knudsen (12/11/82)
I've had bad experiences with multi-path net mail, so am posting this in reply to Bob Miorelli's interest in an $800-1500 HC, including disk. I condsider the Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo) to be the lowerst- priced computer with serious initial capabilities and expansion provisions. By mail-order (see ads in 80-Micro mag), 16K Exteneded Basic model is $325. !st floppy & controller is $475, so that's $800 right there. The built-in BASIC is very good, but you can get Forth for $50-100 and PASCAL for about the same. If you expand to 64K RAM (commonly sold by the Shack as 32K, but it's relly 64!) for about $150, you can run FLEX or OS-9, a UN*X clone that supports C. I think the Shack itself sells LOGO. All sorts of printers and plotters(!) are available, plus a graphics input tablet ($350 list). Total of 4 floppies can be supported. Secret to all this is that CoCo uses a 6809, probably the best of the 8-bit micros (the 8088 is really 16-bit, etc). Nice to write assembler for (several assembler systems are available). Only problem is, you mentioned hard disk. Shack has a big Winchester for at least one of its black & white Z80 (or 68000) machines, but I don't know what the future holds in this respect for CoCo. Given current prices (at least $3K for a Winch sysstem), your uncle & nephews may not face that problem for a while. If hard disk is necessary, try Osbourne, IBM-PC, or pseudo-Apple, or Radio Shack Model II. mike k