[Coco] WordPak RS/CO80

[Arthur Flexser]

Thanks for that interesting bit of history, Steve.  I wonder if that co80 OS-9
module was intended, then, for the sort of system you describe.

And, nice to see you back here after a long absence!  I hope things have been
going well for you.  Best wishes for the New Year!

Art

On Wed, 5 Jan 2005, Steve Bjork wrote:

> Art,
> 
> Way back in the old days of the CoCo 1, (while working at DataSoft) I 
> created a 80 Column display for coco software development.  It was nothing 
> more then a cheap "stand-alone" terminal with output of the coco's serial 
> port was tied to it.  While the terminal's keyboard could not be used for 
> input, the screen could be quickly updated when running at 19,200 baud.
> 
> The main use for the terminal was writing Assembly Language code and EDTASM 
> was perfect for it.  You see, EDTASM user interface was written for 
> terminal I/O and it was not hard to patch the code of a pre-release version 
> to output to the terminal. (I later patched EDTASM with an On Screen line 
> editor (see my SECS),  extra long labels and Disk I/O with file includes.)
> 
> About this time, Mark Segal (sp?) left DataSoft for Tandy and took the 
> technology with him.  Soon, Tandy and other Developers were using this 
> simple system for their 80 column displays.  There was also talk about 
> selling a patch cable and drivers through the store or at lease the direct 
> order system. All of that was dropped once worked started on the CoCo 3.
> 
> Steve 6809er Bjork
> 
> At 12:23 AM 1/4/2005 -0500, you wrote:
> >On Mon, 3 Jan 2005, Boisy Pitre wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > There's more than just a base address difference.  The co80 driver that
> > > I started with is very simplistic in what it does, and doesn't even
> > > begin to address the complexity that this card has when it comes to
> > > setting up.
> > >
> > > I did dig up something interesting about this driver in one of the
> > > Kissable OS-9 columns in the Rainbow.  Puckett was writing about one of
> > > the Microware OS-9 expos in Des Moines, and one of the programmers
> > > talked about the CO80 module being written according to a specification
> > > that Tandy provided them, but with hardware that was in prototype
> > > stage.
> > >
> > > What a mystery...
> > >
> >
> >In that case, my guess would be that Tandy was planning to come out with 
> >its own
> >80-column display at the time, and had a driver programmed according to its
> >specs and included with OS-9.  Then, that device was scrapped in favor of
> >offering a version of the PBJ WordPak through its Express Order program (or
> >whatever that program was called, where you could get non-RS products at RS
> >stores by special order), and so the co80 driver actually drives no existing
> >device at all.  I believe the WordPak-RS originally came with an OS-9 driver
> >on disk, though I'm not 100% certain.  Somebody out there surely should have a
> >copy.
> >
> >Art
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>