The Story of the Color Computer 3, Take a CoCo and SUPERCHARGE It - Tandy Lab -

[@popzct]

I wrote 37 video games for Tandy from StarBlaze to Tetris, and I loved this machine. I recently donated all of my Color Computers (1 through 3+) to the Oklahoma Historical Society / OKPOP museum as well as expansion interfaces, parallel printer interfaces, floppy disk interfaces, 15mb hard drive interfaces, and more. Many thanks for this video! Greg

[@Mmacrossfirekenai]

You are a Coco Hall of Famer. I've played many of your games. You wrote Flight Simulator and Robocop too?

[@popzct]

@@Mmacrossfirekenai Hi MMA Crossfire, Yes I did! It was great fun to work with Tandy in develop games for them. Greg

[@aaronkosharskyswhiteknight5224]

I just played star blaze today

[@popzct]

@@aaronkosharskyswhiteknight5224 Wow, that's great! I no longer have a copy, all of mine except for one Tetris are now in a museum. Greg

[@FrankNazario]

i had the ultimate Coco Setup... Coco 2 with 2 DSFD and an 80-column dot matrix printer ... I ran OS-9 at one point and some drafting software. That machine was amazing and the setup even today would have taken care of a LOT of our daily chores. And of course subscription to Color Computer Magazine which brought TONS of programs to be coded by hand in basic and absolute GEEK fest for us... the community was spectacular.

[@danielrjones]

I remember these sitting at our Radio Shack store in 1992 collecting dust! I really should have bought one back then.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

I did,the 1000 RLX, it had a problem with the hard drive, which was replaced. It jumped between DOS and Desk Mate at will. Fortunately, a service warranty had the provision that defective parts could be replaced. it was replaced and worked great! I liked the Desk Mate graphical user interface most of all!

[@johnjay6370]

I had a color computer 3 in 1998 and 1990 and loved it. I would type in games and save them on a tape drive... I learned some basic programming from it.

[@bslprints9935]

CoCo 3 was my first computer. I went on to run a c++ software development company many years later and am grateful for my parents giving me this head start.

[@wayland7150]

The 80's 8-bit machines launched a lot of programming careers and the big name game developers. I used my Dragon 32 (CoCo1) for 6809 assembly language with a special cartridge.

[@Mmacrossfirekenai]

I had a Coco 2 and Coco 3. Great machines. Dungeons of Daggorath was my game.

[@TrojanMan78]

I just took home my dads CoCo3 he bought somewhere in the late 80's. It had sat in his garage for 20-30 years. It initially didnt want to boot but for some reason it decided it wanted to work and has not stopped since. The only thing I had to fix was the keyboard circuits. Some of the keys didnt want to work so I bought a circuit pen and took wrote over the spots that didnt beep on the continuity meter. Almost all the 5.25 floppies still read and write. The tape drive still works and loads programs. The monitor works. Just had to ebay some joysticks. We were HARD on those joysticks as kids. I remember going through a bunch of them. I know we had a dot matrix printer which is probably still in his house somewhere... Hell can you even get dot matrix paper anymore?!!? LOL ... I wanted this for one main reason... to play Cashman and I was not let down.

[@wayland7150]

I paired my Dragon 32 with a little Japanese pen plotter typewriter that had a printer port. Weirdest device ever. The 4 pens were like 22 bullets in a revolver for the colour. I could plot drawings I had plotted on the screen as well as type text. It actually drew each character with the selected pen. Yes you can get tractor feed paper. Some businesses rely on dotmatrix for bills of loading etc.

[@theweakestlink2278]

Had a CoCo 3 when I was a kid back in the 80s and loved that thing!

[@enjoythepig]

That's great. I agree that the Coco3 is so much more capable than the one or two that you really cannot lump them together. I think Tandy missed the boat on this line though. They seemed to assume the 1000 to be a natural upgrade path, but $799, is a lot more than $199. There are Coco user groups even today. I don't know anyone who actually used an MC10. It was like the machine Grandma would buy at Christmas because it was in her budget, and you never had the heart to exhange it. I recently got a Timex Sinclair 1000, and inside the front cover of the manual in shaky writing was "You can buy the programs for this at Kmart, dear."

[@NewsmakersTech]

That's a great find! Yeah the MC10 was a strange strange machine, it wasn't necessarily a bad design but Tandy was chasing a market that frankly didn't exist.

[@MrJmack46]

I used and still have my COCO 3 and my MC10. I used my MC10 to do payroll for my uncle's construction company. Just enter the hours and it calculated taxes needed to be taken out and a worker's net pay. Each worker watched on a screen what their gross was then taxes then pay. My uncle counted their money from a big wad of cash. No checks in those days. Workers could barely read and write. But they could pour the hell out of some concrete.

[@hdufort]

And the story continues, with new games being published almost every year. And the OS/9 system is being maintained and improved too.

[@jacobjones9071]

It's really cool just how much the Color Computer 3 was punching above it's weight class. You can get it set up with a hirez mouse, a GUI based OS/9 multitasking envorment, and have a ton of options for hires resolutions.

[@CurtisBoyle]

Our NitrOS-9/EOU (Ease of Use) edition of NitrOS-9 (which is an upgraded version of OS-9 Level II with improvements, additions, bug fixes and optimizations) is a good starting point to try OS-9 (pre-emptive multi-tasking, multi-user, windowing), if your Coco 3 has 512K or higher, and a CocoSDC (SD card adaptor that works on all Coco's and emulates floppy and hard drives at the hardware level). You can read a bit about it, and download it for free (current version is Beta 5; Beta 6 will be out by Christmas) for either the original 6809 CPU that is in the Coco 3, or the Hitachi 6309 CPU upgrade (which is actually period correct; it came out around the same time the Coco 3 itself did), here: www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/nitros9.html. Also, the joysticks were upgraded to handle 2 button joysticks, instead of just single button like the Coco 1 and 2.

[@jobadirk6371]

@@CurtisBoyle That's some great info

[@jacobjones9071]

@@CurtisBoyle Yeah, I've been looking into it the past few days. Looking forward to trying it out....Once I have freetime that is

[@CurtisBoyle]

@@jacobjones9071 - Cool - let me know how it goes. I should mention that EOU is also set up to run in an emulator (like MAME, or VCC), if you boot from the included floppy disk image (not needed for a real Coco 3 with a CocoSDC) to the hard drive image.

[@donjaksa4071]

I learned how to program 6809 ASSEMBLY language on the Color Computer. A course-on-tape I purchased from Dennis Kinitch. I turned that 6809 programming experience into a 40 year career. About 5 years ago I looked Dennis up on-line and thanked him for my career.

[@BaarBear]

I cut my computing teeth on the CoCos. They were powerful, versatile computers but Tandy/Radio Shack didn't seem to want to support them because of their like of "business" computers (Tandy 1000, and so forth). Thanks to the late Lonnie Falk and his gang at Rainbow Magazine, we Coco nuts KNEW what these little machines were capable of doing.

[@tinyBigGAMES]

Indeed. I learned how to program on my beloved CoCo. Rainbow, yes sir! 👌

[@JoseReyes-ov2tu]

Long live the CoCo 3 and the Rainbow! I still have Rainbow magazines and sometimes browse them whenever I am feeling nostalgic. I will never forget the day I got the last issue of the Rainbow in my mailbox and read the front page title, "The Time Has Come". That was a sad day.

[@user-qy9rg3nt2l]

I recently made a trip back to the US after being gone since 1991. My Coco3 made the trip back to Japan with me. It has a place of honor all it's own.

[@etow8034]

Who still wants one of these ? I have the silver Coco 4k with the tape recorder. Remember typing in line per line in BASIC to create games ...LoL

[@cybersean3000]

There is a story behind the boot RON. Three developers made a cartoon image of themselves in a a Three Stooges style and imbedded it on the chip. The inventory was built and shipped befirevRadio Shack discovered it.

[@SFknight]

Thank you, thank you, thank you - I'm now a subscriber! Outside of the CoCo community, the 3 is glossed over, lumped together, or ignored entirely (see LGR's recent video) - so your overview of the differences is very helpful. Btw, Deskmate 3 is essentially the same Deskmate as the CoCo 2, but with 80 column and RGB support. Those of us that expecting "Tandy 1000 deskmate" quality back in the day, were disappointed to unwrap a warmed up coco cash grab (squeezed, like most CoCo3 software, to run in 128K standard memory). OS-9-- you showed Level 1 for the CoCo 1/2 --- offers an opportunity to flesh out the windowing and multi-tasking CoCo3 features in a future video. Maybe a few more screen shots next time, but extremely well written and delivered! Try this 2020 16-color game, when you have a chance. You'll need VCC/MAME or (a 512K card from boysontech.com) to play it. hypertechgaming.itch.io/digger3 Also, to get a sense of the 640 4-color mode potential, take a look at Omnistar (though Omnistar is mostly text, future games may start to utilize the higher res mode more often, as a new FPGA GIME chip is due for release that offers additional colors and resolutions). rickadams.itch.io/omnistar

[@SFknight]

New GIME-X Info: thezippsterzone.com/2019/03/27/gime-x/

[@wayland7150]

Many of the arcade machined used the 6809 but the Dragon and CoCo lacked the graphics and RAM to emulate them. The CoCo 3 can actually play the Williams Defender ROM images from the real arcade machines now after some recent work by a member of the community.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Where in Maine is Tandy?

[@gurujaketube]

My main machines in the 80s were Ataris. But I had fun programming CoCos and Apple ][s as well. As I recall, you could change the pointers for the screen memory of the coco to achieve "page flipping" which meant masking graphic redraws and getting a smoother visual experience. If I'd owned one of these rather than just playing around with the ones in the local Radio Shack, I would have navigated its memory map and done some real mischief like I did with Ataris and Apples and Commodore PETs (My experience with VIC-20s and C64s was limited.) Life so started to suck once PCs and Macs took over. Like the fall of Communism or even worse. Whole worlds died.

[@roberttbrockway]

I went from OS-9 Level 2 on a Coco3 to Windows 3.1. I was horrified. I switched to Linux a couple of years later and have never looked back.

[@Greenstang02]

With the max-10 software, you were able to do what macintosh did back in the day. It was way superior to wordperfect on pc, you were able to write your text with multiple fonts and insert image in your document on the fly. Tandy didnt allowed 256 colors to not compete with thandy 1000 but some guys later were able to activate it. See jonh linville plays movies in 256 colors on that computer.

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

I had a TI 99/4A as a gift for Christmas 1983, when it went out of the market. Years later, I would buy an RLX 1000 Tandy with monitor, keyboard, printer all cables and mouse. i learned QBASIC, played "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy" and used "Print Shop" and went online!

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Desk Mate was my favorite software!

[@jackilynpyzocha662]

Maybe it was GW BASIC. It was fun!

[@kjrehberg]

I started with the TRS-80 Color Computer with its "chiclet" keyboard and 16K memory. We installed a weirdly-soldered 64K upgrade on it. It worked fine enough until I broke it. I was fortunate enough to skip the CoCo 2 and directly upgraded to the Color Computer 3, whose performance far outperformed even the NEC V22 8086 PC clone my brother owned. I installed a 512K upgrade on the CoCo 3 and ran the multi-user OS-9 (and a dial-up BBS) on it for a while with a third-party 6-cartridge interface. It was completely awesome. Then came the Amiga and my computing life changed again.

[@jacobjones9071]

I'd have loved to see that 256 color mode in action!

[@wildmanfujiami5870]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/pmTcimeje7Gdeq8 it's been unlocked.

[@NewsmakersTech]

The Color Computer 3 is awesome! Do you own one?

[@David_Ladd]

Yes I actually do have one :) Plus a few other devices for it as well :) Don't forget the good old MPI Floppy Controller and drives Deluxe RS232 Pak ORCH-90 pak CoCoSDC CoCoPSG So many nifty things for the CoCo :)

[@richardadams4928]

Nope, but I do have a CoCo 2, Spectaculator, and an RS232 Pack. Mostly do Color Computing via emulation these days. My monthly column in Full Circle Magazine online, Everyday Ubuntu, is currently detailing how to set up the CoCo emulator XROAR.

[@richardadams4928]

BTW, XROAR on Linux only emulates the CoCo 1/2.

[@RoyCyberPunk]

I did it was awesome.

[@richardadams4928]

LGR found a CoCo 3 at Goodwill for THREE BUCKS, and it worked fine. Lucky SOB....

[@GermarDerron]

I had one - played lots of games while everyone else had Nintendo. Did some basic coding/programming too--as a really young child.

[@TheSulross]

The CoCo3 is the harder to come by and will cost more - it's definitely the CoCo to have - the paged memory management built into the GIME chip was really clever and rather sophisticated for an 8-bit computer - competitors just had simple bank switching MMUs.

[@rondelvo]

Couldn't you clean the CoCo3 before you did the great video??

[@writerpatrick]

I upgraded mine to 512K with the memory upgrade. But you really needed to be running OS9 to make that worthwhile. I've often thought of pulling it out and trying to get a Zip drive working on it.

[@erroneus00]

The thing about OS9 was that it was my gateway into Unixes. Served me very well hacking around in OS9 the way I did.

[@aronchas]

Used to play sublogic flight simulator 1 on one of these when I was 6years old!

[@thebaron512]

I bought a coco3 with 512mb after my regular unit died, but I do still have my mc-10 (my first computer)

[@jestubbs69]

Never sold a single CoCo. I focused on big commission 1000SL /TL & upgrades.

[@jobadirk6371]

I've never seen one of these systems in person.

[@ion-shivs]

Me either.

[@jacobjones9071]

@@ion-shivs it's definitely the most uncommon of the color computer range. I wouldn't necessarily call it rare though.

[@robertgaines-tulsa]

I have. I was probably around 10 years old when I saw them on display in RadioShack. I never got one, though. I still have a CoCo2, but I want to emulate the ROM packs for it because of the games. The only emulators I knew of were for DOS, and they tended to crash on ROM files.

[@KG4JYS]

My first "real" computer (other than gaming consoles and calculators) was the CoCo3. Good memories. Too bad people want so much money for these things, or I'd pick one up for a trip down memory lane.

[@fedoralexandersteeman6672]

That's one dirty CoCo3...

[@SeltsamerAttraktor]

Yeah your videos are nice and all but .. where is the footage? You can talk about graphics and capabilities all day long, but it's kinda dull without seeing it :/

[@jacobjones9071]

Great question! We fully intended to include some great footage of the system running (both nice external shots and raw capture) but, we had to nix it for these videos or they would be delayed till October. They were already delayed quite a bit because I had some major health issues that prevented me from working for quite awhile. Expect plenty in future videos!

[@infinitecanadian]

Hit the bell for notifications? That seldom works.

[@NewsmakersTech]

You never know.....

[@nilliouswork9815]

Oh no...Take a Coco.....Newsmaker likes V-Tubers.

[@ZA1US]

Yeah you might want to reconsider cleaning your stuff before filming it, just sayin

[@goldenagex]

Could you guys not clean the CoCo 3? It looks terrible.