[Coco] COCO Video

[Mike Pepe]

Thanks Steve, that's good info!

I think "Green Thumb" may have been the trigger I was looking to correlate
with the 6847/6883 design and Tandy, not so much the CoCo and the VideoTex
terminal that came after that pilot project.

-Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Steve Bjork
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2013 9:53 AM
To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [Coco] COCO Video

On 6/23/2013 10:52 PM, Mike Pepe wrote:
> 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.
>

Truth be told, the 6847 (VDG) 6883 (SAM) chip was NOT design for Tandy.

The support chips like the SAM are standard affair in any CPU lineup.  
They simple help computer designers build a using that CPU.

If the SAM chip was design for Tandy there would not have been the Dragon or
other CoCo like computers using the SAM.  (Tandy design chips like the Salt
of the CoCo 2&3 and GIME of the CoCo3 were never used by outside companies.)

To this day, both Intel and AMD have support chips for their CPU. That big
old chip on a motherboard helps interface the CPU to all that other stuff in
the computer.  (Just like the SAM & GIME chip did many, many years ago.)

About year before the CoCo came out, the $250 Electric Crayon from Percom
hit the market.  This was standalone computer that plug into the TRS-80's
printer port and output a NTSC video display using a 6847 VDG chip.  I used
a number of them to create color information displays for cable systems.

As you can see, I already knew how to use the 6847 before the CoCo hit the
market.  That's one of the reason why DataSoft hired me to create their
Color Computer department.

Steve


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