[Coco] old backups, RESTORED!

[gene heskett]

On Saturday, January 08, 2011 01:05:57 pm Lothan did opine:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: gene heskett
> Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 5:41 PM
> To: coco at maltedmedia.com
> Subject: Re: [Coco] old backups, RESTORED!
> 
> On Friday, January 07, 2011 05:38:35 pm Willard Goosey did opine:
> >> OBCoCo:  I described Drivewire 4 to my ISP's sysadmin as a
> >> point-to-point network (over serial) supporting block and character
> >> devices, including the ability to telnet into the CoCo, since OS-9
> >> has been multi-user and multi-tasking since '79 or so.  I think his
> >> jaw is *still* on the floor! :-)
> >> 
> >> Willard
> >
> >Be careful & don't step on it or kick it.  I've used the 1984 time
> >frame for that and been called a liar by many.  It was 85 when I
> >discovered os9, and I was off the the races.
> 
> It was OS-9 that actually sold the CoCo in my case. I had been in the
> Radio Shack/Tandy Computer Center here several times and I just wasn't
> impressed with the "mainstream" TRS-80 line (Model I/II/whatever else
> was on display). My problem was that I had champagne taste with not
> much of a beer budget, meaning I wanted something like UNIX but knew
> darn well I would never be able to afford UNIX hardware. When I finally
> scraped the money together I decided to stop by the Computer Center one
> more time to see if they had anything new before heading over to a
> competitor to buy a computer. When I walked in the door, the salesman
> pulled a box off the shelf and asked if I might be interested in
> something like this. After browsing the manual for a few minutes, I
> walked out the door with a Color Computer F-board computer, disk
> drives, OS-9 Level 1, and (if I remember correctly) the C compiler.
> 
> Of course, the 6809 microprocessor really helped seal the deal as well.
> I had some experience with assembly language programming on the 6502,
> Z80, and 6800 and didn't like the 6502 or Z80 that much.

I cut my coding first teeth on the RCA 1802 making a video production tool 
for KRCR in Redding CA that saved them a dubbing generation loss and 
probably 100k in manpower costs over the next 15 yars they used it that I 
know of, then made a automatic transmitter control project at KSUE AM/FM 
with the z-80 before a session with the TI99/4a but it priced me out of the 
showroom, but the 6809 was the first cpu that was not drain bamaged by its 
transistor count. However, I still have fond memories of the RCA 1802 
family, an odd architecture to be sure, but about as universal as they 
came.  It has 16 each 16 bit wide registers, any one of which could become 
the program counter in a 1 byte command, built in DMA which made handling 
video dead simple if the video was. I/O port mapping was separate from main 
memory and expandable to 127 devices.  This thing was faintly similar to 
the TI-9900 except the 9900 didn't have all those internal registers, it 
used all indirect addressing from a register image maintained in local ram.  
But I never got my head around it well enough to write anything of note for 
it.  Typical packrat, I still have that TI99/4a and its extended basic 
cartridge.  Maybe even the cassette recorder, but those tended to be 
destroyed by my kids in those days.

If the 6x09 had ever grown a built in DMA capability, I suspect its 
lifetime on the shelves would have been extended at least another half a 
decade.  As it is, its abilities have carved itself a place in all our 
hearts that would do serious damage to our education if it were to have 
never happened.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
An actor's a guy who if you ain't talkin' about him, ain't listening.
		-- Marlon Brando