[Coco] Some Old CoCo Contacts

[Tom Seagrove]

I remember about that time period someone had a tic-tack-toe program and
wanted volunteers to play it and pass it on to the next person.  It was
supposed to learn.  I ran it about 200 times and passed it one as asked.
Don't remember hearing the results of that.  It may have been William Barden
who set it up and asked for volunteers.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Andrew
Sent: Saturday, March 06, 2010 8:56 PM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Subject: Re: [Coco] Some Old CoCo Contacts

All:

Recently, I dug around in some of my old "memorabilia" from my more 
youthful days with my CoCo, and I found a few letters I received from a 
few individuals on various topics. I wanted to post their names, where 
the letter was from at the time, what the general idea of their letter 
was about, and some comments. I am kinda hoping some or all of them are 
on this list; one in particular, because I may owe him some money!

:)

First off out of the gate, I have a letter postmarked November 1988 from 
William Barden, Jr, of Mission Viejo, CA. He was a prolific columnist 
and article writer for the Rainbow, if I remember correctly. I remember 
writing to the Rainbow (or maybe it was to him directly) about this 
Tic-Tac-Toe program he wrote (I guess it was in the July 1988 issue of 
the Rainbow), and it learned how to play better using a form of AI 
learning. I was either volunteering some results, or asking a question 
or something (I am not sure how else he would have got my address). I 
think (???) he has posted here before. I do remember typing the program 
in and enjoying playing around with it. I am still fascinated by the 
concept and ideas of computer/machine intelligence and AI.

The next letter I have is postmarked from Lancaster, Ontario in 1989 
from Kevin C. Vivaraies; I must've wrote a letter to the Rainbow or 
something, having to do with 3D graphics programming (or 3D using 
anaglyph?); he said he had found some information, specifically a couple 
of articles in Popular Science, and a magazine called "Micro Kids" 
(December 1983) - detailing 3D graphics of some sort or another. I 
wonder if he pursued things further? I know I played around with 
converting Lee Adams 3D graphics code to the CoCo 3 and had some good 
success with it, too. As I grew older, I played with 3D graphics on the 
Amiga, and later on my PC (using everything from Assembler to QuickBasic 
to Visual Basic to C/C+); I haven't done much recently, though (I did 
play around with Python and OpenGL not too many years back). 3D graphics 
and virtual reality are both long-time pursuits of mine as well, and 
probably always will be.

Lastly (and this is the guy I may owe money to), I have a small letter 
written on a 3x5 index card from William T. Munza, in Vass, NC. 
According to this letter, in some manner he sent me a check for $8.00 
for me to make a copy of EDTASM onto his original floppy, which he also 
sent (I guess I was willing to make him a copy, but only a legal one?); 
there isn't any date on the note card, but it does mention that after 
May 15 he was planning to move back to Ohio. Mr. Munza, if you are 
reading this, and if I didn't get you that copy, I sincerely apologize; 
contact me and we can work something out (I'll gladly repay you the 
dollar adjusted amount - with interest, even, if we can figure out the 
date!). If I did get you your copy back, I hope it worked out for you. 
Email me either way, if this finds you somehow.

For all of these letters, I was in High School and playing heavily with 
my CoCo 3, dialing up bulletin boards at night and tying up my parents 
phone line with 300 baud goodness, and honing my skills and fascination 
with computers. I still have this fascination; if it involves computing 
however remotely, I am likely a fan of it. I have a career as a 
professional software developer; I play around with electronics, 
robotics, micro-controllers, and virtual reality as a hobby. I study 
computer history for fun, and I own a small vintage computing 
collection. It originally started with watching too much Battlestar 
Galactica and Buck Rogers on the weekends, coupled with playing Atari, 
as a second and third grade kid. A few years later, I played with an 
Apple IIe at school, and my parents later bought me a Color Computer 2 
with 16k of RAM and a tape deck. That kicked things into high gear; my 
grades even got better! I am where I am today because of all this, and 
those letter writers so long ago were a part of it, whether they know it 
or not.

Thank you all,

Andrew L. Ayers, Glendale, Arizona

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