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

switch away from slot 4 (which contains the disk controller).The newer models (large and small white cased) appeared towork just fine in most cases. Intermittent problems resultedfrom the 6809 trying to read data from certain GIME portaddresses. The main problem was that the MPI was designedbefore the CoCo 3 and the data buffer is activated whenevera read was performed in that overlapping address range! TheGIME and buffer would then try to give the 6809 data at thesame time, garbling the read data. This would happen even ifnothing was in the MPI. Upgrading the large MPIs was easyordera replacement PAL chip from Tandy. Upgrade instructionswere given for the newest 26-3124 (small white) MPI,which required the addition of a single chip and a few jumperwires. Tips were also given for modifying the MPI for OS-9 use (not required, but some modifications enhance operationsunder OS-9). The IMS ad focussed on software companieswith OSK software. A phone number for Kala Software,formerly Second City, was given with the advice tocall for a catalog. Yes, owner Ed Hathaway still supportedthe CoCo (though it wasn’t mentioned in the ad). Many of theother vendors mentioned as "gone" were also still in theCoCo business, there just wasn’t enough of it to pay forRainbow ads (remember... around $300 monthly for 1/4page) and make a decent profit... in many cases, not enoughto break even! To top the month off (actually to START itoff!), the Second Annual Atlanta CoCoFest was deemeda success again. There were fewer people than the crowd theyear before, but still enough to make an effort for next year.With the sluggishness of the economy in general, the smallershowing was no big surprise.page 28Tandy's Little WonderGracing the cover in November was the 6809 based TC9Tomcat from Frank Hogg Laboratories. Until now, theTC9 design had been subject to several changes. The designreviewed was the production model then being shipped. Themotherboard contained the 68B09 and a genuine GIME tomaintain CoCo 3 compatibility. The CPU had to be run at justunder 2MHz... the GIME wouldn’t run at a full 2MHz! Apair of 256Kx8bit SIMMs (single in-line memory modules)took care of the 512K of memory. An additional pair couldbe added along with a DAT board (which handles addresstranslation) for a full 1MB of RAM. The CoCo bus was atwo-row 40 pin header connector. A short Y cable wasconnected to this. Unlike the CoCo, this bus was fullybuffered so running with a Y cable would not strain the busnorthe 200 watt power supply. Composite video and RGBwas available, but no TV output. Two serial and one parallelport, the CoCo bus, and joystick ports were on an I/O boardmounted above the motherboard. The only real incompatibilitywith CoCo OS-9 hardware was that a different addresshad to be used for the sound port. Three bytes hadto be changed in Kyum-Gai in order to here the soundeffects. OS-9 Level II had to be purchased separately fromTandy or another source. New boot disks with the correctFHL TC9 drivers had to be made with a CoCo 3 or theoriginal OS-9 disks sent to FHL so they could make a newboot for the TC9 purchaser. Disk BASIC was not yet supported,but FHL did release a utility within a year thatallowed saving ones’ CoCo 3 ROMs to disk and patchedthem for TC9 use, thus gaining Disk BASIC compatibilitybutonly if one had access to a CoCo 3 (note: it would beconsidered piracy if one did not own a CoCo 3). Rainbowshrank yet again- down to 50 pages and 20 advertisers.Two letters were printed from readers who had troublewith support from Microcom. They were still shippingorders for Word Power 3.3 but were NOT returningletters asking for support even after repeated queries. Asad way to end what was once a well respected company...And finally- a review of the IMS MM/1, with an appearanceon the cover of the December ’91 Rainbow! This computeris "brained" with a Phillips/Signetics 68070 (Motorola68020 compatible... manufactured for Phillips, the licensee,by Signetics) and a 66470 Video System Controller(VSC). Due to delays in FCC certification, the MM/1 wasbeing delivered only as a "kit". The kit included a completedmotherboard, case, power supply, keyboard, I/O board,and drives. Assembly took only 30 minutes. Anyone who hadever installed a second drive in their CoCo could accomplishthis task easily! One serial, RGB analog video, keyboard (XTtype), and sound ports were on the motherboard along with1MB of RAM, two ROMs, and the CPU and VSC chips. TheI/O board had a second serial, a parallel, stereo sound, andjoystick ports along with an SCSI interface (primarily forhard drives) and sockets for two 1MB SIMMs for a total of3MB RAM. The VSC chip supported an interlace modewhich allowed crisp 16 or 256 color graphics with up to720x480 resolution (16 colors in 720x480 mode)- evenon a CM-8! Real-time animation sequences were alsopossible. These last two items (high resolution graphics andanimation) were both made possible by the capabilities ofthe VSC chip. Of all the new machines, the MM/1 seemedto have left the greatest impression. New this month fromSundog was Photon (a maze game), War Monger (wargame, sort of a modernized version of Risk), and GrafExpress (a graphics and music programming environmentthat allowed easy fast action and sound). Licensing optionswould be available for programs using Graf Express.The February and March 1992 Rainbows were significant inone way: February was the last magazine format Rainbow,and March the first tabloid, or newspaper, format.The reason for the change was simple economics. Withfewer advertisers there wasn’t as much money flowing tostay with the comparatively expensive slick paper colorcover magazine. Rather than raise subscription prices ($31for a 50 page magazine isn’t cheap!), the new format waschosen. The "new" Rainbow featured only 32 pages, butspace was actually INCREASED by roughly nine percent dueto the increase in size of the pages themselves. A fourcolor process was still used for the cover, but most of thecover space was used for content rather than just "windowdressing". The ads were bigger and the ad prices were evenrolled back to the previous years rates. Ad price was a big