jlw@ariel.UUCP (J.WOOD) (10/22/86)
Last weekend's RAINBOWfest in Princeton NJ was mainly characterized by a buying frenzy for COCO 3s. Several of the commercial companies had supplies and were selling them for $169 ea. The Shack itself had them for $200 ea. The supply was sold out at all but the Shack's booth by 1:00pm on Saturday, but one NJ based outfit had an additional supply in their warehouse and sent out for more. This seemed to satisfy the demand, and supplies lasted into the evening. Unfortunately the machines were the 128K models, and there were no 512K add-in boards available. Also there were no CM-8 analog RGB monitors for sale either although there were some for display purposes. One booth had Y-connected, side-by-side comparison of the CM-8 and a RS composite monitor. No contest. The CM-8 is great. The final disappointment is that COCO 3 Level II OS-9 is coming, <Real Soon Now>. "You're gonna love it when you get it." Did I buy a COCO 3, you ask? No; the TV I use for my COCO has lost its tuner section for Ch 2-6; I have an old style Disk controller which needs 12V; and the expansion (which I'd have to buy) interface needs a PAL fix for $7.50 from the Shack. All-in-all it would have been a pretty expensive proposition. The seminars I attended were pretty awful. The speakers were not well prepared and were not good speakers in general. It was all pretty amateurish. Dale Plunkett just rehashed his OS-9 book. The booth area was smaller than in previous years; probably due to the popularity of MS-DOS machines. What there was was crowded and a lot of interest was exhibited. The retailers who were there did a land office business. The Shack just brought out their floor sweepings and a few 3s. COCO 2s were going for $49 (16k reg. basic) and $89 (64k ext. basic). J&M was there and many of the RAINBOW advertisers, but the COCO-MAX people weren't. Probably back home trying the get the COCO-MAX to work with a 3. Joseph L. Wood, III AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Middletown (201) 957-5475 ariel!jlw