[Coco] SECB (was RAINBOW vinyl records?)

[Frank Swygert]

The CoCo was a low profit side-line for Tandy by the time the CoCo3 came along. Tandy didn't want it to compete in any way with any of their more profitable PC line, they just wanted it to as a stepping stone to a PC and/or to have something to sell to those who just couldn't afford a more capable machine. They upgraded it just enough to keep CoCo fans somewhat happy, but no more. Otherwise we wouldn't be saddled with a GIME that freaks out when pushed much faster. I think that cripples future hardware upgrades more than anything else. The analog RGB doesn't help either, but I think it was easier to implement and more compatible with older programs, as most RGBA monitors also had composite inputs. Who knew at the time that it would soon be phased out? 

I think they were aware that OS-9 was a more serious OS, and people who used it were the ones really clamoring for more memory. More memory access from SECB could be perceived as competing with Tandy's PC line, but OS-9 was a totally different animal that only techies of the period really used. Most of us simply put a game disc in and booted, didn't matter if it was OS-9 or BASIC/ML code. Programming in Basic-09 wasn't all that complicated -- unless you were used to the old line number BASIC. Running OS-9 could be, and required more expensive hardware, which put the total system cost more in line with a low end PC, which I'm sure RS sales people would happily point out. 

As far the circles, I'd bet that had something to do with translating the math to the screen. Pixel counts don't always match the math, so circles appear a bit more oblong on many systems, not just the CoCo. Compromises had to be made.

What always puzzled me was why didn't Tandy contact Art Flexser instead of Microware for a better DECB. Art had already been selling ADOS for some time. If ADOS-3 had come with the CoCo3 it would have been a much better machine! I do agree that I wish there had been a better use for all the memory. I think I coded my genealogy program (CC3 only) to check for 512K and load a RAM disk if it found it to speed operations up. I don't recall now... but I know I made several patches to SECB when the program loaded to speed disk I/O and a few other things. 

There was also a little trick loader that made the BASIC program look like an ML program on the disk. It was easy to work around, but most didn't bother because the programs were so fast they assumed they were ML code. Any accomplished SECB programmer caught on and could go around it, but if you knew enough to do that I wasn't worried with you messing the programs up and complaining later!

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Message: 10
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:18:28 -0400
From: Christian Lesage <hyperfrog at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Coco] RAINBOW vinyl records?

Arthur Flexser wrote:

> > my recollection is that the bugs were neither all that numerous nor
> > particularly serious.  It is definitely coded more sloppily than the
> > Microsoft CoCo ROMs, true, but that mostly takes the form of wasted bytes
> > rather than bugs.
> >   
>   
Well, circles that don't look like circles was a very obvious and 
annoying bug. I dont't remember precisely what were the other ones, but 
I do remember I used to run a patching program upon start-up to correct 
the most annoying ones. All in all, it seems to me that the SECB 
patching project had not been taken very seriously be either Tandy or 
Microware... or both.

Well, well... Why didn't they (Tandy and/or Microware) made SECB capable 
of using the whole 128KB (or 512KB) of RAM? I'm not talking about being 
able to LPOKE/LPEEK all the address space, but being able to load larger 
programs and hold larger strings. To use the CoCo 3 memory to its full 
potential, you HAD to buy another product... like OS9, for example, or a 
third-party product. I'm not saying Microware was responsible for the 
lesser quality SECB. It could as well be Tandy. My point is that I (like 
some other people I guess) was quite disappointed with SECB and came the 
conclusion that BASIC-09 was the way to go. So I gave Radio Shack 
another $500 in exchange of a floppy disk drive and OS9... just to find 
out that I would also need to buy a 512KB memory board if I wanted to do 
serious work, hence my deception.


-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
Magazine (AMC)
For all AMC enthusiasts
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