Rumor has it that Richard Erlacher may have mentioned these words:
>Well, what I know is that my kids had a C64 before they were both in
>elementary school and had outgrown it by the time they were 10. I didn't
make
>that choice, having been divorced from their mother, but it was apparent to
>her that they needed something more capable. They had PC/AT's when they were
>10. Those were not great, but at least they were adequate. Frankly, if one
>considers the competition, the Commodore people picked the video toy
market to
>play in rather than the home computer market, because they couldn't compete
>with Apple and Radio Shack, though they attempted to compete with RS'
low-end.
>That low-end, e.g. COCO wasn't much to compete with.
Huh?
Not sure if I'm reading you right, but you make it sound as if the CoCo
wasn't a very powerful computer - *if* that's the case, let me assure you
just how wrong you are.
When I got my first 386 (sx-16 Mhz, admittedly) I couldn't believe about
the _lack of power_ it had, and relegated it to playing games because I
could get more work done, faster, on my CoCo3 with 512K & only a floppy
drive with OS-9 than my PC was with a 66Meg RLL drive, 2Megs of RAM, 512K
of VGA RAM & HD floppy... running M$ *anything*. For another 4 *years* my
CoCo was still my main work machine, until I got a 486DX66 EISA Dell
machine on "perma-loan" from my employer of the time to do AutoCAD on.
I *don't* want to get into a urinating match over Commie-lovers as to C64
vs. CoCo and all that; and yes I have Atari's too - I've prolly heard it
all. They *all* had their strong & weak points, but I think a lot of folks
here will agree with me: the CoCo was a damn powerful machine for it's day,
and the 6809 CPU has a *lot* of followers (altho the 6309 is something I
*still* drool over... ;-)...
> All these were capable
>if you were determined to make them into what they weren't, but if you wanted
>a home computer, you were better off buying something that was alread a
>computer.
Honestly, I worked on the XT's when they were out and couldn't believe how
slow they were... and things hadn't improved that much by the time 386's
hit the scene - makes me wish I'd stuck that $1800 I spent on my
Intel-based VGA grafix Nintendo in the bank instead... or at least used the
difference for a HD for my CoCo and bank the rest.
Altho, something tells me you'd be dissatisfied with a Cray... Or did
someone urinate on your Wheaties this morning???
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 16:10:44 BST