[Coco] Old Coco Info

Steve Ostrom smostrom at mn.rr.com
Thu Aug 5 22:37:15 EDT 2004


Well, these two references aren't as much fun as some of the more recent 
hilarious postings here, but I thought some of you might find these 
interesting reading material.


"LATEST RUMORS: Designers of Radio Shack's successor to the TRS-80 Model 
I have changed their minds and will employ Microsoft for writing the 
BASIC interpreter and operating system.  Motorola also made a bid to do 
this development; however, Microsoft ended up with the contract.  Radio 
Shack had been planning to call the unit the "TRS-90", but the firm is 
now leaning toward "TRS-80/Color".  -- March 1980, pg. 108, BYTE


"ROM Programs Held Not Copyrightable:  A decision made in a federal 
court has held that object-code programs in read-only memory cannot be 
copyrighted.  One of the bases for the decision was that the object code 
is not a true copy of the source code, because it is not in a 
human-readable form.  The decision was made in a case involving two 
competing computerized chess-game manufacturers.  Data Cash Systems Inc 
sued J S & A Group Inc for producing a chess game that uses read-only 
memory code identical to its chess-game program, which was copyrighted 
in source code."  -- July 1980, pg. 150, BYTE


-- Steve --






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