[Coco] CoCo in my Blog

[Ty Sopko]

Hi Gene,

Thanks for the kind words and stories.  I am always interested to hear about personal experiences and frustrations with tech.

My opinion is that we unknowingly buy gadgets [nowadays] with the hope that they will fill some internal need.  When they do not, we move on.  The CoCo was certainly different in this regard.

I am suspicious that you would have a great time with my product-under-development.  It will be a long wait, unfortunately.

Ty


-----Original Message-----
From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Gene Heskett
Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2018 2:51 PM
To: coco at maltedmedia.com
Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo in my Blog

On Sunday 04 February 2018 14:02:39 Ty Sopko wrote:

> Curtis and Santiago, thanks for taking a look!
>
> I am glad you both enjoyed the article.  It would be fun to keep 
> writing about CoCo and retro computing, but that is not my company's 
> focus.
>
> I publish a new post weekly on Saturday night.  I only shared this 
> article because it is vaguely on-topic for this list; everyone has an 
> open invitation to keep up with Shift Sight if you like what you are 
> reading.
>
> Kind Regards,
>
> Ty
>
I just read your blog, and its totally spot on. I had 2 "computers" 
before I got my first coco. A quest Super Elf that I made a production tool out of at KRCR-tv in Redding CA, a tool that turned out to be so useful it was still in several times a day use at KRCR 13 years later when I checked last.

Then a TI99/4A which I still have, but while it may have been a quite capable machine, was severely crippled by the nearly $700 just to get a disk drive attached.

Then came the coco's, and before very long, os9, and I was off to the races and won a few.

I can't argue with a thing you wrote, Ty. The coco was the best teaching tool ever. To this day, if its not PIC code. or very well hidden if not, I'll soon tire of its limitations without it. Being familiar with os9 also made my transition from a coco to an amiga, and then to linux on an
x86 box in 1998 relatively painless. I have only owned a windows machine once, I needed a laptop to keep in touch when I was on the road playing visiting fireman after I retired in 2002. The XP on it got wiped in favor of Mandrake a week later when I found the windows supplied drivers for its radio didn't work. Didn't work with Mandrake, broadcom made some real crippled dogs, still today there is not a driver that can maintain a connection via the radio for more than about a minute. So I bought a usb dongle which just works.

Now in my dotage, I am carving both metal and wood with machines I've converted to cnc controls, the latest one a 70 yo Sheldon 11x36 lathe.

Currently running it with a Raspberry pi 3b, albeit not without a problem at times. And the coco made it all possible, faster because it was such a good teacher. Thanks for the reminder Ty.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Carlos 
> Santiago Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2018 11:48 AM
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] CoCo in my Blog
>
> I agree. This was a great article. My kids were first exposed to basic 
> on the color computer and it was better than the exposure that kids 
> get today from an iPhone or iPad.
>
> GuruSantiago
>
> Sent from my iPhone4
>
> > On Feb 4, 2018, at 8:55 AM, L. Curtis Boyle 
> > <curtisboyle at sasktel.net> wrote:
> >
> > I quite liked your article, and agree with a lot of it as well.
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
> >> On Feb 3, 2018, at 8:26 PM, Ty Sopko <ty.sopko at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Hi Folks,
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Just FYI if you are interested - my company's latest blog post 
> >> stars a CoCo3.  There is not much CoCo-specific detail, but there 
> >> is praise for BASIC and retro computers in general.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> https://www.shiftsight.com/blog/ok-_
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Have a great night.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Kind Regards,
> >>
> >>
> >> Ty
> >>

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