u557676751ea@ucdavis.UUCP (Mark Nagel) (08/05/86)
In <1199@arieal.UUCP> Joseph L. Wood III writes: > . > . > [ vivid description of the new CoCo ] > > . > . > > Now some speculation: > > . > . > > The RS-232 port is probable still the old bit > banger, and you'll need the RS-232 Pak to improve > things. Question, will there be a new expansion > box with real address selection allowing one > to keep the RS-232 port and the disk drive > active at the same time? > No mention is made of an OS9 release. Of course, > I expect that the original COCO OS9 will run up to > release 2.0, but how about a release of Level II? > From information I have heard, the RS232 *is* the old bit banger. Tandy apparently is keeping the same Multi-Pak, but they are offering an upgrade for something like $25-$30. This will supposedly fix the above problem. Now, lessee. the *new* CoCo III $219.95 (128K) *monochrome* monitor $80-$120 DSQD Disk Drive $80-$100 --------------------- -------- something less than approx. $380-$440 another system which costs slightly more (no names, but it starts with an 'A' and will run os9/68K) Too little, too late?? Nah, couldn't be. ;-) > > > > Joseph L. Wood, III > AT&T Information Systems > Laboratories, Middletown > (201) 957-5475 > ariel!jlw - Mark Nagel ucdavis!u557676751ea@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (ARPA) ...!{dual|lll-crg|ucbvax}!ucdavis!deneb!u557676751ea (UUCP) "Ever since I gave up hope, I've felt much better!" - a bumper sticker somewhere
neals@tekigm.UUCP (Neal Sedell) (08/05/86)
Summary:
After seeing Jim O's posting yesterday I went to the local Shack and
chatted with a COCO fan type salesman. He said the enhanced extended
basic is now 32K of rom. He also had a strong feeling that OS-9
level 2 would be out fairly soon. He felt the analog RGB monitor
would be around $200 since the COCO is the only computer that uses
it. Supposedly you can upgrade your COCO 1/2 to a 3 - the only catch
is that you have to replace your CPU. In the training film he saw
that said this they went on to talk about the model 1000, and the
person in the film picked up the system unit and said "This is the
CPU" ;-) For the price, I don't see how it would be economical to
provice the motherboard, new case (new output connector(s)) and new
keyboard along with service time for less than $220. As far as
personal speculation, I doubt they provide any new expansion pins
since it must be backwards compatible. As far as memory goes, I
don't think they would use 256Kx4's for the 512K upgrade since
I haven't seen them anywhere and the upgrade should be available
pretty soon (even if there's no truth in advertising). I wouldn't
be suprised to learn you need to buy a daughterboard from RS though.
Neal Sedell
--
{zehntel | uw-beaver | reed | hp-pcd | hplabs | decvax}!tektronix!tekigm!nealsjlw@ariel.UUCP (J.WOOD) (08/09/86)
At a Local Radio Shack today I picked up a brochure about the new COCO 3 from Tandy Radio Shack. The storeman expected to have units in a month or so and I would expect he's right since the new COCO isn't a real great departure from the COCO 2. First the picture of unit on the front of the one sheet front/back brochure. Appearance is very similar to the COCO 2 with a cartridge slot on the right hand side. It's small and in the now standard white plastic. The keyboard is full throw. The red break key is now further out than on my HJL and is now labeled ESC/BREAK. Below that is a diamond of arrow keys. The clear key is on the right end of the qwety row. The above mentioned up-arrow key is directly to its right. The Return key is labeled Enter and is slightly larger than the others, but not as large as I like. It's crowded by the left and right arrow keys. There are two function keys F1 and F2 at the extreme lower right hand side of the keyboard opening. There are no annoying intervening keys between the Z and the ?/ keys and the shift keys, but again the shift keys are somewhat small for us ham handed typists. To the left is a ctrl key right next to the A, good, and an ALT key to the left of the Q. The keyboard is missing the braces, square brackets, vertical bar, backslash, tilde, underbar, and backquote. There is a monitor in the picture showing an office window with the usual icons in color. The monitor is labeled 'TANDY RGB COLOR MONITOR CM-8.' It's sitting on a nice little base stand. I will now type in verbatim the text from the back of the borchure. "The most powerful addition ever to Radio Shack's famous line of Color Computers will give you higher performance and greater versatility. The Color Computer 3 (26-3334) can be used in a va- riety of home or small business applications from graphics, pro- gramming and word processing, to database management, budgeting, spreadsheet analysis and many others. With 128K memory (expandable to 512K), the Color Computer 3 gives you the advantage of greater pro- gramming capability and data processing power, as well as higher resolution graphics. Superb Graphics Resolution "You can easily create incredibly detailed charts, graphs and engi- neering drawings in vivid colors by using the Color Computer 3 with a high resolution monitor - such as our CM-8 monitor (sold separately). The special higher graphics mode lets you print 160 x 192 or 320 x 192 - resolution graphics using 16 out of the 64 total colors. Or produce razor-sharp 640 x 192 - resolution in 4 colors. The 21 additional commands featured in the Color Computer 3's en- hanced Extended BASIC lan- guage allow you to switch between screens, colors and backgrounds at a higher resolu- tion and in a greater variety of colors than in any previous Color Computer. When connected to a TV, the Color Computer 3 will display text in a 32-character by 16-line format. Get a 40- character by 24-line or 80- character by 24 line display with a monitor. Best of all, the Color Computer 3 is compatible with Program Paks and accessories designed for the Color Com- puter 2 (in the Color Computer 2 mode). And it can be ex- panded easily and inexpensively with disk drives, printer, tele- phome modem and more. High-Res Color Monitor "Add the CM-8 RGB Analog Color Monitor (26-3215) for 80x24 text and 640x192 graphics. Features include a 13" diagonal screen and built-in speaker with volume control. Expand Your Capabilities "To organize your desk better, try our monitor platform (26-210) - it holds your monitor and gives more room to work. It also holds the FD-501 Color Thinline Disk drive (26-3131), which turns your color com-0 puter into a complete disk sys- tem capable of storing over 156,000 characters of data. The disk drive lets you store your own programs on disk, and opens the door to our wide li- brary of ready-to-run disk soft- ware. For example, you can run DeskMate 3 (26-3262), an inte- grated package of seven pro- grams on one disk: Text, Ledger, Index Cards, Paint, Telecom, Calendar, and Calculator. Specifications: "Microprocessor: 6809E 8-bit Clock Speed: 0.894 MHz or 1.788 Mhz Keyboard: 57 keys, including Control, Alternate, F1 and F2 Video Display: 16 lines of 32 uppercase characters (with any color TV) to 24 lines of 80 uppercase/lowercase charac- ters (with the optional CM-8 monitor). Color graphics range from 64 x 32 (8 colors) to 640 x 192 (4 colors and back- ground color) with 6 intermediate dis- play formats. High-resolution graphics available through machine language, Extended BASIC, or Program Paks. Mmeory: 128K RAM - internally ex- pandable to 512K. Twenty-one com- mands in enhanced Extended BASIC. Input/Output: 1500-baud cassette (re- corder optional). Two joystick ports. RS-232C serial port (4-pin only). Stan- dard TV (300 ohms), composite monitor and RGB Analog Monitor outputs. Dimensions: 3x10 3/8x14 3/4"". Power: 120VAC, 60 Hz. UL listed." Now some speculation: The memory chips used are probably 4ea. 64Kx4 and not 16ea. 64kx1s which means that we may have to wait a bit for that 512Kbyte upgrade until 256Kx4s are available. The full Color Computer 2 compatibility mode is very good news. Will the old drive controller work? They mention an "enhanced Extended Color BASIC" but no mention is made of the Disk BASIC. Perhaps some- one who is more conversant with RS catalog codes can tell me if the (26-3131) disk drive is new or not. This is the first COCO upgrade which has an inherent expanded capability over the original COCO. Mine is an old Silver Bullet with a 4K medallion, enhanced with a disk controller made up of spare RS parts, an HJL keyboard, 64K plus the Frank Hogg mod., etc. The RS-232 port is probable still the old bit banger, and you'll need the RS-232 Pak to improve things. Question, will there be a new expansion box with real address selection allowing one to keep the RS-232 port and the disk drive active at the same time? No mention is made of an OS9 release. Of course, I expect that the original COCO OS9 will run up to release 2.0, but how about a release of Level II? Joseph L. Wood, III AT&T Information Systems Laboratories, Middletown (201) 957-5475 ariel!jlw