[Coco] New CoCo'er, Some Q's and looking for hardware

[Zippster]

Welcome to the group John.  :)

The 512K upgrade is something you definitely want, a lot of the better CoCo3 software requires it.
As others mentioned, just email Cloud9 and Mark will set you up with whatever you need from them.

I was the person that did a run of RGB2VGA boards for the group.  They aren’t the cheapest option,
because of the DE-0 Nano FPGA development board that’s required, but they work very well.
I have a few PCBs left, I could set you up with one if you decide to go that way.
Here’s some info on it...
<https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/rgb2vga <https://sites.google.com/site/tandycocoloco/rgb2vga>>
<http://www.cococommunity.net/vga-for-the-coco-3/ <http://www.cococommunity.net/vga-for-the-coco-3/>>
<https://sites.google.com/site/thezippsterzone/rgb2vga <https://sites.google.com/site/thezippsterzone/rgb2vga>>

There’s a pretty active Facebook group for the CoCo that you might want to check out in addition to
this mailing list.  <https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/ <https://www.facebook.com/groups/2359462640/>>

Have fun!

- Ed



> On Feb 24, 2016, at 2:09 PM, admin at kd8cgo.com wrote:
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I'm a proud owner of a never-used CoCo3 that I received from a friend in the mid 90's - I had never even heard of a CoCo up to that point.  I had some minor experience with a C64, and started out on a XT clone when I was a kid.  Never used the CoCo myself either, as I had no software for it.  I just plugged it into a TV to test it, ran a few "Hello, World!" programs I keyed in and that was it.  Anyway, I was going through the basement cleaning and stumbled across it this week.
> 
> I have no hardware or cartridges for it, so I assumed it was destined for the scrap heap along with a lot of my other old PC junk.  Did a quick search and found a *very* surprising level of interest and support for these here on the list archives and elsewhere.  I started tinkering with it, got Drivewire4 fired up on a old laptop with a serial port, and loaded the first program to ever grace this CoCo - HDB-DOS and then NitrOS9.  I can't read the screen when booted into NitrOS9, so that will have to wait, but I have been working through the Tandy Color Extended Basic book in HDB-DOS so I can save my .BAS files for later.
> 
> I'd like to do the Cloud-9 memory upgrade to 512K and get some proper cables to replace these cobbled together jumpers I made to load the .WAV file and the serial port cable. It seems like they do not have a order shopping cart though, just an email address, is that normal?  I thought they might be out of business or closed for now, given the lack of a normal purchasing order form.
> 
> I am also looking for some sort of VGA monitor adapter, I've found some references to a Roy Justus adapter, there is some PCB available on Amazon that says it will convert RGB, and also I found another 15Khz one on http://www.ambery.com/rgbcgatovgac.html that looks like it could be coaxed into working.  I also found some mention of a run of RGB2VGA boards that will hook up to something called a DE0 Nano in the archives here on pair.net, but I didn't find out much about that or the Roy Justus thing, or if you can even get them anywhere.  Advice here appreciated.
> 
> Basically I'd like to get this up and running and be able to do some BASIC programming, experiment with the NitrOS9 software, maybe load a few ROMs.  I'm trying to figure out how to convert a normal image file JPG/GIF/PNG/BMP into something I can use in a BASIC program on the system, but so far no luck solving that problem.  I might be able to use NitrOS9 if I could figure out how to change the screen colors - I can (barely) read the screen on WIDTH 80 if I use PALETTE 0,0:PALETTE 8,16 in HDB-DOS or Color Basic.  Eventually it would be cool to connect the CoCo to the outside world, but I think I'll need NitrOS9 running with DW4 for that.  Sounds like BASIC09 might have some advantages over Color Basic, too...
> 
> Sorry for the long first post & TIA!
> 
> --John, kd8cgo
> 
> 
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