[Coco] [CoCo] Atari and Amiga comparison

[RJRTTY at aol.com]

People

In the course of adapting my  converter to these machines I have
had to acquire them for testing  purposes.    Because of this I have been
able to compare them  personally with the coco3.  I have always wanted
one of these machines  because of all the "hoopla" in the press about
them when they came  out.   A number of things discouraged me from
owning one at the  time.   Price, the fact that I already had the coco3 and
a limited  amount of time available to become familiar with another 
machine.   Little things like that and the biggy "I just never got around
to  it".

Well I have them now and I have to tell you I am  not all that impressed.
Don't get me wrong.   The 68000 was a great  processor in its day and
these machines were great advancements to personal  computing but
I think the coco3 compares favorably with them.    They didn't display
more simultaneous colors than the coco tho they had  bigger palettes.
The Amiga had the "HAM" mode but it was convoluted and  inconvenient
to use.  Sock's enhanced display modes for the coco3 are as  useful
and show more colors.   Great for still images like the  Amiga HAM  mode.

I guess they just don't live up to the  mystique that surrounded them for
me at the time.   In my opinion,  the 6809 ( and 6309 now) was still a viable
alternative during the 68000's  prime.  The only thing missing in the coco3
was 8 bit task registers  that could allow it to access 2 meg ram natively and
8 bit palette registers  for a 256 color palette.   But even without these the
coco3 held it  own with these machines and seemed more appropriate for
the experimenters  among us to use for special purposes.

The one thing I  like the most about the Amiga is the internal disk drive and
the external  power supply.    I think my next personal project will be to 
put  a 
1.44 M drive into a coco3 enclosure and modify it for use with an  external
12V "brick" type power supply.   The same thing Bob did on  his website.

What I am saying is I don't think I  missed much.  Looking back on it now
I am glad I was a coco  person.  No regrets.  See you all at the fest.

Roy  

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