[Coco] New to the world of COCO

[gene heskett]

On Thursday, June 30, 2011 05:32:17 PM Mike Needham did opine:

> Greetings fellow COCO enthusiasts!
> 
> I am brand new to the world of the Color Computer, though I was first
> exposed to computers via the TRS-80 and COCO machines.
> 
> My uncle had a COCO (not sure if it was a 2 or a 3) back in the 1980's
> and he worked (and still works) as a COBAL programmer.  My school had a
> TRS-80 model 3 or 4 in the math department that was used to tutor us on
> Math skills.
> 
> Today, I am a programmer and UNIX Geek.  I collect vintage computers and
> began to focus on the Tandy's as I have a VERY fond place in my heart
> for them all.  My first purchased computer for myself was a Tandy
> 1000TX.  So I shifted my collecting focus from Amiga to Tandy's and if
> you all are interested, glad to discuss my collection in it's entirety
> at a later time ;-)  However, most of the focus is on Tandy and
> currently on COCO3 and parts.  Though just today (6/30/2011) I received
> my COCO2 and drives as part of trade I made for some of my Commodore
> stuff which I am currently getting rid of the lot.
> 
> BTW:  If someone knows where one could get a good Tandy CM-8 or CM-11 in
> the Kansas City Metro area, I would love to know!
> 
There is likely not more than 20 cm8's still alive, and the cm11 is an ega 
monitor, not usable with the coco.  Your best bet is one of the scan 
doublers and a recent vga monitor, even the late lcd's should work with 
that.  Roy Justice was making one, and so was someone else, so there might 
be one of those on fleabay occasionally.

> Anyhow, hope that I can be involved with you guys and naturally will
> have questions about my machine.  I have an interesting start as I have
> the Motorola book on programming the 6809 processor which sparked my
> interest in acquiring a COCO at this time.

That is an excellent book, made moreso these days by transplanting a 
Hitachi 6309 cpu into the coco3, which is about 10% faster natively, and 
when combined with nitros9 for the OS, which is today's name for OS9, the 
speed for some operations is more than doubled.  The 6309 has quite a few 
more instructions than the 6809 has, and is all cmos, so there is virtually 
no heat from this new chip.
 
> Have a good day all!


Cheers, gene
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