[Coco] Deskmate 3 article link

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:12 AM, Willard Goosey <goosey at virgo.sdc.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:04:55PM -0400, RJRTTY at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Sometimes I wonder why Tandy even bothered with the coco and coco3.
>
> Or, at least, why it was the machine it was.  I can see wanting to
> cash in on the color-TV-using low-end 8-bit market, but why did a Z80
> house like Tandy/Radio Shack suddenly put out a 6809 machine?  (I'm
> very glad they did, but it still seems strange!)  A color version of
> the Model I/III would have been more expected.
>

The use of the 6809 came out of the relationship between Tandy and
Motorola.  Their are a few different versions of the story floating
around.  There was some sort of project to provide agricultural
clients with a data service which involved a partnership of Tandy,
Motorola and possibly some other companies.  The VideoTex machine
based on the 6809 was the result, and by adding a few chips to the
VideoTex a full computer could be made: the CoCo 1.
I'm sure others could expand or correct the details.


> Then again, they probably didn't want to go to their fellow Texan
> competition for the 9928, hacking a 6845 to do color is just that, a
> hack, the Z80/6847 combo doesn't seem to work very well(*), there's no
> way they could license the VICII, and they sure weren't going to
> design their own video chip.  So, what else could they do?
>
> By the time the CoCo 3 rolled around, well, it could compete fairly
> evenly with the Tandy 1000, and that just wasn't allowed. :-(
>
> (*)Judging by that wierd Japanese machine that was discussed here a
> few years ago.
>>
>> Why make the effort in the first place?
>
> Money, of course.  The FCC killed the Model 1, the Model II was a
> "serious business machine" and the Model III was expensive.
>
> Willard
> --
> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
> Socorro, New Mexico, USA
> I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
>  -- R.E. Howard
>
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