[Coco] Old Coco Media

[Ron Bihler]

Forgive as I am an outsider voicing my opinions.  
It has been a very long time since I was active in the Coco Community, a really long time for that matter.  I was very familiar with the likes of Warren Hrach, Charles Pippin and many others that contributed to the BBS community and Fidonet at the time. 
How this has all changed but yet stayed the same.  When I took on the project of connecting into the Fidonet (Those not familair - it was similair to this group but all the people involved would contact a local connect or in many cases a Long distance connection to share messages across the country).  
At that time the primary systems connected where the XT and AT's of the day.  It took some very good and willing to people to put up with the software I created and the problems.  Somehow it did get done.  The coco has always been the underdog to the bigger machines, but has had a solid following (Small thought).  

I syspect many people are like myself, I was big time into the Coco and OS9.  Countless hours of typing in Rainbow programs.  However I have a very fond memory of this time, I have since moved on.  This is really very old technology.  I also work with a bunch of old Hardware based on 6809 or 68000 processors, robotics etc.  I can't tell you how hard it is to find software or hardware for these old machines, if at all.  After holding onto the Hardware and Magizines for 15 years, I ended up disposing of it (Prior to Ebay being big) as there was NO interest. I had all of them up to the introduction of the MM/1, this included Hot Coco/ Rainbow and a few issues on one I can't even remember.  Regrets yes, but realality steps in and I can't keep it all.  

It would be a shame to lose this piece of history, I do hope something happens to archive it.  This sounds like many old hardware peices I use, much of the data is lost forever.  Someone has it in a dark store room getting moldy to never see the light of day.  I myself have nothing left from this time, I had passed on my files for porting to the MM/1.  This is history, the only value is for the collector and this group and this has to be very limited.  Really now how many people are willing to fork out even 20 bucks for a DVD, 20, 40 ???

Again just me two cents worth.  Had to say something. 

Ron Bihler
Author of RiBBS system.