[Coco] Coco Armatron Interfacing

[Aaron Wolfe]

On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 11:03 PM, Andrew <keeper63 at cox.net> wrote:
> All,
>
> I have just posted to my website a writeup about an article I found in the
> April 1984 issue of Color Computer magazine on Aaron Wolfe's website,
> CoCoCoding. Aaron had linked to his website about another issue in regards
> to Mr. Bjork's sitting on a quad at age 25 (interesting article and
> pictures, that!). I started reading thru some of the other issues - and
> found the Armabot!
>
> It was an article on interfacing the Armatron to the Color Computer,
> something I knew had been done before (there were advertisements for such
> conversions in the Rainbow, for instance, by Analog Micro Systems), but I
> had not seen any discussion on how to actually do it (there was an article
> series about something called the ROS which detailed a general bus interface
> geared toward robotics - but this had nothing to do with the Armatron,
> AFAIK).
>
> So - I "ripped" a copy of the article and made a PDF of it, and put it on my
> website, here:
>
>        http://www.phoenixgarage.org/show_article/106
>
> I credit Aaron Wolfe's website and his collection, as well as the magazine
> issue; I hope this is OK - I am not trying to step on anyone's toes, I just
> collect and archive articles on my website dealing with interfacing the
> Armatron to computers - there were quite a few projects of this nature
> during that time period.
>

Credit should not go to me :)  The PDFs on cococoding.com are all from
other places.  I just OCRed them and put them into Google Docs.  Most
come from the maltedmedia archive, with the exception of 68 Micro
Journal which comes from the Flex User Group archive.  The real work
was done by those who took the time to scan these in.  I've tried to
credit them when I can find out who that was, but for many that
information seems to be have lost along the way.

Since you can find these files on many sites, I think it's OK to post
them or parts of them on your own.  It's certainly fine by me.


> I wanted to announce it here, in case anyone was interested!
>
> -- Andrew L. Ayers
>   Glendale, Arizona
>   http://www.phoenixgarage.org/
>
>
>> Message: 8
>> Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:39:51 -0400
>> From: Aaron Wolfe <aawolfe at gmail.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Coco] Good memories with Mr. Bjork
>> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts <coco at maltedmedia.com>
>> Message-ID:
>>        <AANLkTikXiXaLMxO-d-+6N+QLHTEgr391a8dktnDiUoNC at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 8:02 PM, Allen Huffman <alsplace at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Jul 28, 2010, at 6:50 PM, Aaron Wolfe wrote:
>>>>
>>>> The picture on the first page is awesome.. ?Steve at age 25, sitting
>>>> on a four wheeler (apparently indoors), wearing a sports coat and full
>>>> on 80s tie. ?Man that takes me back. ?Makes you appreciate how much
>>>> has changed in ~30 years. ?Those were good times.
>>>
>>> I remember that! I must have that issue somewhere. 25? Really? Wow. I'm
>>> dumbfounded thinking at how young alot of these folks were that were
>>> cranking out so much software.
>>>
>>> If I recall the story, they had that four wheeler in a booth at whatever
>>> show that was at, and wired up the CoCo joystick interface to controls on
>>> the actual four wheeler so folks could ride and play ... Dessert Rider?
>>>
>>
>> Another interesting bit of trivia.  I'm guessing it wasn't "dessert"
>> rider, but who knows? the 80s were strange times :)
>>
>> FWIW, you can read the article online here:
>>
>> https://sites.google.com/a/aaronwolfe.com/cococoding/home/magazines/color-computer-magazine
>>
>> (if your email client doesn't mangle the massive url)  it's on page 86.
>>
>> I only have a couple of the CCM magazines converted so far, but lots
>> of other mags fully OCR'ed and shrunk in size are available to read or
>> download.  I do the conversions in the background when I'm working on
>> boring jobs.  google indexes the contents once they are OCRed, so you
>> can do full text search over tons of magazines/issues, sort of cool.
>> Some day Google is supposed to be adding context to the results like
>> they do with web searches, but right now all you get is links to the
>> matching issues with the search terms highlighted in the text if you
>> open them.  Not ideal but maybe useful.
>
> --
> Coco mailing list
> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> http://five.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
>