[Coco] Color computer 2 educational version

[Steve Strowbridge]

My High School still had Apple ][ computers, but my junior high switched
from apple to CoCo 2's and I went back to visit them.

I never hated the Apple computer back then, just the attitudes of their
owners, who thought their computer was better, and therefore so were they,
so my disdain with Apple elitism goes back to the original :)
I actually did some halfway decent programming on the Apple II in high
school, I figured out how to enable the multi-color low-res graphics mode,
and actually which characters I could "print" to that mode, and was able to
get halfway decent speed and animation on the thing using some clever hacks.

When tasked with creating some form of computer "art" on the Apple, I had a
full scene rendered with grass on the ground, a blue sky, mountain range, a
sun that rose and set, animated birds that "flapped" back and forth across
the screen, an animated waterfall, that was just cycling between an
alternating series of blue/light blue stripes, etc., but the time I got my
hands on an Apple I had like 3 years working on a CoCo, I could whip up
just about anything in BASIC :)


Steve Strowbridge, aka
The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
http://ogsteviestrow.com
ogsteviestrow at gmail.com


On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 11:55 AM, Bill Loguidice <bill at armchairarcade.com>
wrote:

> I'm frankly amazed that your school SWITCHED to CoCo's over Apple II's. I
> can only think that they had a very limited number of Apple II's and to do
> a mass buy the numbers worked out better in the CoCo's favor for whatever
> reason. I mean, there were lots of things I didn't like about the Apple II
> (although my appreciation for it has grown by leaps and bounds after the
> 80s), but in terms of educational-centric software, it was second-to-none.
>
> Of course, now that I'm reading over your post, I'm thinking that maybe you
> meant (and I misunderstood) that when you went to high school, they had
> CoCo's instead of Apple II's. In other words, Apple II's weren't replaced,
> they were just never there in the first place.
>
> In my school system, there were only a handful of Apple II's out and about.
> We were a Tandy-centric school system. In Junior High, in our computer labs
> (programming classes), we had Tandy Model III's and 4's, and then Tandy
> Model 1000's. I enjoyed both platforms a great deal, and certainly my use
> of the III/4's made me fall-in-love with all-in-one computers, which, to
> me, looked like how a computer "should" look.
>
> My first real exposure to a CoCo outside of Radio Shack-centered stuff
> (catalogs, stores, commercials, etc.) was my first job at 16, where I
> worked at a "five and dime" store (sort of a smaller K-Mart). One of the
> managers ran the bookkeeping on a CoCo 2 and tape deck of all things!
>
> -Bill
>
> ========================================================
> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
> <http://www.armchairarcade.com>
> ========================================================
> Authored Books
> <http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Loguidice/e/B001U7W3YS/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_1> and
> Film <http://www.armchairarcade.com/film>; About me and other ways to get
> in touch <http://about.me/billloguidice>
> ========================================================
>
> On Tue, Apr 4, 2017 at 10:43 AM, Steve Strowbridge <
> ogsteviestrow at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > That is Wicked Cool!
> >
> > My Junior High was all Apple II when I was there, but when I got to high
> > school, they switched over to CoCos.
> > I was able to go back and visit and act as the CoCo consultant, and show
> > them all the cool things I was doing, what some of the awesome games and
> > music were like, and I remember showing off this really cool game in the
> > Rainbow that was in BASIC, but had 4 panels of assembly language
> scrolling
> > in it, and the teachers and the class were all just blown away.
> >
> > It was nice to see the same pompous and elitist teachers who were all up
> > Apple's ass eat crow, if even for a day :)
> >
> > I never understood why people would get so high and might on the Apple
> > being such a good computer, when the average kid really couldn't do
> > anything with it themselves, and the things I could do in BASIC on my
> CoCo
> > ran circles around AppleSoft BASIC.
> >
> > I felt then, and I do now, that it doesn't matter what the machine is, it
> > really matters on what you can do with it, and the CoCo literally
> empowered
> > me, I felt pretty invincible when it came to what I could do in BASIC,
> > which is embarrassing at this point :)
> >
> >
> > Steve Strowbridge, aka
> > The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
> > http://ogsteviestrow.com
> > ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
>
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