Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Tue Apr 23 20:52:28 2002

I haven't looked at the insides of the COCO2 I've got sitting here, but I
don't see any place for a FDD or a HDD. Are there serial ports anywhere that
I can use? How much R/W memory does it have? How do you expand it to do
something useful?

... see what I mean? You have to do so much to the thing that RS sells you
that it takes up a whole tabletop just to get to what's in the PC's box, and
if you compare the price of a typical PC Clone available the same year the
COCO2 was offered, how do they compare in price, avaialble software base, etc?

The worst you have to do with a PC, PDP11, or whatever computer you buy, is
plug in what you want to use.

With the COCO, you're better off starting from a wirewrap panel and a bucket
of parts, since the video on the COCO is not "up to snuff," i.e. 80x24
characters-capable. It uses that ridiculous 6847, IIRC, and even at 32
characters (or was it 40), it's pretty shabby. The other RS stuff wasn't much
better with its unconventional 64x16. They foisted that ridiculous format off
on the public to save a buck on display ram. <sigh>

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "blacklord" <blacklord_at_telstra.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 23, 2002 3:46 PM
Subject: Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers (was: OT email response format)


>
> Hi Richard,
>
> > 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.
>
>
> So just what is it that classifies the C64 as a "toy" computer ? When
> it was released, it was far more capable than the existant Apples,
> Ataris & Radio Shacks (& a damn sight cheaper too).
>
> Indeed, out of all the machines then in production, which one still in
> use now is still capable of (more or less) doing what modern machines
> can ?
>
> cheers,
>
> Lance
>
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>
Received on Tue Apr 23 2002 - 20:52:28 BST