[Coco] COCO Video

[billg999 at cs.uofs.edu]

> 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.


Got a part number?  I have had dozens of catalogs including
Computer only and European and I never saw that or remember
seeing it advertised in any of the rags that talked about
the COCO.  Are you sure it wasn't a non-Tandy product being
sold by a computer enthusiast who happened to work at Radio
Shack?

Time to try some web searching.......

bill