[Coco] So how about sequels for classic CoCo games like Ghana Bwana in 3D for PC and Consoles?

[wdg3rd at comcast.net]

> On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 4:08 PM,  <wdg3rd at comcast.net> wrote:

> > From: "RJLCyberPunk" <cyberpunk at prtc.net>

> >> > Even see him here once in a while.

> >>

> >> Wow! You do? Like face to face? Man to me and my brothers and cousins he is

> >> a freaking legend with the games that he made and we played on the CoCo back

> >> in the day! If I ever saw him face to face I'd ask for the man's authograph

> >> he is our hero! :D

> >

> Honest, he's not a god, he's just a nice guy and a hell of a programmer.  

> "Back in the day" I used to see him fairly regularly, as he lived in the San 

> Fernando Valley and I did tech support at the RSCC in downtown L.A.  Happens at 

> the time he was engaged to (and later married) a field tech who sometimes worked 

> out of our repair shop, though she usually worked out of the RSCC down by LAX or 

> the one in Beverly Hills.



> In those days, I was about the only person doing tech support for RS in SoCal 

> who had any real fondness for (or gave any support for) the Color Computer line.  

> (I made up for my support of low-ticket items by also being tops in support of 

> the high-end Xenix systems, often farmed out to other RSCCs in the triangle 

> between Santa Barbara, San Diego and San Bernardino to handle problems their 

> CSRs couldn't handle).  (And yes, I own a Tandy 6000HD along with all of my 

> Color Computers, my Mod One, my 4 and 4P, my Mod 2 and my Mod 100s).  My support 

> for the Color Computer did get me one fan, practically a disciple.  You've seen 

> him if you ever watched the original "Beastmaster" movie.  Josh Milrad, who 

> played the young prince (and hasn't a major impact on the movie industry since 

> then, as far as the IMDB can tell).


From: Sean <badfrog at gmail.com>

> You know, I never even knew there was tech support available for the

> CoCo...  Could you just call in or what?

> Don't think I would have ever had a need for it, everything was pretty

> self explanatory.  I would have just been calling in to say "how do

> you get past the Anaconda in Dallas Quest?"  (Which I do remember the

> answer to. :)


I did not offer solutions to games, as I was not (and am not) a gamer.  When I say technical support, I mean technical support.  Problems reading disks, getting serial setups right, hassles with poor documentation, the real thing.  I will state that half of the folks on this list are more technically competent in the guts of the Color Computer than I ever was.  I did _retail level_ tech support, which in an RSCC was merely a step or two above asking the pimply faced youth at your local mall Radio Shack store.  The most advanced I ever got in those days was setting up a multi-user OS-9 Level One system in the classroom of my RSCC.  Which I think had some hack value at the time (1984).  By then I'd been into Xenix for over a year, the OS-9 docs mentioned commands that implied the capability, so I tried it.  It worked, though poorly (the bit-banger lost characters if you typed on the terminal (a Coco with a Vidtex cartridge) while the floppy on the "server" was being accessed). 
  It wa
s about $6k less than a T6k setup.  (Though the T6k had eight times as much RAM and a dozen more and faster megabytes of storage and a 68k instead of a 6809 -- oh, and real terminals with real keyboards -- I was never happy with the standard issue Color Computer keyboards, from the chiclet to the Coco 3).
--
Ward Griffiths    wdg3rd at comcast.net

I thought about being diplomatic and polite.  Honest, I really did.  But while I was thinking about it, I accidentally bumped the button that puts my mouth on autopilot, because it said, "That's a load of crap, Captain, and you know it".    Jim Butcher, _Small Favor_