New CoCo owner

[NML32]

First-time CoCo owner

I bought a CoCo 2 & 3 from eBay with a floppy drive (no FDC) and two joysticks.

 

So far I've added a few things.

- Triad 512K SRAM Upgrade from Cloud9tech for the CoCo3

- FDC from Ian Mavric

- CoCo SDC, I printed a case I found on Thingiverse.com My Case

 

I read online that inverted colors in some games are normal and all you need to do is hit the reset button a few times and it will correct the colors. I haven't had luck getting correct colors on Pitfall II. I haven't had time to try many games yet so I don't know how many games this will happen on.

 

I have a question about Sailor Man. Could someone tell me how to save the High Score table?

 

I think I'll upgrade the CoCo 2 to 64k Ram one of these days.

 

I'm really enjoying the CoCo color computer.

 

 

[linville]

Pitfall II is a CoCo3 game, IIRC. You probably need to figure-out how to tell it you are using a composite video monitor rather than RGB.

[Nebulon]

Congrats!

 

If you need to invert colors on the CoCo 3, hold ALT and press Reset.

http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/coco.html

 

As for the CoCo 2, you might end up having to press reset 5 or 6 times before it switches colors (luck of the draw).

 

The bulk of the CoCo 2 software out there is 32K, so no rush on adding more RAM to it (plus, BASIC only accesses 32K anyway).

 

 

If you can find them, try to locate an adapter to allow you to use DB9 joysticks (like the classic Atari stick) on the CoCo. There were a number of brands available back in the day. And if you're tech-savvy, it's apparently really easy to just make your own adapter. I had one custom made, and the guy that did it said it was simple to do.

 

Not sure about high scores on Sailor Man. Is the diskette write-protected?

[Nebulon]

Here's an ad for that joystick adapter I mentioned:

https://archive.org/stream/198304Rainbow/198304-Rainbow#page/n69/mode/2up

 

https://archive.org/search.php?query=rainbow%20magazine (index)

 

Plus a few links to reference material for your new computers:

https://archive.org/details/Color_Computer_3_Exended_Basic_1986_Tandy

 

https://archive.org/details/Color_Computer_Assembly_Language_Programming_1983_William_Barden_Jr

[NML32]

Thanks everyone for the tips and links.

 

My 512k memory arrived today and when I went to install it I was surprised to see the computer was already upgraded to 512k. The board has 16 chips and a date of 1986 by PBJ Inc.

 

Thanks for the tip about changing colors but for Pitfall2 I had to hold F1+reset since Alt+reset didn't work. It's good to know there are ways to get the correct palette.

[BassGuitari]

Pitfall II is a CoCo3 game, IIRC. You probably need to figure-out how to tell it you are using a composite video monitor rather than RGB.

Per the manual, it will run on a 64K CoCo1/2.