[Coco] Anyone else collect other old computers/game consoles beside the Coco?

[Jeremy Michea]

I thought it might be an interesting discussion. Obviously we all love 
the Coco but what else do you love? Many of you may know that I'm a huge 
Atari fan and have been collecting for the Atari 2600/7800 and 8-bit 
line of computers for about 20 years now, on and off as it was my first 
console in 1980. Through the 80's I also owned the original Nintendo 
(NES) and Turbografx-16 but the only computer I used aside from PC's 
(late 80's and early 90's) was my beloved Coco.

As a side note, I almost didn't get a coco. Brand loyalty at the time 
lead our family to buy an Atari 800XL but my father wasn't interested in 
buying all new software and games for a new system so a friend suggested 
the coco since he had all kinds of software to share with us (well, 
copied software on cassettes but as a 13 year old in 1982 I wasn't aware 
or concerned about piracy so that's another story) so we got a used Coco 
1 with the chicklet keyboard, a cassette player and a bunch of cassettes 
with, yes, mostly games. I did do some homework but lets be honest, I 
spent most of my time playing some great coco 1 games.

As another side, yet rambling note, what BBS's did any of you use back 
in the day? Here in Southern Ontario, the one I used the most in my area 
was called "Route 66". I believe it was the only coco based BBS in my 
area where it seemed predominately Commodore 64. Also downloaded a lot 
of software from Route 66 as well as a local coco user group that met 
once a month in a local french public school.

I remember being so excited when the Coco 3 was announced. I spent the 
summer prior to its release in the glorious field (literally) of corn 
detasseling to save up the money to buy my brand new Coco 3. I remember 
being in complete awe of the demo in the store and the manager was nice 
enough to make a disk copy that I played a lot at home. :)

Anyway, I've rambled enough. Anyone else have any stories about their 
other retro passions, coco musings, etc? :)