[Coco] RAINBOW vinyl records?

[Frank Swygert]

theother_bob wrote:
That "marketing" scheme left people in a twisted kind of situation where 
to be able to use the available 128KB in a sensible way to write larger 
BASIC programs, they would have to purchase a disk drive, OS-9 and a 
512KB memory board (in order to be able to run BASIC09 with a decent 
amount of free memory).
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You'd really have needed a disk drive no matter what. You can't think that a cassette recorder would have been very useful! When programs were 4K or so it was okay, but try to use it for some real work. I know people have, and I tried some relatively serious word processing with a Scripsit cartridge and tape drive. So irritating and frustrating to lose work! I bought some of the best tapes and used two different ones to save work on, and made multiple saves often. STILL lost some  work, and had to try 2-3 times to load. Had to break the book I was writing into 10 page segments. After about a year of making the thing work, I said to hell with it and bought some used IBM drives and a new disk controller. This was around 1987. I had been in the USAF four years and had a three year old and wife. Repackaged my CoCo 2 in a wood box (I was a carpenter in the USAF at first) lined with tin foil grounded to the motherboard to prevent RF interference and have a place to mount the disk drives. No fancy power supply, CoCo used the original, I mail ordered a surplus +12/+5 power supply (which I still have!) to power the drives, just spliced the cord so there was only one. 

I can't imagine trying to load and/or save 128K or code or data on a #$%#$% tape. The ectra memory did take some work to use, but could be used for data as well as graphics. If nothing else a small RAM drive was useful. 

Besides, two different software packages DID extend BASIC memory access in an easier method. One was "512 BASIC", I forget the other. Yes, extra things you had to buy, and I'm pretty sure they didn't work in 128K, or rather didn't provide enough extra memory to be worth the trouble. The M/L code had to replace the ROMS in RAM too. Then there were distribution problems -- only someone with a copy of the program could run anything you wrote. If Tandy had included something like that in the ROMs, I guess the computer may have been a bit more useful though. 

We're beating a dead horse either way. Tandy didn't do any of those tings. We're darn lucky they invested the money to make the CoCo 3 at all -- their PC sales were so much more profitable. If it hadn't been for a few real CoCo enthusiasts in the company who pushed it, there wouldn't have been one. 

-- 
Frank Swygert
Publisher, "American Motors Cars" 
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