John_L

Chess isn't that big of a deal as long as the look ahead doesn't go more than a move or two ahead. I had a little battery operated hand held deal that played chess. It has like 10 settings, and on the easiest setting look ahead was 1 move and the unit calculated it pretty quick, I don't recall how many moves ahead level 10 looked, but it bogged the system down, it would take 5-6 minutes for the computer side to respond, so if one wanted to do chess for the O2, it could be done pretty easily.

Yus, and the one sticking out the back of the drive.

Actually, sometimes it can.. Say you're a cheap ass, and you REALLY REALLY want that $10 game, but you want to pay $5, and you see no bids and it's about to expire. If you let it expire, you wait, and he should logically relist for say, $5, you're goal purchase price, however, sellers will sometimes jack the price so you'll go OMG, and grab it real quick before he realizes how bad you want it, so it'll prompt you to buy it before he raises the price again. I actually made a $560 profit for a friend once on Second Life. He owned about 1/4 of a sim, and he noticed for sale parcels around the sim started to disappear, upon further inspection, he noticed that it was the same entity buying up the lots. I told him the guy was trying to buy up the whole sim, and that he should list his land for an outrageous price and he'll buy it. The land was worth about $20,000 "Linden dollars", or about $80 bucks, I told him to list it for $100,000 Linden dollars, about $320 dollars US. He said the guy would never go for it, so I talked him into listing it since if he wasn't going to buy it, it wouldn't matter, so he did. About 3 days go by, and he tells me that it hasn't moved yet.... so I told him, Double it. List it for $200,000, or $640 US. He laughed and said that the guy would never go for it. I had to literally beg him, but I managed to get him to change the listing, and the guy bought it 5 minutes later.... he knew the jig was up and that my friend the seller knew he really wanted that land, so the guy cut his losses and blew all that cash because I got him worried we'd double the price again. So, on a similar level, I think that might be what that seller was going for... trying to get someone to jump because they see the price going up... not down. It works. I did pretty well when I was in my Real Estate phase in Second Life. I built and sold both a Mall and a Casino, made a few bucks along the way too... My love of vintage arcade games spilling over into Second Life...

Another thing to consider would be to check the edge connectors, give them a good rubdown with a pencil eraser and make sure both sides of the connectors are clean, they may have some oxidation on them which can cause erratic behavior.

You "mess" with Mame... lol Well, I'd contact the seller and offer $20 bucks... otherwise, they can keep it listed on ebay forever. I don't see why anyone would pay that much for a cartridge, regardless of how rare it is. I can understand wanting to collect the actual carts, but not at such a ridiculous price. Maybe if you wave a $20 under the sellers nose, they might see that they've at least got a taker for it. If anything, another may come down the pike at a more reasonable price.

Yeah, controller to drive. Also, make sure the drive cable isn't folded up and rubber banded, it's not impossible to get cross talk across the ribbon cable as it's not shielded in any way, also keep it away from the left side of any CRT television, the fly-back transformer is usually there and can cause interference as well.

Well, the cart looks fine, even the label is pristine, and it doesn't appear used much. Honestly, I wouldn't worry so much about "untested", it's probably fine, but it's more about do you want really spend $100 bucks on a CoCo 1/Coco 2 game that's ancient, and honestly, freely available all over the internet? I've got it, and it's a great game, it was a great game on the Atari 2600, and it's a great implementation on CoCo 1/2 hardware, but that cart didn't sell for that much new. Bear in mind, alot of this older stuff is Abandon-ware, and copying it isn't illegal, although in this case, Activision owns the rights to all of iMagic's titles as they bought them when iMagic went under oh so many moons ago. Here's a screenshot:

Actually it was Ω who kissed the sleeping thread and woke it up. That's cool though, I actually have one of these and the more I know about it the better.

Actually just ran into the image while researching the unit.

Ok, so now were all on the same page that none of us are Linville... we'll blame'm for the necropost...lol

Oh, no... funny you mentioned that.. I joined #coco_chat as "John_L" and I asked John Linville a question and he responded with "who are you btw?", and mentioned people might get us confused, so I started joining with my full name. Nope, I'm not that John L, although I wish I had John L(inville's) coding prowess. He's got major code fu. I think I've seen posts by him here on AA, and I believe on here he's goes by "Linville".

We can take that direction...

Omega is Linville?

Well I'm certainly not a hater, all machines from those days had their pluses and minuses. Honestly, they're all interesting to me. I occasionally will go through MESS and fire up every system in there and see what I can do with it. Some are foreign language, some have hex monitors instead of a BASIC interpreter (I'm lookin' at you Apple I !!) It's interesting what you find. I recall finding a Z80 based system that used Motorola's MC6847 VDG Chip, and it was weird, because it was a Z80 based machine but had that "CoCo" feel to it. So, having cut my teeth on the likes of the TRS-80 Model I/III and CoCo's 1,2 and 3, I have a strong affinity to those machines, so I can understand why any given person has the same affinity for any given system. I actually know more about Sir Clive Sinclair than most... He was IMHO like both Steves (Job and Woz) all rolled up into one. He always seems to be ahead of the curve. I was most impressed with the flat CRT... who was making flatscreen TVs in 1984... SInclair was, so I have nothing but respect for the guy. @MarkO, I totally get why you wouldn't want to do something as non-standard as hacking your Apple. I won't even jailbreak my iPhone... !!! Apple's always charged premium prices, but they've been able to do it because they put out a good product. I was lucky because I worked at a Radio Shack Computer Center back then, and pretty much had carte blanche to do pretty much whatever we wanted to the display model, and, if we would have trashed it (which, btw, we never actually did), we'd simply box it up and send it off to repair in Texas and pull another from stock. Luckily we never trashed one, about the only possibility would have been from jammin' carts into the machine with the cart* interrupt disabled so we could pirate the game I actually got so good at it that at worst, it would lock up the machine or start executing the cartridge. Most of the time though the computer wouldn't even flinch. The trick was to push the cart in just until it hit the plastic, which was intentionally a bit too small for the thickness of the edge card connector so when it was inserted, the slot "gripped" it. I'd push it up to that point, make sure it was lined up perfectly parallel to the slot, then with one quick snap, push it into place, and done right, the computer wouldn't notice. There's always warnings about how you could kill the machine by doing it, but honestly, done right, the possibility of frying the CPU was quite low. Still, despite that, none of the CoCo's I ever owned endured that. We did that at work....lol.

Good point James... worth investigating to rule it in or out...

Yep amazing stuff.. thanks for the neat trick about passing code through a URL! I figured since many of the systems discussed here in the forum use variations of the 6502, Apple, Atari 2600, NES, etc that it would be of interest to the folks here. Didn't realize anyone here was involved in the project, but major kudos to you and the rest of the folks involved on the project. The first thing that popped into my head when I saw this was the GIME chip found in the Tandy Color Computer 3. That chip combined the functions of the Motorola 6847 VDG and 6853 SAM chip along with new graphics mode and an MMU similar to the 6829. This awesome chip has a partial implementation of a 256 color mode in the chip, but Tandy stopped them from implementing it in the Color Computer 3 because they were worried it would harm sales of the Tandy 1000 PC line, which had just had EGA graphics in the latest models. So the CoCo 3 community is left with a 16 color 64 palette machine that has another mode buried deep within it. Certain people involved with designing the chip were contacted, but no one remembered all the details, but it is possible to coax the chip into the 256 color mode despite the fact that it was never fully implemented, and when I saw the video, I thought man, that would be great if we could have that done to the GIME chip. I'm pretty sure the CoCo community would collectively give their left arm to have that mode revealed. I noticed the 6800 model too but forgot to mention it. Do you know if the team has any plans to move forward on any other chips? Thanks, John.

No problem... I'm pretty handy with Photoshop and couldn't resist...!

Opps, you know what, I think you're right, I thought it was, but upon closer inspection I think that's the USB port, which can be easily converted to an RJ-45 for about $15 bucks, also, I checked the BASIC language reference page and it doesn't seem to have TCP/IP support directly, but there are some serial data functions built in. Also, I did a bit of research by downloading some of the support files and found some ".spin" extension files for a sample HTTP server.... Project : "example_httpserver" Archived : Friday, August 10, 2012 at 8:05:28 AM Tool : Propeller Tool version 1.3.2 example_httpserver.spin │ ├──api_telnet_serial.spin │ │ │ └──driver_socket.spin <--- lookie here ! │ │ │ └──driver_enc28j60.spin │ ├──util_strings.spin │ └──RealRandom.spin So it appears as though driver_socket.spin is an internet socket driver, so it looks like it does have TCP socket support !!! So it looks like Omega's vision of a cheap BBS board to connect directly to his router is totally possible, and probably wouldn't require any low level programming, although I may be wrong. This device is looking cooler and cooler. Personally, I'd like to combine it with this... http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-inch-TFT-Car-LCD-Display-Module-w-VGA-Video-AV-Board-Optional-Touch-Panel-/291020349128 and this.... http://www.adafruit.com/products/857?gclid=Cj0KEQjwxZieBRDegZuj9rzLt_ABEiQASqRd-oexr-Q78TkUV_Bv9EsjERetAIkjnmWffbXkeMor_8saAo9T8P8HAQ and make a portable unit ! Would be pretty cool The display, keyboard, and Pocket Mini adds up to just over $100 bucks! It's amazing how cheap LCDs are these days...

Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what it can do considering what it has under the hood compared to say a C64, Apple ][, or TRS-80 Color Computer. The big drawbacks being the keyboard, and the poorly written 8K ROM BASIC. Internally though, it's an impressive machine considering the number of chips under the hood. When home computers came about, they were a bit expensive. The first home computer, the TRS-80 "Model I" was an extremely well made machine, and sold incredibly well considering it's $600 price point, which was about 4 1/2 percent of the median household income at the time ($13, 572). It was like spending $2400 in today's dollar. Conversely, the Timex Sinclair 1000 was $100 in 1982, which was about .005 percent of the median household income of $20171, which was like spending $250 in today's dollar. A nearly 10 fold decrease in price over the Model I in 5 years. The goal at that point was to put out a home computer at the cheapest possible price point. At that point in time, the industry was still trying to flesh out the best price point for a computer, so there was alot of experimentation with price vs functionality. Moore's law was adjusted in 1975 to "# of transistors on a chip doubling every 18 months", So at that time, the technology was so in flux that the chips for devices like the C64, Color Computer, Apple, etc were dropping like a rock, and the competition was tight, so with newer chips claiming the premium price points, existing chips were pushed down in price. So, instead of competing with the higher priced ~$500 C64 and Color computer, both of those machines dropped from $500 to about $200 by 1982. It's the closing of that gap caused by ever dropping prices of the chips used in the machines combined with motherboard revisions the companies made to further reduce the cost of manufacture that caused the buying public to opt for the $200 C64s and CoCos. Even Radio Shack's attempt at competing with Sinclair with the TRS-80 MC-10 ($119.00 at launch) died a flaming death right about the same time that Timex folded here in the US. I totally get why it was a popular machine for it's time, why it had a big following of folks who loved it, and why it's still a popular vintage unit. I just started the thread as a joke, I have no ill feelings towards folks who owed, or still own one. It was just posted in fun... kinda like this:

That's cool, I was a member of a forum that had Admins that were so anal that they would "ding" me with points on virtually ever post, they would site exactly what section of the TOS agreement I was violating, and dinged me once for necroposting. Thing is, they have a recent post portion at the top of the page, and I was responding to a post listed there, but had lingered beyond 30 days. I eventually told them that I was tired of being drilled every single time I posted and that I wouldn't post anymore, just lurk. AtariAge is great forum, and everyone in it seems really cool, there's a ton of great info on a huge variety of vintage consoles and computers as well. I've never really seen an Admin have to step in to to much more than maybe more a misplaced post. Let me take this opportunity to say thanks to the Admin(s) here at AtariAge for running such a cool forum.

Well, you're 100 percent correct that the forced use of short key for basic statements like PRINT was to cut down the code size. They were trying to squeeze the equivalent of a "level 2" basic into the space of a Level I basic. But forced short key isn't what really bugs me about it. It's that freakish ever-changing-to-yet-another-alphabetic-character of a cursor. Cursors are cursors, and characters are characters. A cursor can be an underline, or an inverted space (block character), it can blink, or not, but the two biggest no no's you could possibly do is A) Let it be an alphabetic character, or B, change. TS 1000 did BOTH. A cursor's job is to indicate where the next character will appear on the display, not to indicate what "mode" you're in, I don't know much about how it works, but what I've figured out just dicking around with an emulator is that "L" means you're in basic statement input mode, and "G" means Graphics mode, and K means whatever letter you type will actually appear on the screen mode, aka, string input mode. They honestly could have indicated the mode by say, changing the border color to indicate the mode or something else. That way, the cursor could have been, well, a cursor, and not a cursor/mode indicator. Also, the problem with short keys is that you have to memorize a bunch of different functions for the same key depending on the mode you're in. I think you're being generous saying that it saved as much as 1k, there's about 300 characters in the keyword set (for the lookup table), and the routines for checking and tokenizing are probably about 20 to 30 bytes each, and both could use the same keyword table, so well under 1/2 kilobyte. If they were looking to keep things light, they could have shelved "Let" the most useless function of any programming language ever of all time. Programming is difficult enough as it is without having to continuously remember what key does what, or to glance down at the keyboard to figure out what key to hit or track modes.

Wow... talk about necroposting! Thankfully AA doesn't care much if one does... I actually have one of these units. It's missing the joystick but I have about a dozen games or so for it. Someone gave it to me years go, I actually even forget who, but they said if I wanted it I could have it, so I grabbed it and tossed it into a closet, I pulled it out just the other day to see what sort of shape its in, and discovered the joysticks are missing and the blade connectors are missing from the switchbox for some reason. That's easily fixable, I could just wire a 75-300 ohm converter to it and pipe into my tv's F connector input. Joysticks however are a different story.... gonna have to check ebay. I think Magnaovox's idea was let's sell them an empty box that looks like a computer for a couple hundred bucks, and sell the the actual computer later for a couple hundred more. None of these console/home computer hybrids ever really went anywhere. At the time, consoles were for kids where computers were more for older kids/adults. I suppose the thinking was this would be an appliance for the whole family to use (for different reasons), the kids for games, and the computer for apps the parents would use to balance the checkbook or store recipes, ya know the usual suspects for marketing a computer to mom and dad. However, I think the idea of dad kicking jr off the games so he could code a biorhythm program came into play, and the idea of dad using jr's game console as a computer didn't sit well with Dad. The idea was there.. kill 2 birds with one stone. Jr gets the game system and the family gets a computer, but it was a bad idea from the start. Honestly, considering that the computer portion of the device never really materialized, I think this thread belongs more in the vintage console section, not the vintage computer system, because, well, for one thing, computers stuff like RAM and ROM, and this had neither unless you had a cartridge installed.

Welll, there ya go... I spy an RJ-45 jack on that puppy, and that's exactly what that device is designed to do. That sounds perfect for something like that, and that's actually a really cool implementation for one. I suppose these days it would probably be pretty easy to have a BBS running as a background task on your PC, but then your PC has to be always on. With this cheap $45 device you could maintain a 24 hour BBS that could soldier on even when the PC is off or asleep. You could probably write the BBS in BASIC... and I'm wondering what sort of TCP support functions they built into their impletmentation of BASIC.

Yeah, I personally didn't really mind it that much, I was such a fan of the Model I/III computers, the first I worked on, computers were so new back than, and so amazing to us, that I didn't really care what color it was, I was more interested in getting color on the screen !

Yep, which is really strange because Tandy Corporation was a very conservative manufacturer. Radio Shack managers would report to upper management what people were asking for and NO ONE was asking for a computer. It was typical for Tandy to wait until customers were asking for a product in large numbers before investing in creating a new product and bringing it to market. Lewis Cornfeld was an ad exec for Tandy, and was the one who talked John Roach into making a computer. He was put in charge of making a computer and had no clue about what they were or how the worked, but, he did have enough knowledge to know RAM was important, so he approached a chip maker wanting 4k chips instead of two, but they were much more expensive. He would up striking a deal by asking "how many 4k chips do I have to buy to get them at the 2k price....". He also was involved in defining much of what became the Model I, and, he obviously hired the right people to design and built it because despite being the first, it was one of the best designed computers of the era. Also, even a base model 4k unit was $600 bucks, a far cry from the cost of the sub $100 Timex. Not that I'm a huge Microsoft fan, and felt Microsoft made much of their way by being followers who borrowed, copied, and stole their way through the 80's and 90s, in the early days, they were quite the leaders as they wrote the BASIC interpreter for the Model I/II/III line, the color computers (1,2 and part of 3), the C64 and Apple. Those leaders of the industry from '77 until the early 90's when everything went away except PC's and a few Macs all had Microsoft BASIC in them. Machines like the Sinclair units, TI-99, and scores of others who wrote their own seemingly intentionally different BASIC interpreters suffered and died off. The Sinclair BASIC was especially bad with that stupid "mode" cursor that kept changing to a different letter of the alphabet making trying to operate the computer a real pain.