JamesD
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Posts posted by JamesD
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First of all... the Coco drives are not built in. Perhaps someone was thinking of a Model III.
Here is a Coco drive unit on ebay.
ebay is one place to find stuff or you can get stuff from Cloud9.
They make an IDE/Compact Flash interface and a product called DriveWire that lets you treat a PC like a hard drive over a high speed serial connection. There are several places you can download software from.
I'd go with the Coco3. While I like the looks of the Coco1 the best, it's missing features that even later Coco2's had like lower case letters. The Coco3 also has a 40 and 80 column text modes, 16 color hi-res 320x192 graphics and more RAM.
Most software for the older machines runs on it and most of the new software requires a Coco3.
There was actually a lot of cassette software available since the Coco has a 1500 baud interface. I just rarely see much of it on ebay. In spite of a small number of cartridges to chose from, they seem to be the most common.
The Deluxe Joysticks work both the Coco and Tandy 1000 machines.
For game downloads start here and then check here and a few more here.
There are others.
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You can try looking at this thread for others:
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I thought I'd pass on this youtube video of the Coco3 game 'Crystal City'.
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I have games for the Ti99 and don't even own one.
I've decided that I have enough extras and stuff I don't need that I should start putting things on ebay myself.
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That's great news!
Well, if anything gets changed I'd start with SIMMs for RAM and FLASH for the ROMs.
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Pac Man was probably produced in higher numbers than any other arcade machine. I wouldn't spend a lot on one with potential problems.
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I think a lot of old systems would be junked without them.
However, it makes it difficult to pick up stuff at estate or yard sales for really cheap prices. Sure you can get deals but only if you beat the ebayers to them.
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Maybe Jeri Ellsworth is prepared to do an A8 on a FPGA?
I think she might still be a little upset over what happened with the C64 DTV and not getting paid royalties for later projects that used the technology. Besides, I'll bet she's plenty busy on other consulting jobs.
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Some of the many Coco adventures:
Hall of the King II: The Inner Chambers
Hall of the King III: The Earthstone Revealed
Major Istar - Under the Doomed Sea
There were some games that were part adventure and part arcade:
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One, I think was significant, was "Madness and the Minoutar" for the CoCo. Unlike most text adventures, it was a real time game. Things happened while you were reading!
I think the Coco was the first machine to have an animated adventure.
I'm not sure but I *think* it was Pyramid Adventure.<edit> Sands of Egypt
After that there were a bunch.
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I'm not sure I agree with Zork. Scott Adams beat Infocom by years in the commercial adventure market and the original 'Adventure' was around years before that.
<edit>
'Adventurland' and 'Pirate Adventure' were released in 1978.
Zork was 1979
Not years but it was before Zork.
'Adventure' is also called 'Colossal Cave Adventure'. It has it's origins all the way back in 1972.
The "official" version in C was introduced in 1976.
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There were actually a lot of companies that had great adventure games.
Some were just specific to individual machines though.
The Magnetic Scrolls made several really good adventures... not sure how many machines they supported though.
http://www.if-legends.org/~msmemorial/lega...es.htm/pawn.htm
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Seems to me, storage is the biggest limitation.
The computers are perfectly capable of decoding the file --just not in real time, IMHO. By way of comparison, a 30Mhz MIPS CPU can decode a 256kbps mp3 file in real time, with about 90 percent utilization. (That's under IRIX)
So, the mp3 is pre-processed to distill the audio down to whatever makes sense, given the hardware at hand.
If you are talking music MP3s then you need to deal with 16 bit audio data.
A MIPS CPU handles 16 bit numbers in register where the 6502 does not so you'd need a higher MHz 6502 to deal with an MP3. A 65816 would be a little better but still doesn't have as many registers as a MIPS. 40Mhz may not even be enough if the MIPS has to be that fast.
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The voltage converter will be cheaper than a power supply... but once you pay shipping from Europe for the weight of a power supply you can buy one.
With shipping quotes over 40 pounds on every machine I've inquired about it's definitely something to consider.
You will need a PAL converter or to use RGB output. I don't think rubber key models had RGB out. Not sure about the 128. Seems to me the +2 does.
I don't know what monitors would work with it though since I've never tried it.
It would probably need a multi-sync that could handle the scan rate.
Most of the converter boxes I've looked at were considerably more expensive than the one linked above.
I'd want to hear what someone's results were before trying it.
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An 8 bit could probably do it but you would need:
1. A large enough storage device to hold the mp3 file
2. A file system that can handle files that large
3. A lot of RAM
4. A 40(?)Mhz or greater CPU... or it wouldn't sound like music
We all know #1 has been done. I know of one guy that has 64MBs of RAM in a machine so that's possible. And with FPGAs #4 *is* possible.
It's that #2 that I think would be the problem. You'd need to write a new DOS or OS to deal with files into the megabytes.
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If you are worried about it running hot you could add a 3.1 volt zener diode to convert it to 9v.
See this thread for info:
http://www.epanorama.net/phpBB2/viewtopic....8fe6c5c4aa73051
(it talks about a car's 12v but the same should apply)
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You need to replace the power supply with a US equivalent. Pretty easy since it's external. You could try starting at Radio Shack.
Search their site for AC-to-DC Power Adapter and look for a 1.5 - 2 amp 9v or 12v supply. Supposedly the Speccy says 9v but the supply is actually 12v. If it has a changable plug and polarity that certainly won't hurt either.
I have a gray +2 but haven't tried to hook it up yet.
It's the first model with a "normal" keyboard and is mostly compatible.
The black +2 doesn't work with as much older software and pre-128K models don't have the RAM or sound chip.
But only the black +2 and +3 have a floppy controller.
The most important reason I bought the grey model was I got it cheap.
I think it was about $20 shipped... but the seller had listed it wrong so don't expect that kind of deal.
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The "unofficial" Zaxxon for the Coco3 was pretty good. It was by the same author that made the "official" one for the standard Coco 1&2.
It was called Z89 (for Zaxxon '89 I assume).
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A lot of people use M.E.S.S. but some people still run the old DOS Coco3 emulator.
I think there are links on http://coco3.com/
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I'd kill for the Sanyo MBC-55x version and a proper emulator to play it on.
The MBC-550 was just a PC clone. I can't find a special version listed for it anywhere but that page so it might just be the PC version.
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I just figure as a unique challenge to that particular port. If you want to see a real oddball port of CB then check out the Sega SG-1000 version:Eeewwww!
The Apple ][ version is very nice in that it contains all four boards. And no complaining about the disc access between each of them either.
I think the Tandy Coco version had all 4 boards as well and game play was ok. The game really wasn't made for analog joysticks though.
<edit>
Scratch that. The game I'm thinking of wasn't an officially licensed version and had different screens.
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I found a disk image with Coco Time Bandit.
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Original "Sweet 16" Atari 1000 PCB found...
in Atari 8-Bit Computers
Posted
I thought Sweet 16 was the emulated 16 bit instruction set built into the Apple II ROMs.