[Coco] Hello from a Coco Newbie...

[Aaron Wolfe]

If you have a general interest in all types of classic computers, you
probably want to explore MESS.  It not only has a good emulation of several
coco and coco-like machines, but many other retro systems as well.   Whether
you prefer it to VCC is something you'll have to determine for yourself,
seems to be a split between users of the two here on the list.

It can be really hard to find things in both the rtsi ftp site (mostly
software) and the malted media archive (mostly documentation).  When I first
go back into CoCo stuff I struggled to find things and was never really sure
if I'd looked everywhere or had the most current version of anything.

Here are the books I've found most useful, all can be found online, mostly
in malted media's archive.  Sorry if I've left any favorites out, and also
sorry but you'll have to search around for them.  At least maybe you'll have
a better idea of *what* to look for :)

General CoCo / History:

  "Tandy's Little Wonder, 2nd edition" by F.G. Swygert


Hardware:

  "Coco III Secrets Revealed" by John Gabbard
  "A Full Turn of the Screw" by Tony DiStefano


6809 ASM:

  "Assembly Language Programming for the Color Computer" by Laurence A
Tepolt
  "Assembly Language Programming for the Color Computer 3" by Laurence A
Tepolt
  "TRS-80 Color Computer Assembly Language Programming" by William Barden,
Jr
  "Motorola MC6809 Programming Manual" by Motorola


BASIC

  All of the Tandy manuals are quite good
  All of the "Unravelled" series by Spectral Associates (Color, Disk,
Extended, Super Extended Basic Unravelled)


OS-9 / NitrOS-9

  The original documentations from Microware/Tandy, especially the
  "OS-9 Level II Development System and Tech Reference"
  "Mastering OS-9 on the Tandy Color Computer 3" by Farna Systems
  "Inside OS-9 Level II" by Kevin Darling
  "OS-9 User Notes vol 1" by Peter Dibble (great set of articles, is there a
vol 2+?)
  "OS-9 Insights" by Peter Dibble, edition 3.0
  For NitrOS-9, the documentation found on the website is very good.  Not
aware of any books specifically written about NitrOS-9, but most content in
the OS-9 books applies.


Welcome and hope you enjoy the CoCo!
-Aaron




On Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 7:21 PM, Michael Kerpan <mjkerpan at kerpan.com> wrote:

> As someone who has long been interested in classic computers, I'm
> always looking to explore cool platforms from the past, which Coco
> (and especially the Coco 3) seems to be. At the moment, I'm short on
> physical space (and on cash), so a real system looks to be out of the
> question, but the VCC emulator looks quite good to start an
> exploration with...
>
> Anyway, I was wonder if there are any good sources of software online
> to get me started and also if anybody has any reccomendations as to
> good sources of information about Coco and 6809 coding? I've checked
> the Cocopedia, but information still seems to be very limited, so any
> help would greatly appreciated!
>
> Mike
>
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