[Coco] Why was the Coco abandoned?

[Roger Taylor]

At 06:06 PM 11/9/2008, you wrote:
>Michael Robinson wrote:
>>I've heard that an engineering problem in the GIME chip lead to the
>>demise of the Coco.  I've heard that the GIME was too expensive.
>>1990, wasn't the 386 out at that point?
>>In the old days when the Coco was hot, there was real competition in the
>>personal computer market.  It wasn't just Apple and vendors selling
>>Windows compatible PC's.  Even the Alpha is gone now.
>>
>>--
>
>I think most of us believe that Tandy felt the Coco undercut the 
>sales of the more expensive PC clones. That would certainly have 
>been the case if a Coco4 were released.
>
>Also Tandy never took the Coco seriously in spite of the fact that 
>it was very strong competition for anything else on the market in 
>its price range.



There was also a lack of programmer involvement.  There were plenty 
of games on the market but it seems that they rushed most of them to 
just get them done and on the shelf.  Look on YouTube for videos of 
Sinclair games and other computers of that time and you'll see that 
we could have had much better stuff released.

If we had my Rainbow IDE around back then, some serious stuff could 
have been done in a fraction of the time, and deadlines could have 
been met with quality.  :)

But then, the idea of using a more powerful system to develop for a 
smaller system might not have crossed many programmer's 
minds.  EDTASM may have been the primary choice tool back then.

-- 
Roger Taylor

http://www.wordofthedayonline.com