MichOne@cup.portal.com (MICHAEL R TUCKER) (05/21/89)
A friend recently acquired a used TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with a cassette player and some plug in cartridges and a DMP-110 dot matrix printer. He is looking for a **cheap** disk drive (and whatever it takes to attach) and a **cheap** color monitor, and maybe some old software someone has floating around. Please advise and/or offer to sell your unused or unneeded items. Thanks. MichOne@cup.Portal.Com
leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson) (05/24/89)
In article <18615@cup.portal.com> MichOne@cup.portal.com (MICHAEL R TUCKER) writes:
<A friend recently acquired a used TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with a
<cassette player and some plug in cartridges and a DMP-110 dot matrix
<printer. He is looking for a **cheap** disk drive (and whatever it
<takes to attach) and a **cheap** color monitor, and maybe some old
<software someone has floating around. Please advise and/or offer
<to sell your unused or unneeded items. Thanks.
Have him look for a copy of a magazine called Rainbow. It's a magazine
for CoCo owners and will have lots of adds for disk controllers and
drives for a CoCo. The controller will cost him around $100. And it will
use fairly standard drives.
As for a cheap monitor, the CoCo 1 & 2 *only* have RF output, so you *can't*
use a monitor. If he wants to spend $$$ he can get a cartridge that will let
him hook up to a monitor (and get 80 column). But normally you hook a CoCo
up to a TV thru one of those switchboxes like you use for a video game.
--
Leonard Erickson ...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools.
Let's start with typewriters." -- Solomon Shortrtoscan@pacsbb.UUCP (Robert Toscani) (05/29/89)
I don't have the orginal posting so I am responding to the reply. The suggestion of getting Rainbow is a good one. Some Radio Shacks carry it so you can start there. It does have a lot of ads for stuff like disk drives. I bought my orginal drives through one of their advertisers and got a complete 2 drive system for what RS was then charging for Drive 0. But you are not completely correct about the monitor situation. There are still a few kits, also advertised in Rainbow, that let you tap into the video and audio output before it goes to the RF modulator, thus giving a composite monitor output, without having to buy Wordpak or one of those type products. You still won't get 80 column output but there are some software packages that generate more columns than the standard display, if you have something capable of showing them. The real problem is getting the old hardware. Most of the addons for the Coco 2 have disappeared with the release of the Coco 3. If he likes the Coco 2, he will like the 3. It comes with 128K, tv, composite monitor and analog output, all standard. Besides the builtin 32 x 16 display, it has 40 by 22 and 80 by 22 with true lowercase. So it may be more economical to buy the 3, which can be gotten mail order for about $130 and occasionaly for that price when the Shack has it on sale. For additional advice, you will do well (the orginal poster) to put in your Coco messages in comp.sys.m6809 which is devoted to the Coco. It will also mention LISTSERV, for the Coco, another source of info. Hope this helps. Robert Toscani