[Coco] NEC PC6001, a shadow of the CoCo

[farna at att.net]

The Z-80 worked great when paired with hardware designed to work with it, same with the CoCo. The 6809 and 6847 were designed to work in concert with each other, and "made beautiful music" together... well, how about "painted beautiful pictures" together...

Tandy took a little heat for the CoCo's Motorola innards mainly because everything else they made was Z-80 based. I think part of the reason for doing so was to distinguish the more business related Z-80 machines from the home use/game machine -- they shouldn't compete with each other. That's definitely why Tandy didn't push the CoCo early on as anything but a game/learning/suitable for home use only machine.
The editor of Computer Shopper wrote a book describing lots of the old "home computer" and early business computers. I've got a copy... here it is! "Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer -- From Altair to IBM, A History of the PC Revolution". ISBN 1-56664-023-7, Published by WorldComm of Asheville, NC. Library of Congress # 93-060161. Of course it's long out of print, but you might find one. The only drawback is it focuses on North American and some European (mainly Sinclair) produced and sold computers, very few (if any) of the Asian computers. There's a couple pages strictly on the CoCo. The last line of the CoCo section sums things up nicely: "Although CoCo was popular with its cult following, it was always a sideshow to the Tandy computer business".  The section on Tandy computers is titled "TRS-80, Almost Everyone's Computer".
It's definitely a book worth having!

----------------------------
Date: Tue, 4 Mar 2008 02:43:02 EST
From: RJRTTY at aol.com

I seem to remember reading somewhere that Tandy took
some heat for using the 6809 in the coco over the Z80 like in its
other machines.    I guess even they got it right once
in awhile.... by chance.


--
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
http://farna.home.att.net/AMC.html
(free download available!)