How good was the Coleco Adam compared to other computers of the time?

[carlsson]

Without looking it up, I believe in the fall of 1983 you could get a C64 + 1541 for less than $800, probably $750 which exactly matches the launch price of the ADAM with tape drives.

 

For those willing to convert CatPix' price references into USD, divide the FF by 8.5. Those prices likely include value added tax TVA which today is 20%, not sure what it was back in 1983.

[mr_me]

C64 and floppy drive pricing might have been a bit much for most families in 1982; sales were modest that year. In 1983, pricing may have been more practical for a c64+floppy system; c64 sales improved but well behind colecovision. Coleco couldn't even get Adams out in numbers in 1983. With further price drops, 1984 was when c64 sales peaked, selling way more than colecovision and adam put together. C64+floppy sold for $450 (even lower with promotions) while the adam bundle with printer was $650 in 1984.

 

The home productivity market that Coleco was targeting never materialised; how many c64 or zx spectrum owners bought printers. The c64 was the better games machine and you couldn't pirate colecovision cartridges. The c64 took over the video games market as much as it did the home computer market.

[NIAD]

Everyone probably knows me well enough to not be surprised that I will always "champion" the ADAM Computer, but will also honestly discuss the bad as well. So just a couple quick points and I'll save my longer response for tonight.

 

- the CV and the ADAM were developed almost concurrently by Coleco. The plan was to expand the CV into a full fledged computer from pretty early on

 

- the rush to market to capitalize on the Xmas '83 season sealed the ADAM's fate.

 

- ADAMs started showing up in retail stores in early October '83... about 4-6 weeks late... predominately in the Eastern half of the U.S.

 

- Estimates are about a 33% return rate by purchasers. Remember who the system was marketed to/at... computer neophytes. In my discussions with numerous former Coleco employees, a couple of whom handled repairs of returned systems in the Amsterdam, NY facility, most systems that were returned were fully operational. One estimate has it that only 10% were actually defective...system power supply in printer DOA, Digital Data Drive inoperative, just a data pack eaten or zapped by the EMT release by the printer. Actually failure rates were pretty much along the lines of the IBM PCjr.

 

- Poorly written/confusing documentation and lack of warning labels caused a lot of these early returns, but the computer inexperience of most ADAM purchasers was key here. First time I turned on my ADAM, I watched my father start banging on the keyboard because he coukdn't figure out how to use the word processor and HE NEVER USED IT AGAIN! Simply put... RTFM and if you still don't understand, think a lottle bit before you act.

 

- The Digital Data Drive came about because of the failure of the Entrepo Wafer Tape which was to be used for both the Super Game Module and the ADAM. It was a helluva lot cheaper alternative to a disk drive being included, I/O operations worked just like disk drive I/O operations, was pretty damn fast and even though sone may dispute this... reliable.

 

- By late Nov. '83, Coleco was delivering a reliable system.

 

- The financial hit that Coleco took re. the ADAM in 1983 ended the ADAM in Coleco's mind no matter what Coleco said early on in 1984. Coleco threw in the towel and then there was no hope for major 3rd Party support.

 

To be continued...

[mr_me]

Still coleco only shipped 95,000 Adams in 1983. My understanding is that was due to production problems. Nevertheless, they missed out on the 1983 season. Third party developers will go where the install base is, adam did have plenty of third party games through colecovision cartridges in 1983 and 1984.

[CatPix]

- Poorly written/confusing documentation and lack of warning labels caused a lot of these early returns, but the computer inexperience of most ADAM purchasers was key here. First time I turned on my ADAM, I watched my father start banging on the keyboard because he coukdn't figure out how to use the word processor and HE NEVER USED IT AGAIN! Simply put... RTFM and if you still don't understand, think a lottle bit before you act.

 

Interesting experience.

 

This point is quite important. It reminds me how Amstrad made a "silent killer" machine. It's a machine that almost nobody but die-hard Amstrad fans know, yet, it outsold the CPC 4-fold.

 

The Amstrad PCW was sold as a word processor, but unlike most words processors of the time (which could only have their word-processing software loaded and nothing else), it was a computer with a really clear and intuitive interface (really, the PCW is an Amstrad CPC stuck in monochrome hi-res mode and no sound chip - and with 256 or 512 ko of RAM.)

They started selling it in 1985, and aside from switching from 3" floppies to 3,5" floppies around 1990, their remained unchanged till Amstrad discontinued them in 1995, after they sold about 8 millions of them.

 

One clever thing they did was to not include anything in ROM but a simple bootloader, meaning that people would only need to insert a floppy (the PCW is probably the only European 8 bits computer that never got tape support, even as an option or as 3rd party accessory) and wait for Locoscript (the file management that could get into word processing mode), CP/M or any bootable software to load.

 

Another clever thing was that the Amstrad printer was sold with the PCW, but, totally opposite to the ADAM, the printer power came FROM the PCW, not the opposite.

 

As a side effect of being close to the CPC architecture and being CP/M compatible, it got tons of games, mostly CPC ports but also CP/M text games.

[NIAD]

Yep. Only producing 95,000 systems for the '83 holiday season was devastating. This was due to a combination of delays caused by hardware development issues and having to retrofit all the assembly lines from CV to ADAM. All the growing pains that we are fully aware of now, but that Coleco wasn't prepared enough to handle then. They eventually righted the ship and reaching an agreement with Honeywell to handle warranty/repairs was key, but still to little to late when the bottom line is always profits, expenses, loses.

 

Coleco wasn't prepared for the Cabbage Patch Kids craze either.

 

As far as cartridge based games, they were a god send, but people wanted and demanded more ADAM specific software based solutions. Coleco did a pretty good job with the releases they made, but there just needed to be more.

[BassGuitari]

Everyone probably knows me well enough to not be surprised that I will always "champion" the ADAM Computer, but will also honestly discuss the bad as well. So just a couple quick points and I'll save my longer response for tonight...

 

Very interesting points!

[mbd30]

BTW, the Mattel Aquarius made the Coleco ADAM seem like a stunning success by comparison. That was released in June of 1983 and then discontinued in October of 1983.

[TigerSuperman]

Yep. Only producing 95,000 systems for the '83 holiday season was devastating. This was due to a combination of delays caused by hardware development issues and having to retrofit all the assembly lines from CV to ADAM. All the growing pains that we are fully aware of now, but that Coleco wasn't prepared enough to handle then. They eventually righted the ship and reaching an agreement with Honeywell to handle warranty/repairs was key, but still to little to late when the bottom line is always profits, expenses, loses.

 

Coleco wasn't prepared for the Cabbage Patch Kids craze either.

 

As far as cartridge based games, they were a god send, but people wanted and demanded more ADAM specific software based solutions. Coleco did a pretty good job with the releases they made, but there just needed to be more.

I'm not even sure Coleco was big enough to try releasing a mass market computer and even if they were Coleco always panicked when something successful happened. The Cabbage Patch success took them completely off guard and they had no idea what to do with the company in order to continue growing so they put their hands in all the pies and made some brain-dead decisions like beating competitors to the market by any means necessary.

 

I think Colecos biggest mistake between the ADAM production and Cabbage patch craze was not realizing Cabbage patch wasn't Barbie. They lost more money chasing that delusion then in electronics. A mistake that they never would recover from.

 

BTW, the Mattel Aquarius made the Coleco ADAM seem like a stunning success by comparison. That was released in June of 1983 and then discontinued in October of 1983.

I'm not sure what Mattel was smoking releasing a computer with mid 70's specifications in the 80's that was weaker than their 1979 designed Intellivision game console.

Edited October 3, 2018 by TigerSuperman

[mr_me]

There are some parallels between the Coleco Adam and Mattel's original Keyboard Component. Both had plans from the beginning to be a home computer. Both had integrated, high speed, fully automatic tape drives. Both were targeting the home productivity market not the hobby or business market. Mattel actually built a large team of developers to support it with ready made application software. They were also prepared to spend the marketing dollars necessaary. Mattel couldn't hit the price point they wanted and never seriously launched the computer. Realistically, pricing wasn't much different than other computers in 1980. The Mattel computer looked like the Apple II form factor and Coleco's like an IBM PC. However, they both lacked the open architecture that made those computers great.

Edited October 4, 2018 by mr_me

[Pixelboy]

The Mattel computer looked like the Apple II form factor and Coleco's like an IBM PC. However, they both lacked the open architecture that made those computers great.

I have to voice my disagreement here. The Adam's architecture was as open as they could possibly make it:

 

1) It had PCB slots for expansion on the motherboard (although the plastic casing of the module often got in the way in terms of height). These expansion slots were used for RAM upgrades, among other things.

 

2) It had the AdamNet system that formed a framework for controlled I/O with peripherals. Peripherals like disk drives could even be daisy-chained through AdamNet, and most of the people who worked with the AdamNet system (to create hardware) had a good opinion of it, in terms of technical design.

 

3) There was also the "old" ColecoVision expansion port, which was actually used by peripherals like the Adam auto-dialer module, in addition to the familiar Expansion Module #1.

 

This just shows that having an open architecture does not equate to commercial success. You have to generate a lot of consumer interest in your computer for third-party companies to take notice and invest in making custom hardware for specific applications. Coleco handled pretty much all the development of such hardware (aside from a few interesting items like Micro Innovation's floppy drive) and since the Adam was marketed as a family computer, there wasn't a lot of real-world applications that warranted making specialized hardware, so the expandability of the Adam was mostly wasted as a result.

[NIAD]

Mr-Me... If by open architecture you mean just supplying a bare bones CPU and Keyboard and then a Video Card, Sound Card, Game Card, etc. has to be purchased then you are correct. Otherwise, the ADAM was probably the most open comouter system and easily expanded of it's time. As Pixelboy mentioned, there are 3 internal expansion slots that Coleco put to use via a Modem, Language Card and Memory Expander. External options included the Expansion Interface which was used by the Autodialer and Atari Adapter as well as two Adamnet ports which are similar to the modern era USB ports with it's daisy channing of hardware devices ability.

 

This is only a small sampling of hardware expansion options because once 3rd Party homebrew companies starting developing and releasing hardware items, everything imaginable was developed from Serial and Parallel Cards, memory expanders up to 2Mb, RLL and MFM Hard Drives, Speech Synthesizers, Clock Cards, Sound Digiters, MIDI Interfaces, 80 columns units, larger size disk drives, IDE interfaces, etc., etc.

 

The form factor which mimmicked a PC was also very important here with it's separate CPU and Keyboard unlike what Apple, Commodore, TI, Tandy, Atari and others had released before and even after the Adam.

[carlsson]

How much a C64 + 1541 cost in say November 1982 isn't relevant if you compare with a system not released until October 1983. Also it seems odd to compare the sales figures of a $175 games console with a $595 home computer, even if both were released simultaneously. Sure if the ADAM had been ready to be launched already in November 1982 for say $900 for the complete system, it would have made an entirely different story.

 

Commodore ran a very aggressive price war during the spring of 1983, more or less slashing their prices by 1/3. Their main victim of course was Texas Instruments, though I'm sure people at Coleco watched this in fear for their upcoming ADAM computer. If the C64 pricing had remained more or less unchanged throughout 1983, Coleco would have been far more competitive on price. Even Atari made what they could to keep up in the price war, though they didn't have the same "vertical integration" of chips that Commodore had with MOS/CSG.

[TigerSuperman]

I have to voice my disagreement here. The Adam's architecture was as open as they could possibly make it:

 

1) It had PCB slots for expansion on the motherboard (although the plastic casing of the module often got in the way in terms of height). These expansion slots were used for RAM upgrades, among other things.

 

2) It had the AdamNet system that formed a framework for controlled I/O with peripherals. Peripherals like disk drives could even be daisy-chained through AdamNet, and most of the people who worked with the AdamNet system (to create hardware) had a good opinion of it, in terms of technical design.

 

3) There was also the "old" ColecoVision expansion port, which was actually used by peripherals like the Adam auto-dialer module, in addition to the familiar Expansion Module #1.

 

This just shows that having an open architecture does not equate to commercial success. You have to generate a lot of consumer interest in your computer for third-party companies to take notice and invest in making custom hardware for specific applications. Coleco handled pretty much all the development of such hardware (aside from a few interesting items like Micro Innovation's floppy drive) and since the Adam was marketed as a family computer, there wasn't a lot of real-world applications that warranted making specialized hardware, so the expandability of the Adam was mostly wasted as a result.

I think people often equate open architecture to the PC clones that would later dominate and often associate it with success as a result.

 

Open Architecture never guaranteed success, all computers that had better architecture than the C64 got clobbered by the C64.

[mr_me]

Technically, the C64 was open architecture. Commodore openly shared the system specifications for third party developers.

[CatPix]

What made the PC successful is that in addition to open architecture, was the ability of being easily backward compatible.

It's what nailed the Amiga's coffin; as it's architecture couldn't be easily upgraded without breaking older software.The other computers that survived in both home and professionnal uses were also the ones that were bakward compatible; Apple (until they abandonned the PowerPC CPU), IBM and the S/360 - Z series, etc...

[AMenard]

I consider the Adam in the same niche as the TI-99/4A. Both are nice niche machine plagued by some stupid business decision that came back to byte them in the yazoo. Yes the tape drives of the Adam were a bit silly, but then again the C64 was stuck with the 1541 that wasn't really all that faster or store that much more data on it. If it wasn't for the reliability issues with the Adam I would bet it would have an active community like the TI still enjoy here. But the reality is, that most people did disposed of theirs when the PSU or other part stopped working and replaced it by a PC running a pirated copy of wordperfect or some other software.

 

Personnaly, I would like to find one, even a non functionnal one to fix and add to my setup. I'd love to try my hand at coding for the machine.

[NIAD]

Technically, the C64 was open architecture. Commodore openly shared the system specifications for third party developers.

Thanks for your clarification of your use of the phrase "open architecture".

 

So, indeed, Coleco was slow to release the "ADAM Technical Manual" to 3rd Parties, but all things considering with what we now know, this was no surprise and I don't see it as a major factor in the ADAM's eventual failure. Where Coleco failed was in slow walking the EOS Programmers Manual which hamstrung potential 3rd Party software development... so much so that it gave these companies additional time to decide whether or not to commit to supporting the system. With all the delays and other issues we've discussed as well as bad press the ADAM was receiving, it became a very easy decision for these companies not to support the ADAM or withdraw their announced support. Without software, even the most technically advanced computer or videogame system will fail and thru their actions or lack thereof, Coleco was left to fend for themselves.

[NIAD]

Personnaly, I would like to find one, even a non functionnal one to fix and add to my setup. I'd love to try my hand at coding for the machine.

If you eventually decide to scatch that itch, send MilliV a PM. He usually has a couple systems on hand for sale that have been completely refurbished, tested and sold at a very fair price. eBay is an option as well and i've seen a lot more listed in the past couple months, but as i'm sure you know, buyer beware.

 

I had a C=64 setup right next to my Adam back in the 80s and couldn't believe how slow the 1541 drive was compared to the Adam's FDD. Heck, the Adam's Data Drive sometimes seemed just as fast at least until the FastRun carts became available for the C=64.

[TigerSuperman]

What made the PC successful is that in addition to open architecture, was the ability of being easily backward compatible.

It's what nailed the Amiga's coffin; as it's architecture couldn't be easily upgraded without breaking older software.The other computers that survived in both home and professionnal uses were also the ones that were bakward compatible; Apple (until they abandonned the PowerPC CPU), IBM and the S/360 - Z series, etc...

And price.

 

Well for the clones anyway.

[Flojomojo]

[CatPix]

And price.

 

Well for the clones anyway.

Hmm depends where. In France (and probably Europe, but I wouldn't be so affirmative) PC clones were always more expensive than "closed" alternatives (Atari ST, Amiga).

At least until 1990, when VGA and sound cards became more common as well. My father bough a Commodore SL 80286-16 in 1988, the price was 10 000FF for a 286 with 1 Mo of RAM, CGA video (gracefully replaced by a VGA card when the original B&W Sanyo CRT died and was replaced under guarantee by a Commodore 1936 VGA monitor), a 40 Mo hard drive and a cheap printer.

For comparison, the Amiga 2000 was sold for half this price (4990FF) in 1987.

And if you wanted the "high end" in PC, in 1988, there was the Commodore PC60,with a 80386-16 MHz and 2,5 Mo of RAM for...40 000 FF. Yikes.

[TigerSuperman]

Hmm depends where. In France (and probably Europe, but I wouldn't be so affirmative) PC clones were always more expensive than "closed" alternatives (Atari ST, Amiga).

At least until 1990, when VGA and sound cards became more common as well. My father bough a Commodore SL 80286-16 in 1988, the price was 10 000FF for a 286 with 1 Mo of RAM, CGA video (gracefully replaced by a VGA card when the original B&W Sanyo CRT died and was replaced under guarantee by a Commodore 1936 VGA monitor), a 40 Mo hard drive and a cheap printer.

For comparison, the Amiga 2000 was sold for half this price (4990FF) in 1987.

And if you wanted the "high end" in PC, in 1988, there was the Commodore PC60,with a 80386-16 MHz and 2,5 Mo of RAM for...40 000 FF. Yikes.

I didn't know Commodore made PC clones. That doesn't really make sense given their so called mission.

 

But yeah, I guess PC clones being cheap was more of an American thing, perhaps in some parts of asia as well.

 

But IBM PC's were pretty expensive in France right? More than the clones surely?

[Flojomojo]

This sock puppet has ripped abs!

 

[CatPix]

Yes, they always were more expensive, tho, the gap shrinked by the 90's.

Early IBM PS/2 were probably sold at the same price than clones because they were very popular here.