[Coco] [Color Computer] What's this?

[John R. Hogerhuis]

On Sun, 2006-08-27 at 10:57 +0000, mccomber wrote:
> Anyone familiar with this device and what it does?
> 
> http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260025516264
> 

Hi-Res joystick adapters use the cassette DAC and the joystick port to
give hi resolution data for mouse and joystick input. I think the
original joystick ports only allow 0-63 in horizontal and vertical axes
which isn't fine-grained enough for graphics work.

The original Coco Max had its own ROM pak to get resolution of 256X192.

There were a couple of Rainbow magazine articles that described how to
read these (machine code is required, you can't just PEEK in BASIC and
there are no BASIC commands tailored to the device). 

I think Steve Bjork may have been involved in helping design these for
Tandy? A vague memory, I may be wrong but it wouldn't be the worst rumor
I ever started. Pretty sure he wrote the original article in Rainbow
describing how to read them.

I don't know if these things are rare... I have one or two. I do believe
that Coco Max III can be patched to use them instead of its proprietary
dongle that ColorWare was including with Coco Max III for DRM (digital
Restrictions management) purposes.

-- John.