[Coco] Deskmate 3 article link

[Little John]

Wasn't the SAM and VDG developed as part of some sort of Farmers 
Agricultural Terminal (one of which just sold on eBay rather cheaply)? Then 
they decided, hey, this could also be used to make a cheap color computer? 
I'm only asking because I seem to remember reading something to that effect 
ages ago - but as memories go, mine seems relatively fallible...

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Willard Goosey" <goosey at virgo.sdc.org>
To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2010 1:12 AM
Subject: Re: [Coco] Deskmate 3 article link


> On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 11:04:55PM -0400, RJRTTY at aol.com wrote:
>
>> Sometimes I wonder why Tandy even bothered with the coco and coco3.
>
> Or, at least, why it was the machine it was.  I can see wanting to
> cash in on the color-TV-using low-end 8-bit market, but why did a Z80
> house like Tandy/Radio Shack suddenly put out a 6809 machine?  (I'm
> very glad they did, but it still seems strange!)  A color version of
> the Model I/III would have been more expected.
>
> Then again, they probably didn't want to go to their fellow Texan
> competition for the 9928, hacking a 6845 to do color is just that, a
> hack, the Z80/6847 combo doesn't seem to work very well(*), there's no
> way they could license the VICII, and they sure weren't going to
> design their own video chip.  So, what else could they do?
>
> By the time the CoCo 3 rolled around, well, it could compete fairly
> evenly with the Tandy 1000, and that just wasn't allowed. :-(
>
> (*)Judging by that wierd Japanese machine that was discussed here a
> few years ago.
>>
>> Why make the effort in the first place?
>
> Money, of course.  The FCC killed the Model 1, the Model II was a
> "serious business machine" and the Model III was expensive.
>
> Willard
> -- 
> Willard Goosey  goosey at sdc.org
> Socorro, New Mexico, USA
> I search my heart and find Cimmeria, land of Darkness and the Night.
>  -- R.E. Howard
>
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