Number of Adam Disk Drives made? Titles?

[sydric]

Just doing some research and wondering if anyone can reasonably give me an idea of how many Coleco Adam 5.25" disk drive units were produced? Since only 100,000 machines were ultimately sold ... I imagine the disk drive production tapped out around 10,000 - but it could be less, could be more I'm just guessing.

 

Also can anyone confirm that Zaxxon and Dragon's Lair were the ONLY two officially produced disk titles for the Adam? I assume the rarity is fairly high ... anyone have an idea how many were made of each?

 

Thanks in advance for any opinions.

[Tempest]

Also can anyone confirm that Zaxxon and Dragon's Lair were the ONLY two officially produced disk titles for the Adam?

As far as I know they were the only GAMES officially ported to disk, there were a few official productivity and utility titles on disk as well.

[NIAD]

The actual number of ADAM Computer systems (Stand-Alone and Exp. Mod. #3) that were manufactured by Coleco before the plug was pulled in Jan. 1985 was in the ball park of 750,000... although I have heard the possibility of that number actually being as high as 950,000. This number is probably a reflection of all the systems that were made, not the number of systems that were packaged as complete and for resale. When Coleco sold off their stock of ADAM Systems that were "Complete in Box" to the likes of American Design Components, Zayre, KayBee Toys, etc. they still had huge numbers of loose components that were later sold off to numerous mail order companies like A.D.C., ADAM's House (eColeco), Alpha-1, NIAD, M.W. Ruth Co. numerous Canadian companies, etc.

 

I have no idea as to the actual number of 5 1/4" Disk Drives that were manufactured, but would venture a guess that your number of 10,000 is EXTREMELY on the low side.

 

Besides Dragon's Lair and Zaxxon being made available as official game/entertainment releases by Coleco, I recently received word that 2010: The Text Adventure was indeed officially released on 5 1/4" Disk by Coleco, but in such a small quantity that it is doubtful we will ever see one show up. I won't add that one to my ADAM Computer rarity list unless concrete evidence is provided.

 

As Ax mentioned, there were a larger number of application titles that were released on 5 1/4" Disk that included: Address Book Filer, SmartFiler, Recipe Filer, CP/M 2.2 & Assembler, ADAM Home Software Library, ExperType, SmartLETTERS & FORMS and of course Disk Manager (which came with the disk drive).

[Tempest]

I recently received word that 2010: The Text Adventure was indeed officially released on 5 1/4" Disk by Coleco, but in such a small quantity that it is doubtful we will ever see one show up. I won't add that one to my ADAM Computer rarity list unless concrete evidence is provided.

I've heard that as well, but proof was always lacking. I'd believe it though.

 

As Ax mentioned

I guess I was channeling my inner Ax.

[NIAD]

I guess I was channeling my inner Ax.

Long day, err week, at work! Sorry about that Tempest. BTW, hope to meet up with you at MGC again and hopefully some others from here.

[Tempest]

I guess I was channeling my inner Ax.

Long day, err week, at work! Sorry about that Tempest. BTW, hope to meet up with you at MGC again and hopefully some others from here.

Yep I'll be there, but sans my ADAM which is being enhanced with Matt's new VGA board (and hopefully getting my disk drive fixed too).

[NIAD]

Very interested to hear how the VGA board mod turns out and hope your disk drive can be repaired as well. BTW, IIRC the drive was reading fine but would not write?

 

Don't forget, if you want to stop the drive (Disk or Data Drive) while it is working/being accessed, just press the CARTRIDGE RESET and wait a few seconds for the drive to stop..

[Tempest]

Very interested to hear how the VGA board mod turns out and hope your disk drive can be repaired as well. BTW, IIRC the drive was reading fine but would not write?

 

Don't forget, if you want to stop the drive (Disk or Data Drive) while it is working/being accessed, just press the CARTRIDGE RESET and wait a few seconds for the drive to stop..

Yes that's right, that's why it took so long for me to notice.

 

There's a slim chance I might have my ADAM back by time of the show, but I doubt it. Matt's busy with other things that the moment.

[sydric]

Thanks for the information - Wikipedia reads "Less than 100,000 units ultimately sold. " but it could be referring to the repackaging and re-pricing - it's hard to know what the author meant and it's something that should be cleaned up. I thought it sounded awfully low.

 

Ultimately, I'm trying to determine how many copies of Zaxxon and Dragon's Lair were produced in disk form and what their rarity it would be - it would make sense to know the number of disk units as the LOGICAL thing is to go on how many disk units were sold (but as we know from the Atari/ET cartridge fiasco that logic doesn't always enter into it).

Edited February 27, 2012 by sydric

[+Gemintronic]

Rarity on a floppy disk? As a collector it does make sense.. As a user, well, old floppies tend to be unreliable at best. I'd expect counterfeits to be an issue too due to the fact that anyone with a floppy drive and a printer could make a legit looking "rare".

Edited February 27, 2012 by theloon

[ed1475]

I'm not sure about how many Zaxxon and Dragon's Lair disks were made but they are fairly easy to get. There was an ebay seller from 2007 to early 2010 that had more than 20 of each cib/sealed. He started out selling them for $15 each. By early 2010 he had raised the price a few times and was selling them for about $25 each.

Edited February 28, 2012 by ed1475

[NIAD]

Thanks for the information - Wikipedia reads "Less than 100,000 units ultimately sold. " but it could be referring to the repackaging and re-pricing - it's hard to know what the author meant and it's something that should be cleaned up. I thought it sounded awfully low.

 

Ultimately, I'm trying to determine how many copies of Zaxxon and Dragon's Lair were produced in disk form and what their rarity it would be - it would make sense to know the number of disk units as the LOGICAL thing is to go on how many disk units were sold (but as we know from the Atari/ET cartridge fiasco that logic doesn't always enter into it).

I just got back in touch with an old friend who worked for Coleco and more importantly for this topic on the ADAM, he hopefully he will be able to shed some light on the total number of systems, disk drives, etc. that were manufactured... but I wouldn't hold my breath as it seems like there may never be a concrete/sure fire answer especially since I think he is the one that gave me the numbers I previously mentioned.

 

Back in the day, Coleco provided the NIAD User's Group (along with other fledgling User's Groups and Mail-Order companies) with a printed out list of ADAM owners that was used to help build up membership. This list would have been acquired in late 1984 and if I recall correctly contained some 15,000 names of people who registered their ADAMs. In hindsight, I should have asked the founder of NIAD a lot more questions about his dealings with Coleco when I had the chance, but I'm pretty sure that the number of listings received was dependent on how much one was willing to spend to acquire this information and it was based on what region of the U.S. that you were interested in... so for NIAD it would have focused mainly on the Midwest.

[NIAD]

Rarity on a floppy disk? As a collector it does make sense.. As a user, well, old floppies tend to be unreliable at best. I'd expect counterfeits to be an issue too due to the fact that anyone with a floppy drive and a printer could make a legit looking "rare".

True that it would be very easy to run off a copy or two or three, but seeing as there isn't the same amount of interest for the ADAM as there is for other systems by retro-computerists, I don't see anyone spending the time to whip-up a bunch of "counterfeits". There just aren't enough people looking for ADAM stuff to make the effort worthwhile financially, plus those that are looking for ADAM stuff also want the original box and manual.

 

Also, I would venture a guess that if anyone attempted this little endeavor, that they would use GENERIC disks instead of name brands disks (Coleco used Nassau disks) which would be very easily noticed due to the thickness and weight difference of the disks. They would also have to reproduce the light grey disk sleeve with the word ADAM across the front-bottom if they wanted to go the whole 9-yards in this little counterfeit endeavor.

[mozartpc27]

Hello All,

 

New forum member here, but looooong time owner of a ColecoVision (which seems, finally, to have died ), and also a Coleco ADAM. I am now using the ADAM as my ColecoVision. Works perfectly, but I am re-exploring other elements of a system I never used very much.

 

My system is a "standard" system, in that it came with one tape drive and that's it. I of course know there was a 5.25" floppy drive produced, but I have never seen one in person, or on the internet for sale, ever, with one exception: someone on this very forum once sold a complete ADAM system with a lot of stuff I would have died to have for the seemingly bargain-basement price of $550 or so. If only I had been paying attention then! It included a disk drive. Outside of that one instance, I have never seen a drive available, or bundled with a system even.

 

What I am wondering is: has anyone ever seen one up for sale? How much do they go for when they are available? I would imagine quite a bit. I would think the poster in this thread who guessed that only 10,000 were ever made must be closer to correct than those who think more!

[NIAD]

Welcome aboard! Glad to hear that you had a backup option with the ADAM after your ColecoVision "died". You might want to look into getting the CV repaired and/or modded by Yurkie seeing as it's always a good idea to have a backup option available in case the ADAM ever develops issues. The CV is a lot easier to repair/replace than the ADAM, so it's really a good idea to have a CV around to use especially if all you are doing is playing cartridge based games.

 

The ADAM Disk Drive is a rare bird know-a-days, but usually about 15-20 do become available throughout the year in the AtariAge MarketPlace, but more so on eBay. Usually the disk drive(s) is part of an ADAM computer collection that is being sold, so you have to unfortunately buy the whole lot just to get the disk drive(s). On rarer occassions, disk drives will be sold by themself either loose or CIB and when this happens, it's all bets off as far as how much it will cost to acquire. Depending on what is included, you can expect to pay between $125 (Loose) on up to $250 (CIB) and I couldn't even begin to imagine how much a NIB/Sealed disk drive would fetch.

 

I was the seller of that ADAM system with disk drive back in 2013. Actually, I put together three such large ADAM packages in the spring/summer of 2013 and sold them thru the MarketPlace as I wanted to help people acquire a good system with all the extras that they would need to get the ball rolling with the ADAM. Thinking back to those packages, I probably could have got double the money for them if I went the eBay route, but it wasn't about turning a huge profit for me... and I still made a good buck on each even considering the amount of time I spent assembling, cleaning, testing, etc., etc. each one.

 

Considering some of the new information made available about how popular the ADAM was in Uruguay after large stocks of them were exported there, I believe a lot more the number of ADAM systems manufactured to be in the 950,000 range. I guess I should read the Wiki right-up on the ADAM, but nonetheless, the number given of 100,000 is completely wrong.

 

As far as the number of 10,000 disk drives that were manufactured, I would say that number is on the extremely low side as well from my past experiences running an ADAM mail-order company in the 80s/90s. In the five years that I have been back in the scene and collecting all this great stuff again, I have acquired about 15 disk drives that were either sold individually or as part of a large collection. I've only kept two for myself (might pay the piper one day for this) and have resold all the rest... only one of which was not 100% operational as it would not format a disk, but it would read/write to a previously formatted disks. My GUESS as to how many disk drives were manufactured by Coleco would be around 100,000.

 

The sad thing with all this old computer gear is that A LOT ended up getting thrown in the garbage over the years and that is a big reason why things are so scarce now.

Edited February 7, 2015 by NIAD

[mozartpc27]

Thank you very much for the information NIAD.

 

So there is someone on here who does ColecoVision repair, eh? I actually have two systems - the one from my childhood and one I bought on ebay. The one from my childhood has been slowly dying in various ways, and the one from ebay never *really* worked right. Is this someone I can PM to ask about rates, etc., should I be interested?

[NIAD]

Yes you should be interested in repairing those systems or at the very least get them into the hands of someone that will so they don't end up in the dump down the road. For all your repair and modification needs, send Yurkie a PM. He has a pinned thread in this forum and a very lengthy sales thread in the MarketPlace along with links to videos he has made covering his mod services.