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uruguay & adam


soviet

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Hi in my country uruguay the coleco adam was sold until 1998, someone imported a sh*tload of coleco stock after the crash fix them and build a computer store here, the compueters where sold for a very long time most people first computer was a coleco adam.

They also run out of spare parts at some time and start building they own. Theres a lot of variations of the adam computer even the build custom boxes art banners cases monitors cabling and psu to complete the machines and sell them as "new" as i got mine, is the most common computer you can find on street markets used etc..

A company called iron byte created games like "narco police" and others for dinamic, i was lucky that one of the game devolopers is a coworker of mine his company not only developed games the also build a module using a coleco digital data drive the brake off the plastic pices that hold the coleco tape it can use normal music tape drives, a especial interface and shadow rom was build to use it in the zx spectrum he told that the controller use a shadow rom and works perfect using standard audio tapes a lot of people in uruguay and argentina purchased it. It was a chap way to have fast loading software. The developer told me that he disassembled the eos rom and find that the software that controll the data drive was very badly devolped and his sofware was much faster and reliable i find amusing that the modified drives this company sold work ok until today and most adams cannot load any software because they screw the tape after certain number of uses, even he managed to tune the firmware to load fine from 90 minuts drives .

 

TmT4Xe2f.jpg jSSOnxbk.jpg

BUimLoaR.jpg 2EHRmSTT.jpg qhZg91N3.jpg

NOXTJRiT.jpg KM15tPrN.jpg KYTGn5tW.jpg

Edited by soviet
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Hi in my country uruguay the coleco adam was sold until 1998, someone imported a sh*tload of coleco stock after the crash fix them and build a computer store here, the compueters where sold for a very long time most people first computer was a coleco adam.

They also run out of spare parts at some time and start building they own. Theres a lot of variations of the adam computer even the build custom boxes art banners cases monitors cabling and psu to complete the machines and sell them as "new" as i got mine, is the most common computer you can find on street markets used etc.

 

 

Sh*t. Wish I had known that. I was in Montevideo recently. :woozy:

Edited by phattyboombatty
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Thank you SO much for taking the time to share all this great information and pictures about the ADAM Computer that was sold in Uruguay and probably other South American countries. I saw the South American eBay auction in December of 2013 for one of these ADAM variations, but never got around to trying to find out more about them.

 

Suffice it to say that it sounds like a lot of CV & ADAM stock must have been bought from Coleco in order for it to have been so popular in Uruguay and now I am more sure of the total number of ADAMs having been manufactured being in the 950,000 range rather than the 100,000 that I have seen mentioned elsewhere. Between this new information, the large number that made it to Europe and sold by CBS (look into pongbeat's HUGE acquisition of CV&ADAMs), and all the companies and users groups (American Design Components, Alpha-1, ADAM's House/eColeco, etc., etc.) that bought train car loads of stock, there is absolutely no way that only 100,000 were made. Heck, the ADAM users group/mail order that I operated for years had an ADAM owners list obtained from Coleco of over 10,000 names and that was mainly people concentrated in the Midwest of the U.S.

 

It's funny that you say that the ADAM was the first computer for a lot of people in Uruguay seeing as that holds true for a lot of people in the U.S., Canada and probably Europe. This newbie-ism to computers did a lot of harm to the ADAM's reputation as a reliable computer, probably even more so than actual defective systems. It's also a funny coincidence that they were sold until 1998 as by this time most of the activity of the Users Groups finally died out with only the ADAMcon members and ADAM's House/eColeco carrying on.

 

In looking at the pictures you supplied and the ones that I saved from that auction, it strikes me as odd that this company concealed the Cartridge Slot on the Stand-Alone Memory Console, but still left the Cartridge Reset Switch as is. I understand that cartridges wouldn't have been easily obtained in South America, it was cheaper to make the new plastic cover without it, Data Pack (cassettes) copies of cartridge based games would be cheaper and easier to produce and so on, but still, why take away something (use ColecoVision carts) that was a big selling point. I'm sure some handy people discovered the Cartridge Slot and made a cut out in the plastic top to access it.

 

The custom ColecoVision case for use with the Expansion Module #3 Memory Console is ingenous and I really have to give that computer store/company high praise for making such a sleek design that includes (from what I can tell) Composite Video output via a DIN as well as RCA jack and then 1 Audio jack. The only things I see missing are, of course, a Cartridge Slot and the two Hand Controller ports which I assume are on the other side that is not pictured.

 

While I see that all of the Data Pack (cassette) software in the pictures are converted ColecoVision cartridge games or copies of ADAM software released by Coleco or 3rd Party companies in the mid to late 1980s, my interest is really peeked to hear that there was further hardware, firmware and software development by this company called Iron Byte. Do you have any further information about Iron Byte and the software/games that they developed for the ADAM that you could share... pics, videos or even backup copies/image files? For that matter, any further info that you can share about software and hardware that may have been made by others would be greatly appreciated.

 

Here are the pics that I saved from the auction in December of 2013.

 

 

 

 

 

 

post-25956-0-01271200-1422410680_thumb.jpg

post-25956-0-71305700-1422410684_thumb.jpg

post-25956-0-34818300-1422410690_thumb.jpg

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Hi in my country uruguay the coleco adam was sold until 1998, someone imported a sh*tload of coleco stock after the crash fix them and build a computer store here, the compueters where sold for a very long time most people first computer was a coleco adam.

They also run out of spare parts at some time and start building they own. Theres a lot of variations of the adam computer even the build custom boxes art banners cases monitors cabling and psu to complete the machines and sell them as "new" as i got mine, is the most common computer you can find on street markets used etc..

A company called iron byte created games like "narco police" and others for dinamic, i was lucky that one of the game devolopers is a coworker of mine his company not only developed games the also build a module using a coleco digital data drive the brake off the plastic pices that hold the coleco tape it can use normal music tape drives, a especial interface and shadow rom was build to use it in the zx spectrum he told that the controller use a shadow rom and works perfect using standard audio tapes a lot of people in uruguay and argentina purchased it. It was a chap way to have fast loading software. The developer told me that he disassembled the eos rom and find that the software that controll the data drive was very badly devolped and his sofware was much faster and reliable i find amusing that the modified drives this company sold work ok until today and most adams cannot load any software because they screw the tape after certain number of uses, even he managed to tune the firmware to load fine from 90 minuts drives .

 

TmT4Xe2f.jpg jSSOnxbk.jpg

BUimLoaR.jpg 2EHRmSTT.jpg qhZg91N3.jpg

NOXTJRiT.jpg KM15tPrN.jpg KYTGn5tW.jpg

 

This is INCREDIBLE!! I sold and shipped an IDE package to a fellow in Uraguay and had email conversations with him a year or two ago. IF my memory serves me correctly I want to say Benny, but not sure. Anyway, he found all of the ADAM sites here in the US and had a good knowledge of the ADAM. I had never seen what variety of ADAM he used, but find it incredible that some company apparently carried on the ADAM after the originals ran out. Another testament to the quality and popularity of our ADAM - after the bungled introduction Coleco did for the 1983 Christmas introduction.

Edited by adamcon
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I was the one that purchased an ide interface the past year from Bob and is the best thing you can do for your adam :D.

Maybe i was misunderstod, when i say that ironbyte developed hardware using a digital data drive what they do was build a hardware interface and os/firmware for the sinclair zx spectrum. here are some pics of the interface board. They break the posts on the drive that hold de data packs so audio casettes can by used and build their own operating system from scratch to run the data drive, later years the developers get holf of a adam compueter and dumped EOS but they found the rutines they developed where better that the one found on EOS.

 

Here are some pictures of the data drive interface.

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NIAD, after a lot of investigation here i found that the only real provider of coleco adams was based on uruguay some computers found the way to argentina but on the rest of the countrys "brasil,chile,argentina" theres very little ammount of coleco adams.

I think they covered the cartrige connector because there very little coleco game systems in the market and cartriges are a rare find, the plastic they used for this was very low quality brittle and look like is plastic vacumm forming get very yellowed fast.

Almost all tapes i have are buck rogers or smart basic tapes overwrited, on the "adam" store i remember there was a big room full from floor to roof of buck rogers and smart basic tapes sealed, thousands.

I don't see much point on dumping the tapes seem to by standard software some have been "translated" to spanish or have hacked menus for multigames or start cp/m and jump to a menu.

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Thanks for the further pics of the Data Drive interface for the ZX Spectrum. I understood that this was a hardware/software product for another computer, but glad you decided to clearify further with all those great pics. These people were pretty ingenous to make this interface to use the Data Drive on the Zx Spectrum.

 

Coleco actually made a Data Pack Formetter by converting an Exp. Mod. #3 Memory Console to an all inclusive device with power supply, custom firmware to format center or right directory ddps depending on what drive you put the cassette in and it did not require a TV or Monitor as the process was all automated... plug it in, place a cassette in the appropriate drive, after a couple seconds the unit would start formatting and a couple minutes later you would have yourself an ADAM data pack. Another item that I once possessed, but went bye-bye with my original collection. I bring this up because we had thousands of Buck Rogers and SmartBasic ddps like that store you mention and we used this device to fix/reformat hundreds of bad/corrupted ddps.

 

Understood about the software on DDP that you have being common items that everyone has already, but any unknown software (to us here in North America) like the one you mentioned (Narco Police by Iron Bytes) would be very interesting for us Northerners too hear further about.

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There were actually two devices created to format cassettes into data packs or reformat a bad data pack.

 

The Coleco made unit that I mentioned above and I would venture a guess that it was a one of a kind item that was made by one of the talented people at Coleco after the bad DDPs started piling up.

 

Then there was Syd Carter's MegaCopy Tape Formatter that attached between the Data Drive and the Memory Console connector pins. There were 3 versions of this device made before the software and hardware was spot on.

 

Better for Coleco to make you buy their DDPs for $10-$15 each than include the formatting functionality built-into the OS so that users could make their own.

 

Checkout my Adam Computer Collectors List for a very detailed list of everything that was made specifically for the ADAM and also checkout Joe Blenkle's website... it's a great source of info with hundreds of newsletters available in PDF format. The link is in my SIG. Oh yeah, also checkout www.theadamresource.com

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That's why I was asking because if there's still manufacturer close-out inventory still out there I'm in the market to find one MIB.

Those kind of finds are getting very scarce, but are always great to hear about if you are not lucky enough to be the one to make the find. Best chance to acquire a NIB or CIB system is via eBay, Craigslist or putting out the word here on AtariAge.
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  • 1 month later...

This was the cheapest proto board you can get your hands on here when i was a boy, some days ago i walked in a small electronic store this guy used to sell this "proto boards" for like 10 cents when i was studing electronics i have done a lot of small circuits on them the guy still have a huge pice of 30 o 40 of this boards still connected on display. I looked on my electronic scraps and found this one i purchased like 18 years ago. Seems the adam was usefull for a lot of more stuff that i even remember :D.

2cntnvb.jpg

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A company called iron byte created games like "narco police" and others for dinamic....

Thanks for sharing the info and pic on the Proto/Dev PCB.

 

Also, from your original post, it sounds like there might have been some ADAM software development done by Iron Byte and released by Dinamic. If this is the case, do you have any further information that you can share about these software titles seeing as they definitely never made there way up to North America and therefore would be brand new to all of us northerners.

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NIAD when i say that i was saying that Iron Byte developed the interface to use DDD on the zx spectrum and the firmware, they never developed any software for the coleco adam.

Sorry for the confusion.

 

Also the "proto board" if you don't recognise it is the little pcb located at the end of the ribbon cable coming from the coleco board that have the connector edge, but they seem to be never finished the solder pads are new and the boards are still linked in big tablets of 30 or 40.

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Yes, I understood about the ZX Spectrum interface and all, but you mentioned a game called Narco Police and was wondering if that was a game released for the ADAM or was that a ZX Spectrum release? Also, just trying to verify if there was any other "original" independent software development released specifically for the ADAM in Uruguay and South America.

 

The Proto board did look familiar, I just couldn't place it until you just mentioned the PCB that joins the ADAM Logic Board to the ColecoVision Delta Board inside the Memory Console.

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