[Coco] VHD 256 or 255 disks

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 21 October 2013 04:55:51 nickma at optusnet.com.au did opine:

> > Sorry Nick, but as a nitros9 only user, that would be throwing a
> 
> very
> 
> >talented baby out with the bath water.
> >
> >Cheers, Gene
> 
> Talented in the eyes of a dedicated Nitros-9 user... yes.
> 
> Talented in the eyes of an outsider looking to come in... maybe the
> opposite. I've come across several who saw it as archaic (as opposed
> to just old).
> 
> We, as die hard users may be able to appreciate the power but none of
> us live forever.
 
I don't know about that, I intend to and have made it to 79 so far. :)
OTOH, I am a diabetic with hypertension, limping badly on a knee I tore up 
on 9/30.  So I'm not in great shape, and diabetics can't buy a warranty 
we'll be here tomorrow for any amount of money.  Thats just how it is.

> When those few die hard's are gone, who is going to remember our
> favorite 8-bitter?
> 
> We should be utilizing that power to expand it's use to something more
> people can appreciate.

The only thing basic has that we don't, is the ability to red/write to 
cassette tape.  Since we have drivewire, and I have 2gigabytes of hard 
drives online for much faster storage than the cassette, I don't consider 
that a disadvantage.

Running os9 was excellent training in the unix way of doing things, so when 
it came time for a faster machine, windows with its limits often imposed by 
what I at the time considered a quite broken processor architecture in the 
x86 chips, opted to switch to an amiga, which didn't suffer that broken 
architectures limits and was a genuinely more powerful system despite a 
rather pedestrian speed in the 68000 powered versions.  It served me well 
for a decade.  But when it came time to build my next machine, it was 
obvious that the x86 architecture was winning so I built a 400 mhz amd k6 
powered machine, and installed Red Hat 5.0 on it in 1998.  Windows was 
never an option for me because that wasn't how real computers ran.  I built 
another when the amd athlons came out, and again about 5 years ago with 
this one being a slow phenom 4 core, with 4 1 terrabyte drives.  Yes, its 
overkill times 5 probably, but theres not a lot I can't do either.  AND 
I've done it on a social security budget. 

I have a 4 axis cnc controlled milling machine, a table topper, accurate to 
around a thousandth.  I also have the basic 7x12 $500 metal lathe, but with 
$200 worth of ball screws, its accuracy is now better than .001", also cnc 
controlled.  So if I can't buy it, I write the gcode and I make it.  The 
two computers that run those machines cost $265 each sitting on my front 
porch without an operating system.  The complete operating system, with the 
linuxcnc software included costs a buck for the cd to store it on as you 
sneakernet it to these machines and install it, also installed on this 
machine but running a newer kernel here.

If I had to go out and buy those machines, in the condition they are now, 
with commercial software to drive them, I'd be out about 20 grand and 
running far buggier software.  I might have 5 grand in them right now, 
including all the networking hardware.

I had written code for 3 other architectures before I was aware of the 
coco.  Each of those had its strong points and its Achilles heels as there 
was once quite a selection of ways to do it.

While one could learn to code for the Z80, or the 6502, both of which are 
architecturally incomplete and broken IMO, the RCA 1802 was nice but 
suffered from a slow clock and only 8 bits wide into memory.  The TI-9900 
was the most unusual but utterly sensible way to do multitasking ever, but 
TI sat on their hands when they should have been doing die shrinks to keep 
up, so it died after its generation of mainframes was over.  It also 
powered the everybody has one in the closet, TI99/4A.

But the coco, and os9 was my real entry into serious computing.  My 
teacher.  The others I could learn, but the coco actually taught, and that 
is the most praiseworthy thing you can say yet today, by removing the 
barriers to learning, it is the best teacher ever yet today even if it was 
discontinued a quarter century ago.

You Nick, want to standardize on the lowest common denominator and live 
with those restrictions.  I don't and I refuse to, but then I was never a 
conformist.  Not even at 17 years old standing behind the podium explaining 
to a large room full of tv dealers, the technical details in the 1952 
Zenith tv's that were head and shoulders better than anything else they 
could sell. That, obviously was 61 years ago and the rest is now history.

> Nick

Cheers, Gene
-- 
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