[Coco] The COCO vs The Apple II

[Bill Pierce]

I can truthfully say that until I bought my Packard Bell 486 DX4 100mhz PC in 1995, the Tandy Color Computer is the only computer I owned. Coco 2 16k Color Basic, Coco 2 64k DECB/OS9 L1, Coco 3 512k DECB/OS9 L2. And to be honest, even when seeing the software and games being run on other machines, I had no desires for them. I would come home, crank up OS9 L2, start Ultimuse3, mouse in some music, and smile.

I did have chances to see as well as operate a few other systems off and on, but preferred my Coco. I met a fellow vender while I was working for Pine State Milk Company (yes, I was a milkman), who had a large Dungeons and Dragons group going. He said he DMed his game from his C64. I wanted to see that so he invited me over to see the system. He had a spare bedroom set up with a huge dining room table in the center that held about 10 people, one wall was a bookshelf with role playing game manuals, and one wall was his computer desk with the C64 system... very impressive. He demonstrated his software, all of which he had written, on the C64. He had programs to role characters, roll monsters, roll treasures, and battle rollers. A really nice setup given the era. Out of curiosity (and seeing he had a printer), I asked him if he could do a printout of all the D&D utilities (they were all in basic). He said "sure, but they wouldn't run on the Coco, it couldn't handle this kind of stuff". He printed all the listings for me which I took home and spent the next two months typing the conversions into the Coco. I used those programs to run my D&D games until we quit playing.

I got a chance to run a Mac while repairing a Coco for a BBS friend. His mom had a Mac and he was showing it off to me. I wasn't really impressed with the software it ran, but the graphic interface impressed me. I guess that's when I stared playing around with the idea of a GUI for the Coco and OS9.

The other systems didn't make me want those systems, but made me want to do what they did on my Coco.
 

Bill Pierce
"Today is a good day... I woke up" - Ritchie Havens
 

My Music from the Tandy/Radio Shack Color Computer 2 & 3
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