[Coco] Mark Seigel Found?

[Arthur Flexser]

Mark Siegel also claimed to be the one who added the DOS command to Disk
Basic 1.1.  Believable, since it is coded horribly.

Art
On Sun, Jan 9, 2011 at 3:18 PM, Nick Marentes <nickma at optusnet.com.au>wrote:

> >Mark Siegel is a common name in America and quick Google search is not
> >going to be too helpful.
>
> True, but we need to start somewhere. This one is a spokesman for AT&T in
> Texas.
> His e-mail address is here...  http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=1916
> Anyone know how to draft a suitable e-mail to ask him if he is who we are
> looking for?   :)
>
> >Also, Mark is far from being the Father of the CoCo since started
> >working for Tandy years after the CoCo hit the market. But he did have
> >something to do with getting OS-9 for the CoCo and some specifications
> >for the CoCo 3. He was a project manager when he worked with me at
> >Datasoft and was not a programmer or hardware engineer.
>
> "Father of the CoCo" were *his* words when I interviewed him in March 1999.
> Isn't it funny how some people like to gain total ownership of things.   :)
>
> >For the record, the nonexistent "256 color" of the CoCo 3 was Marks
> >idea. But the limits on cost for the Coco 3 kept it out of the design.
> >His final 256 color design (never used thank god) was a joke with only
> >80 dots (more like blocks) per scan line. Even that mode could never
> >work because the Video DAC was only 2 bits per color for a total of 64
> >colors. Even years later, he would tell CoCo users that there was a 256
> >mode hidden inside the GIME. Why, who knows?
>
> I agree with the video DAC limitations preventing 256 colors... via RGB
> anyway. I've been long saying that someone should at least analyse Al
> Huffman's prototype boards to confirm if it has a high DAC bit count. Also,
> to see if the 512 byte ROM that this board contains could actually be a 256
> color palette ROM. For some reason, this prototype board remains locked away
> from analysis.
>
> I agree, I'm sceptical of it's existance in the GIME chip. I would like to
> know if it existed in the original prototype that Al Huffman has and it
> would be good to corner the "Father of the CoCo"  and question him a bit
> more about his claims that he had activated this mode on a production GIME
> chip.
>
> Another name that would be good to interview regarding the development of
> the CoCo is Dale Chatham - Director of hardware engineering at Radio Shack
> back then and involved with the CoCo design. Anyone got any links?
>
> >The stuff I was fighting for in the design for the CoCo 3 was real UART
> >for true RS-232 port and simple sound system that could play a few notes
> >at once. But in the end I had to be happy with a programmable timer
> >with interrupt to "fake" the UART and sound chip.
>
> Cost was the factor here and I guess that Radio Shack felt the CoCo had
> these already in the form of the "Deluxe RS-232" and "Sound and Speech"
> paks. Yes, I would have preferred that these were built in and a standard
> part of the design rather than an add-on requiring that dreadful multi-pak.
> I guess Radio Shack were a marketing company and opted to go this way to
> make more money selling the add-ons.
>
> Nick Marentes
>
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