[Coco] Green mountain micro color burner

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

Hi Kip (and everyone),

I'm sorry that I don't have any more info for you. Green Mountain 
Micro went under over 25 years ago, and what was left was stored in a 
repair shop where I worked for a while. It closed four or five years 
ago, and I sold it all.

The designs were published in The Color Computer Magazine. There were 
two 6821s on board, and as I recall the addressing scheme meant you 
couldn't use it with other devices. That was early in the day for 
ported peripherals.

It also used a fairly simple voltage regulation that provided the 
relatively high current that some of those early EPROMs needed to 
burn reliably. That meant it went through 9V batteries fairly 
quickly; it never was a production burner.

And just a reminder about rights: I noted several years ago on this 
list that ALL my computer projects and software have been placed in 
the public domain.

Good luck with it!

Dennis



At 03:38 AM 9/10/2013, you wrote:
>Inspired by your question I think I will tell the story of how my version of
>the Color Burner came to be a reality.  In the meantime, how it all started
>was I came across an article for my version the Color Burner and built mine
>about 3 decades ago on a Coco Prototype PCB that Radio Shack use to sell
>back in the Glory Days of the Coco computer line.  I honestly don't remember
>how I got the software running from disk, but I did come across the DECB
>floppy disk a while back and read it into my workbench PC a year or two ago.
>After looking at the Color Burner manual PDF last night that Al Hartman so
>kindly and generously had scanned (at great cost I might add) I realized I
>needed to look at my homebrewed Color Burner PCB again, for I don't remember
>using any 6821s in it.  What this means is My version of the software may or
>may not work on Dennis' original PCB design as I might have modified it or
>it might be another completely different eprom burner altogether, so I'd
>like for someone who does have Dennis' original version to test this theory
>from me and let me know by private email the results.  I certainly DON'T
>remember much of what I did back then.  Recall after long term storage has
>always been difficult for me at best.  I'm actually speculating much of what
>I might have done.  When I found my Color Burner hardware, I was wondering
>what two eproms my two 16-pin header personality modules were wired for, so
>when I saw this discuss begin on the Green Mountain Micro Color Burner  I
>decided to participate.  I'll need to look at my Color Burner PCB project
>again, because I absolutely don't remember using any 6821s at all.  Weird
>how something you built almost completely escapes your memory.  And I
>thought my memory was non-volatile!  :)   As to your question of PCBs, I
>don't have any other PCBs for the Green Mountain Micro Color Burner as I
>made only the one.  After all, once I built it, I didn't need another one
>and back then I did not know how to go about making my own PCBs though I
>thought about it from time to time.   I can enter the schematic and layout a
>PCB for you if you'd like.  I don't think Dennis would mind since he
>published the article those so many years ago anyway detailing the whole
>with software to boot.  Thank you Dennis for sharing your design.  I really
>appreciate it.  I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd ever be able to
>communicate with you personally.  Luis, I'll get to work on it right away.
>How I built mine?  I point to point wired it on the Coco Prototype PCB from
>Radio Shack and now that I think about that PCB layout, it was not pretty
>nor professional, but it worked for me just fine!  :)  I used it quite a bit
>for a while helping various members in the Spartanburg Color Computer Club I
>use to belong to in Spartanburg, SC before I went into the Air Force in
>1986.  I had a lot of fun with it as I recall.  Well, I better stop this
>email as it is getting long and you guys know how I enjoy sharing my
>experiences.  Take care everybody.  Happy Eproming!