[Coco] [Color Computer] Let me introduce myself

[benwillis]

Hello!

I've found nerd heaven!

My name's Ben and I stumbled across this board over the weekend. 
I've always avoided groups/boards in the past, but the Coco is so 
much fun and has such fond memories for me I just couldn't resist 
(I've never participated in boards/groups before, although I've been 
on the net since '94).

Not sure what the protocol is for discussing "past life" experiences 
so please bear with me while I (briefly) wax nostalgic.

I bought my Coco 1 in '82 that I paid close to $1000 for, with all 
of my summer job money in between years in college. It came with 4K 
RAM, but the weekend I bought it, there was a "special" with a free 
upgrade to 16K. It came with Cassette drive, 300 baud modem, and 
joysticks. My primary draw to the Coco was the Extended BASIC - 
being able to use commands like CIRCLE, PAINT, LINE, etc. just blew 
away the PEEK/POKE graphics of Commodore and Atari. Since then, I've 
always been a big fan of high level languages and predefined library 
methods - I still think PEEK/POKE is just a drag and a headache 
(hope I'm not offending anyone with that statement!)  Except of 
course POKE 65495,0

Over the 4 years I had my Coco, I upgraded to 32K, got a new 
keyboard, got a great terminal emulator with full ASCII character 
emulation - I had a real problem working on computer projects in C 
without {, }, and other characters.  I also wrote alot of games, 
including text based adventure games, a Battleship game, a Lunar 
Lander clone, a Star Trek game using EDTASM+, and others.  What a 
blast that little machine was.

Recently I bought a Coco 2 on eBay, 64K, with Floppy disk drive, 
manuals, joystick, for $25.  What I wouldn't have done to have had 
that setup back in the 80's. I bought another one with 16K and 
cassette drive for $8.

My main motivation for this is to teach my 7 year old son how to 
program. PC's are cool, and there are alot of great compilers etc. 
out there. But there is something fundamentally wonderful with the 
Coco. You turn it on, and all it does is BASIC. The simplicity and 
dedication of doing a single purpose and doing it well just shines. 
Plus the original Coco manuals I think do a great job of teaching 
how to use BASIC and some general programming principles in 
general.  He has grown up playing computer games and GameCube and 
yet the Coco fascinates him.  He's an avid reader and I'm anxious to 
get a hold of Bedlam, Madness and Minotaur, Pyramid, Raaka-Tu and 
The Sands of Egypt.

Anyway I've babbled enough. I hope those of you that got this far 
enjoyed reading this.

Just glad to be here.

Ben








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