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ColecoVision was the inspiration for the Famicom


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Another thing I would like to mention

 

When Coleco decided to drop their Videogames line ... their destiny went sealed at the same moment

 

They bet on plush instead videogames, as Mr. Bromley said himself

 

Coleco had to choose (without even know it?) to be a Toy OR a videogame company

In 1983-1984 Coleco had PLENTY of money ....

They start going bad by droping the CV and ADAM ..... wich lead me to believe they could had survived the game crash

I recall my friends and I were keep looking for some new games unitl the NES came out

I never notice there were a videogame crash here, only though alot of people were buying games and that's why there were not much new choices in stores .....

Even at the rental club, new titles appears every month ...

Ah.... what a wonderfull time!

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So it turned out that Cabbage Patch Kids were the fad and video games were the future.

 

Nintendo won the bet, Coleco lost, and the rest is history.

 

BTW, just what exactly were these "wafers" supposed to me made of, anyways?

 

You might find interesting this article from Electronic Fun of June 1983 that I put on my site :

 

pelectronic_fun_jun83.png

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So it turned out that Cabbage Patch Kids were the fad and video games were the future.

 

Nintendo won the bet, Coleco lost, and the rest is history.

 

BTW, just what exactly were these "wafers" supposed to me made of, anyways?

 

You might find interesting this article from Electronic Fun of June 1983 that I put on my site :

 

pelectronic_fun_jun83.png

 

"Donkey Kong snatches Betsey"???

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You might find interesting this article from Electronic Fun of June 1983 that I put on my site :

 

pelectronic_fun_jun83.png

 

Thanks for sharing this, really interesting reading.

Some of the interesting things I noticed:

 

- Looks like Super Smurf was in advanced stage of development. The reviewer says he spent 2 days with that game. So what happen to that particular build?

- I had read many times about Coleco engineers telling how they couldn't get the wafer tape to work. The reviewer spent 2 days with the thing and didn't mention anything wrong with it.

- The reviewer mentions several times things like "better resolution", "more vivid colors", and "wider palette". Oh, how people were easily impressed in the 80s. They could see things that weren't there just because of the hype. ... :)

- From the fast load times he mentions, I suppose the SGM already included the DMA chip later used with the ADAM. Unless those review units were fake and the games were loading from ROM inside the unit.

- Notice how the reviewer hypes computers during the whole article. Also notice how he mentions computers were expensive (something that was going to change drastically during 83). Here we can see the crash coming first hand... Fast forward 30 years and now tablets and smart phones are going to kill consoles… again. If at least people stopped paying attention to trend analysts and cared more about the games they are playing, we wouldn’t need to go through those dark periods in gaming history…

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OK

 

I've to show you that Super Smurf Gargamel's Castle screen

Look ALOT more beautiful than the CV version :)

 

 

Enjoy! :D

Well, IT ABOUT TIME you shared one of those screenshots that you've been talking about with the rest of us! I've only seen the one that was included in a French magazine that I seem to recall Crapahute making available.

 

That screenie does look awesome... especially the moon light shining through the large opening in the wall.

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- Looks like Super Smurf was in advanced stage of development. The reviewer says he spent 2 days with that game. So what happen to that particular build?

That is the MILLION dollar question that a lot of people have asked over the years. There are two former Coleco employees who would know... Eric Bromley and Walter Banks. Another game that comes to mind is the ADAM version of Wheel of Fortune... someone has to have it or at the very least HAD it at one time.

 

- I had read many times about Coleco engineers telling how they couldn't get the wafer tape to work. The reviewer spent 2 days with the thing and didn't mention anything wrong with it.

I've always heard that it wasn't that they couldn't get it to work, but that they couldn't get it to work reliably / for extended periods of time.

 

- From the fast load times he mentions, I suppose the SGM already included the DMA chip later used with the ADAM. Unless those review units were fake and the games were loading from ROM inside the unit.

Would have to think that the review units were fake, just like some of the ADAM demonstrations at a couple of the trade shows.

Edited by NIAD
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So how did

- Looks like Super Smurf was in advanced stage of development. The reviewer says he spent 2 days with that game. So what happen to that particular build?

That is the MILLION dollar question that a lot of people have asked over the years. There are two former Coleco employees who would know... Eric Bromley and Walter Banks. Another game that comes to mind is the ADAM version of Wheel of Fortune... someone has to have it or at the very least HAD it at one time.

 

- I had read many times about Coleco engineers telling how they couldn't get the wafer tape to work. The reviewer spent 2 days with the thing and didn't mention anything wrong with it.

I've always heard that it wasn't that they couldn't get it to work, but that they couldn't get it to work reliably / for extended periods of time.

 

- From the fast load times he mentions, I suppose the SGM already included the DMA chip later used with the ADAM. Unless those review units were fake and the games were loading from ROM inside the unit.

Would have to think that the review units were fake, just like some of the ADAM demonstrations at a couple of the trade shows.

 

So how did they fake those?

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They did not fake it ....

 

When they first presented the SuperGame Module at the CES, the Wafer tapes, or maybe the Wafer Driver, were so cheap that after some hours the Wafer tape broke

So, Coleco decided to use a video player inside the SuperGame Module to presents their Wafer games

People did not beleive it ... and did not get much interests except the fact that it use pre-recorded videos

 

Both computer Module and SuperGame Module was the plan since almost the begining of the Colecovision development

The SuperGame Module DID work , ..... please, put that rumour to rest! ...

 

At the same time, Coleco did also use the Wafer technology into the ADAM, ...you can see pics almost everywhere of the ADAM prototype It was obviously abandonned when they saw the reliability of the Wafer used into the SGM

 

Some SuperGames using an actual SuperGame Module was reviewed by some magazines back then, I've one here that guy said he played with the SGM for about 2 days ....talking about the vibrant colors, better gameplay ...etc...

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My bet is...

 

Since Coleco wanted Entrepo to make an exclusive dedicated Wafer Drive and Tapes for Coleco's SGM , so Coleco could control people from making illegal pirate copies of their SuperGames ..... I'm pretty sure the problem comes from here,

 

Other Computers (like C64) at the time did use alot of the Wafer since you could store alot of data into them ..... that's until the 5 1/4 went available

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I'll have to check my collection, but I do recall an interview with a Coleco R&D employee stating that the biggest problem with the Wafer Tapes was the tape actually stretching after prolonged use rendering any data stored on it as unreadable.

 

These R&D personal didn't give up easily on the Wafer Drive as can be evidenced by the first ADAM Computer proto (one is known to exist and is owned by Willie Banks IIRC) including the Wafer Drives.

post-25956-0-89033900-1335310222_thumb.jpg

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I'll have to check my collection, but I do recall an interview with a Coleco R&D employee stating that the biggest problem with the Wafer Tapes was the tape actually stretching after prolonged use rendering any data stored on it as unreadable.

 

These R&D personal didn't give up easily on the Wafer Drive as can be evidenced by the first ADAM Computer proto (one is known to exist and is owned by Willie Banks IIRC) including the Wafer Drives.

 

That's probably quite right ;)

 

This is the ADAM proto that was built at the same time as the SGM

 

Same thing, one for gaming, the other with a Keyboard and a ''PC Os''

Same technology .... as Coleco done with the final design

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Well, I must confess that I always found the wafer drive and tapes more charming than the DDPs. :)

I also recall reading an article where they described the Computer Module as an extension of the SGM, thus the expansion port in the SGM. The SGM was going to expand the CV RAM to 32KB plus the wafer drive, then the computer module would add 32KB of extra RAM (for a total of 64KB), plus keyboard and BASIC (and perhaps the printer). Cannot remember exactly the magazine name though.

That was a prettty interesting plan actually.

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... the biggest problem with the Wafer Tapes was the tape actually stretching after prolonged use rendering any data stored on it as unreadable.

 

Wich lead me to beleive the problem was the Dedicated Coleco Wafer Drive, since other computers did not had that problem with their Wafer Drive/Tapes

Probably a big reason for the failure of the Wafer Drive and Wafer Tapes was the increased speed at which the SGM / original ADAM required it to work at seeing as these Entrepo Wafer Drives were around previously and used on other systems of the time. Not being a hardware guru, I'm only guessing here, but it seems that the Coleco implementation had to operate at speeds at or beyond it's intended safe operating speed.

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... the biggest problem with the Wafer Tapes was the tape actually stretching after prolonged use rendering any data stored on it as unreadable.

 

Wich lead me to beleive the problem was the Dedicated Coleco Wafer Drive, since other computers did not had that problem with their Wafer Drive/Tapes

Probably a big reason for the failure of the Wafer Drive and Wafer Tapes was the increased speed at which the SGM / original ADAM required it to work at seeing as these Entrepo Wafer Drives were around previously and used on other systems of the time. Not being a hardware guru, I'm only guessing here, but it seems that the Coleco implementation had to operate at speeds at or beyond it's intended safe operating speed.

 

 

Judging by the DDP speed, I would be no way surprise if that was the main problem with the Wafer Tape speed

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So how did they fake those?

From Bill Rose (former Coleco employee who designed most of the ADAM Computer):

The microwafer drive was the endless loop I mentioned. Didn't work. The SuperGame Module was supposed to be based on that but as CES neared we realized it couldn't cut it. The unit that went to CES had to use ROM'd games "under the covers". The tapes only held the ROM bank select number repeated over and over. We would simply read the ROM bank code off the tapes, delay starting the game for a period of time and then play it from ROM. Had some quirks too. If someone removed the tape during play and put in another tape, the old game continued to play unless they hit reset. Some uncomfortable moments in front of press as the demonstrator screwed up. The rest is history.

 

He also stated:

 

Adam was supposed to use miniature endless loop tapes - much smaller versions of the 8 track tapes of the 70's. Problem was

reliability. They jammed just like their larger cousins. We could never get them to operate for any length of time. We scrapped them for the cassette tape

drives.

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... the biggest problem with the Wafer Tapes was the tape actually stretching after prolonged use rendering any data stored on it as unreadable.

 

Wich lead me to beleive the problem was the Dedicated Coleco Wafer Drive, since other computers did not had that problem with their Wafer Drive/Tapes

Probably a big reason for the failure of the Wafer Drive and Wafer Tapes was the increased speed at which the SGM / original ADAM required it to work at seeing as these Entrepo Wafer Drives were around previously and used on other systems of the time. Not being a hardware guru, I'm only guessing here, but it seems that the Coleco implementation had to operate at speeds at or beyond it's intended safe operating speed.

 

 

Judging by the DDP speed, I would be no way surprise if that was the main problem with the Wafer Tape speed

 

Did the DDP's run too fast or too slow?

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He also stated:

 

Adam was supposed to use miniature endless loop tapes - much smaller versions of the 8 track tapes of the 70's. Problem was

reliability. They jammed just like their larger cousins. We could never get them to operate for any length of time. We scrapped them for the cassette tape

drives.

 

Bill is talking about the Stringy Floppy (as posted by ed1475) ... wich is similar but the size is about a regular DDP

I think Coleco did think by using bigger ''Wafer'' (Stringy Floopy) ... they would get better results ..... wich was not the case

 

Stringy and Wafer did work pretty much the same

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