[Coco] What did the Color COmputer eve do for me?

[Tony C]

Here's a nostalgic story about how I got my first COCO, and how it helped
shaped my life. It was printed in the GCCC newsletter last year, but I
thought I would
post it here, just for fun..



During a 4 year enlistment in the Navy, I had bought my first COCO (COCO1)
from a guy in my squadron who had decided to buy an Atari 400. I didn't
really understand much about programming then, and mostly only played the
game cartridges. This was in 1981 or so. I had met another Coco user in the
Navy. Darryl was close to his discharge date, but we still kept in touch
using a program which wrote text files to cassette. We would mail the
cassette back and forth to each other, as a letter telling the other person
what new things each of us had learned about the computer. Approximately 1
year later I was honorably-discharged and moved back to Pennsylvania
looking for a job.

Shortly thereafter, I had subscribed to Rainbow, 80 Micro Journal, Color
Computer News,
Hot Coco, and just about every other COCO-specific magazine I could find.
I had also ordered my first floppy drive & controller from an ad in the
back of Rainbow. I think I paid $425 for the Tandy controller and floppy
drive at that time. I remember my dad's eyes popping out when I told him
how much that silver box and black plastic cartridge cost, but it was
approximately $99 or so,  less than Radio Shack's price.

I had spent many hours typing in programs from the magazines, as well as
spending fractions of that time fixing bugs. Most of the time, I had no
idea why the fixes made the program work, I was just happy to see the
programs run.

One day, while taking the COCO in to Radio Shack for the "free" upgrade
which provided better ground connections on the cartridge port, I met a guy
(Jerry) who was involved in a local  computer group (not -coco specific).
Over the next year or so, I had gone to several meetings and met a few
other coco users. Jerry had eventually formed a coco sig and I had attended
as many meetings as possible. The Coco sig grew to at least 20 people or
more.

Since the economy was in terrible shape in 1983, (The Billy Joel song
Allentown was all too true, about my hometown , I had moved back to
California about 1 year later looking for a job. I timed my move so that I
could attend the FIRST-Original COCO-Fest, somewhere near Chicago. I don't
really remember much from it though.

After landing my first job, a computer club eventually formed in the
company, of which I was the only COCO-owning member :(  The largest group
was the C-64 group, of which my roommate was the host of many of the
meetings. I endured many trash-80 jokes, but was able to boast that I was
running a Unix-like OS with a windowing interface, 512K Ramdisk, and
2   80MB hard drives. However, king of my-perceived castle, I was the only
one in the castle.

I had later joined a fairly large Coco-users group called  Color America,
which was based in Monrovia, California. Steve Bjork was a member and
frequently came to the meetings, with his larger-than-life ego following
him. During one of the meetings, Steve added a free intro melody to the
Sands of Egypt floppy, for anyone who brought an original diskette with
them to the meeting. I still can hear that 4 bar melody in my head, but
wish I could hear it again as an MP3.

There were a few other not-as-prominent Coco developers who attended
occasionally, and many people showed their home-brew projects.
It was amazing how much creativity that computer brought out in people. It
was in this group that a hardware-savvy guy named Rick upgraded my 16k COCO
to 64K, for a paultry fee. I was terrified watching him wield the soldering
iron over my motherboard, but could see he had done it before, and finished
before I had time to faint. Now I could run several programs that I could
not run before. One non-commercial program that I fondly remember which was
called 'Z' which was THE reason for getting the 64k upgrade. This program
was similar to Xtree Gold on the PC, or today' s Windows Explorer. On a
floppy-based computer, having such a program for file manipulation was a
real blessing. I cannot remember who wrote this program, but I wish I still
had it :-)

After a few years, Color America eventually disbanded, and I as a loner
again.

One day while driving home from work, I saw a license plate which had some
letters about COCO computer or something like it. I almost jumped out of my
seat and nearly had an accident trying to flag down the lady driving the
car. After convincing her I was just a computer wierdo, and not your
run-of-the-mill wierdo, she eventually pulled over and we exchanged phone
numbers. She told me her husband was the computer guy, and built a whole
room just for his COCO(S). Wow- he had three of them. A real power user. I
couldn't wait to meet him. After getting home, I called his numbers and
left several anxious messages on his machine. We eventually got in touch
and spent many hours hanging around doing computer things. Interestingly
enough, Marvin only had lived minutes from me. Marvin literally DID build a
room for his COCOs. He had built shelves for all his magazines and
documentation, and several slide-out platforms for the computers. This guy
was more for a geek than I was, but really wished I had a room just like
his.
Being the handyman that he is, Marvin had built an L-shaped table for me
which I used for my computers and synthesizers. He made this from part of
an old waterbed frame that I had in the garage. I had used this table for
many years. It was very modular, and could be easily disassembled.

Marvin and his wife and I are very good friends, and in addition to
spending hours with them doing computer things, I would regularly go over
to their house on Monday's to watch Star Trek:TNG, and eat Thai Food. I had
even lived with them for a few weeks after the Northridge quake, which was
quite destructive. I can remember that we drove around trying to find some
batteries just so we could watch Star Trek:TNG from a portable TV.

One of the most fun gadgets I ever bought for the Coco was a sound
digitizer cartridge from a Canadian company called Oblique Triad (Jeff
Noyle and Dave Triggerson).
I loved sampling various audio clips then re-arranging them for playback.
Unfortunately there were some hardware problems with the device and I had
to send it back for exchange, never to be seen again. This was the only
time I was "ripped-off"  in the realm of the Coco.

Sometime before 1995, I had sold all of my Coco gear to a company in
Ypsilanti Michigan, (CocoPro, I think), for approximately $600.
Not a bad deal, considering how long I had it and the fact that Coco gear
wasn't pulling top dollar. Many times since then I had regretted selling my
Coco gear.

Now with the help of the Internet and the GCCC, I am happy to see the Coco
is still alive and products are still being made and sold for it.
I wish I had the room for another computer and the time to spend with it.
So I've opted for David Keil's emulator hoping to get Nitros09 and some
games running on it.
(However, I can't seem to make it work on my PC at the moment and can use
help from any of the emulator guru's)

Marvin and his wife eventually moved away, and I moved to San Jose for
another job. I did visit them in their new location a few years ago, and I
had some occasional contact with Jerry in Pennsylvania.

We've all moved into the PC world, for various reasons, but I do not regret
having started with the COCO. Because of Tandy's machine, I've made many
friends and have a lot of good memories as well. I am currently
living/working in Silicon Valley as a software engineer and would like to
say that the COCO and all the friends I made because of it have helped to
shape my life and career.



This is what the Color Computer did for me!


PS

I freely admit that I never did solve Raaka-tu nor Sands of Egypt, but have
probably spent hundreds of hours playing Robotron,  Zaxxon, Donkey Kong,
and Centipeed on the COCO.

I have another COCO-related article which was printed, that is somewhat
funny, but I have to dig it up.
The bold-faced paragraph above is a prelude to the article.