 4300 West 62nd Street, Indiana
Page 71 and 72:
Tape I/O for the CoCo normally occu
Page 73 and 74:
SCS line activates the controller,
Page 75 and 76:
uilt in controller boards and were
Page 77:
Most laser and ink-jet printers als
Page 80 and 81:
Modem Pak that you wish to be inter
Page 83 and 84:
RAM UpgradesEach of the various CoC
Page 85 and 86:
Beyond 64K in the CoCo 1 & 2There w
Page 87 and 88:
functions, the PLAY and SOUND comma
Page 89 and 90:
5) I cut a piece of sheet metal to
Page 91 and 92:
lows as 0V. A pulse should read as
Page 93 and 94:
MC6883 and 74LS783/785 SAM Chip (Co
Page 95 and 96:
on. CTRL-ALT-RESET may not clear ev
Page 97:
E board CoCo, the zener is a 1N4735
Page 100 and 101:
When it seemed that the CoCo was ag
Page 102 and 103:
Around the same time as the demise
Page 104 and 105:
into the upgradable TC9 and then in
Page 106 and 107:
I completed my second book, a compl
Page 108 and 109:
The CoCo is capable of using up to
Page 110:
BASIC/Extended/Disk Error CodesCode
Page 124:
POWER JOYSTICK JOYSTICK SERIAL CASS
Page 132 and 133:
IndexSymbols and Numbers128K upgrad
Page 134 and 135:
DigiSector DS-69(B) 20, 21, 80Digit
Page 136 and 137:
MediaLink Software 56Olaf Meding 44
Page 138:
Snake Mountain Software 11Soft Sect
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