[Coco] New CoCo'er, Some Q's and looking for hardware

[Lee Patterson]

Welcome! Basic09 is pretty bad ass. Loved using it. The advantage I found in using it was structured programming, meaning you could program it (mostly) without using line numbers. Which is great if you also plan to learn C. OS-9 had a C compiler, I think NitrOS9 also does.

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10 + 1 = 3
8BitCoder.com

> On Feb 24, 2016, at 15:09, "admin at kd8cgo.com" <admin at kd8cgo.com> wrote:
> 
> Hello All,
> 
> I'm a proud owner of a never-used CoCo3 that I received from a friend in the mid 90's - I had never even heard of a CoCo up to that point.  I had some minor experience with a C64, and started out on a XT clone when I was a kid.  Never used the CoCo myself either, as I had no software for it.  I just plugged it into a TV to test it, ran a few "Hello, World!" programs I keyed in and that was it.  Anyway, I was going through the basement cleaning and stumbled across it this week.
> 
> I have no hardware or cartridges for it, so I assumed it was destined for the scrap heap along with a lot of my other old PC junk.  Did a quick search and found a *very* surprising level of interest and support for these here on the list archives and elsewhere.  I started tinkering with it, got Drivewire4 fired up on a old laptop with a serial port, and loaded the first program to ever grace this CoCo - HDB-DOS and then NitrOS9.  I can't read the screen when booted into NitrOS9, so that will have to wait, but I have been working through the Tandy Color Extended Basic book in HDB-DOS so I can save my .BAS files for later.
> 
> I'd like to do the Cloud-9 memory upgrade to 512K and get some proper cables to replace these cobbled together jumpers I made to load the .WAV file and the serial port cable. It seems like they do not have a order shopping cart though, just an email address, is that normal?  I thought they might be out of business or closed for now, given the lack of a normal purchasing order form.
> 
> I am also looking for some sort of VGA monitor adapter, I've found some references to a Roy Justus adapter, there is some PCB available on Amazon that says it will convert RGB, and also I found another 15Khz one on http://www.ambery.com/rgbcgatovgac.html that looks like it could be coaxed into working.  I also found some mention of a run of RGB2VGA boards that will hook up to something called a DE0 Nano in the archives here on pair.net, but I didn't find out much about that or the Roy Justus thing, or if you can even get them anywhere.  Advice here appreciated.
> 
> Basically I'd like to get this up and running and be able to do some BASIC programming, experiment with the NitrOS9 software, maybe load a few ROMs.  I'm trying to figure out how to convert a normal image file JPG/GIF/PNG/BMP into something I can use in a BASIC program on the system, but so far no luck solving that problem.  I might be able to use NitrOS9 if I could figure out how to change the screen colors - I can (barely) read the screen on WIDTH 80 if I use PALETTE 0,0:PALETTE 8,16 in HDB-DOS or Color Basic.  Eventually it would be cool to connect the CoCo to the outside world, but I think I'll need NitrOS9 running with DW4 for that.  Sounds like BASIC09 might have some advantages over Color Basic, too...
> 
> Sorry for the long first post & TIA!
> 
> --John, kd8cgo
> 
> 
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