[Coco] Re: New subscription contains bio :)

[Dennis Bathory-Kitsz]

>A short (or not) bio of dickbatt (Richard Batt)
>
>I had previous exposure to computers from mainframes at college
>and minicomputers at work, but my first home computer was...
>not a coco. I put a Southwest Technical Products 6800 together
>from a kit in 1977. It had 4k of ram but I eventually got it
>up to 40k and tweaked the speed from 1Mhz to 1.7 Mhz. It was
>a great learning computer from both a hardware and machine
>language (and Basic) standpoint. But there was almost no
>software. It had 4k and 8k Basic interpreters so I mostly
>typed in Basic programs from books and mags. I got tired
>of this and looked for a computer that had software and
>graphics. When the Coco came out it had color graphics but
>almost no software. But I figured Radio Shack would sell a
>bunch and eventually there would be software. It took well
>over a year to get a decent amount of software and hardware
>available but eventually I got my software.
>
>I started with Color Basic and 4k of ram, but upped that
>to 16k within a month. Later upgrades gave me 32k, 64k, and
>finally 128k of ram. I got the Extended Basic rom a yr or
>so after getting the coco and in '84 a disk system with
>the crummy 35 track drive. Around the same time I finally
>got a printer (a heathkit H11?) that I put together from
>a kit. Only 7 pins and no decenders, but it was great to
>not have to copy everything down from the screen.
>
>In '86? (I'm not quite sure about all these dates) the
>Coco 3 came out and I got one at the Princeton CocoFest.
>I thought it was great and after a year of migrating
>programs from the old coco to the new I pretty much
>retired the Coco 1. I still have it but havn't turned it
>on in years. (Still have the SWTP 6800 to, but that's
>been on the shelf for even more years. Just recently
>threw out the b/w TV I used to use with it.)
>
>The Coco 3, however, has never been retired completely.
>It sits on a microwave cart next to my desk. Unfortunately
>it tends to collect piles of papers until I decide I
>want to play Shanghi or just play around.
>
>I did a lot of adding and modifying to the Coco 3. I got
>a couple of SS 40 track Teac's to go with the 35 track
>drive. Later upgraded to 40 tr. DS Teac's. Then added
>one, later a second, 40 tr. 3.5 " drive. I had gotten
>Ados from Art F. for the old machine, and Ados 3 and
>later, Extended Ados 3 for the Coco 3. I got a prom
>burner for making Ados proms from your Green Mtn. Micro
>Company. I modified it to burn 64k, 128k, and was working
>on burning 256k eproms but didn't get that finished.
>Worked fine, but was easier to use with a disk system
>when I started using the burning software from that
>Canadian guy who wrote a bunch of OS-9 utilities.
>I can't remember his name at the moment. He used to
>use a mailbox in Idaho for American customers so
>there wouldn't be any problems with customs when
>sending things across the border. He wrote really
>solid programs.
>
>I upped the memory to 512k pretty quickly and bought
>a Magnavox RGB monitor to go with the color TV I had
>been using with the Coco 1. I also bought an Okidata
>printer. Much better for word processing. Had Telewriter
>on the Coco 1 which I liked, but eventually settled
>on Simply Better on the Coco 3 for word processing.
>I also got a Puppo keyboard addapter and liked to
>sit back in my chair with the keyboard in my lap.
>Had one of those "beanbag" things (with styrofoam
>"beans") with a flat top for holding the keyboard.
>Still have it, but when I try to use it "beans" fly
>out of the several holes it has acquired. Burned a
>new prom for the Puppo adapter to give me my own
>choices of keyboard macros. Between that and the
>macros I had available from Extended Ados I couldn't
>remember more than a small fraction of them.
>
>In 1990 I signed up for Delphi, and was on that until
>they closed down the text service. I used to read all
>the coco and OS-9 forum messages and downloaded most
>of the files. When Delphi was ready to close down the
>text service I spent several weeks downloading forum
>messages and files from the Coco, OS-9, Pc-Comp and
>several other forums. Didn't download them all, but
>quite a few. Had most of it already, but on Coco
>floppy disks and these days it's much easier to
>handle stuff on a PC. I've somehow lost track of
>some of the Coco downloads. If I ever find it all I
>plan on putting it all on a CD. Much easier to keep
>track of that way. I have burned a CD with most of
>it and some other Coco stuff but not my complete
>download.
>
>In '92 we got PC laptops at work. (20 Mhz 386 w/ 4 meg.
>ram and 40 meg. hard drive. Sounded great to someone
>used to Cocos.) After I became familiar with it's
>limitations (and getting tired of sharing that 40 meg
>HD with my work files) I bought a 40 Mhz 386 w/ 170
>meg. HD! Plus it had a color monitor rather than the
>b/w screen the laptop had. With that purchase I slowly
>started on the road away from the Coco. After numerous
>upgrades and a recent purchase I now have 3 working
>PC's that I use routinely plus an old 486 laptop that
>I use occasionally and a 486 desktop that I havn't
>used since I stuck all the pieces together after a
>(not so) recent upgrade. I pretty much stopped using
>the Coco in '96/'97 (I kind of forget exactly) but I
>never packed it up (though I did put a lot of the Coco
>stuff in the basement.) I followed the forums on Delphi
>until they stopped and last year started following
>the discussions on bit.listserv.coco. I have no
>active involvment with the Coco anymore, but it is
>interesting reading about it.
>
>Dick Batt
>