[Coco] COCO Video

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 24 June 2013 10:27:37 billg999 at cs.uofs.edu did opine:

> > John, you've probably been asked this before, but what do you think of
> > the theory that the 6847 and 6883 were designed specifically for
> > Tandy? The 6883
> > in particular smells like a breadboard of TTL glue that got the old
> > shrinkeroo into a 40 pin DIP.
> 
> I have seen this comment a few times recently.  To be honest, I don't
> think Tandy ever expected the COCO to be anything but a cartridge based
> game console like the Atari 2600 (thus the reason they never did a hard
> disk for it even though they did for every one of the Z80 based
> systems). Given that, I can't see them investing that much effort.
> 
> bill

Ahh, but they did do a hard drive interface for it, they had one at one of 
the local shacks that I've had in my hot, sweaty hands several times.  But 
it was in the late 80's, and $129.95 when child support and the IRS 
garnishments because she was playing with the returns was eating my lunch.

Not exactly sure how it worked, was full of small scale ic's, 14 & 16 pin 
dips, and was I believe intended to function as an interface for some sort 
of SAS to MFM controller adapter.  IOW to get to the drive itself took yet 
another card between it and the drive.  The shack folks could not tell me 
what else was needed, no clue, I could pay the money and take it home & 
figure it out for myself.  I do know that os9 had 2 drivers for it, sized 
for a 5 meg drive, or a 15 meg drive.  Again, zero docs, you figure it out.  
It had a place in the display case for several years, but I assume it was 
recycled when they left the coco business.  I never saw it on the tent sale 
tables at the end either. 
> 
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Cheers, Gene
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