26 Apr
2002
26 Apr
'02
7:38 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jeff Hellige" <jhellige(a)earthlink.net>
To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 25, 2002 7:02 PM
Subject: Re: expansion differences (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers)
your
I don't know why they didn't become more popular, except that I never
encountered anyone who had a complete system built on the SS-50. One thing
that helped interest me in S-100, initially, was that, provided I was running
CP/M, I could buy a vast supply of used floppy diskettes with things like
Wordstar, various compilers, various interpreters, ... you get the idea ...
I'm not sure that was possible for someone using SS-50 hardware. What OS was
popular on that hardware? Which CPU's?
Normally, in '80-'82. if you wanted a game, you went to a toy (or
discount)
store, while, when you wanted a computer, you went to a computer store. You
could tell what you were buying by looking at the sign in front of the store
as you entered. That was not so easy with the Radio Shack, since their niche
was the overlap. As time has passed, the distinction has become less obvious.
This thread has
become shanghaied down a path different that the one I
intended to take.
Likely due to too broad of a blanket statement concerning
what constitutes a computer. A few machines that I do feel fall more
into the realm of 'toys' vice true computers, mainly due to their
total lack of built-in I/O interfaces are extremely lowcost systems
such as the ZX-81 and the Aquarius. Both have bus extensions but the
only built-in I/O they have is their video out and cassette
interfaces. The ZX-81 takes another step back by not even offering
program loading by way of ROM cartridges, which the Aquarius does but
by the time the Aquarius was released it was well behind everything
else out there. There's certainly no disputing the impact that
machines such as those from Sinclair had as far as introducing people
to computers through their availability though.
>My point was that you didn't have to write code when you bought a computer
>that was intended to be used as a computer in order just to get it to run OS and
applications.
Personally, I consider the SS-50 bus boxes to be some of the
better designs as far as being able to start using the machine with
minimum fuss or additional requirements. As early as 1976 they
included a ROM monitor, from Motorolla, and enough I/O to connect a
serial terminal.
>When you opened the box with your COCO, what useful work would it do with
the
>$399 you had just spent? Could you write a
letter? Could you write and
>compile a Fortran program? Could you save your work in any meaningful way?
>Given that you had a printer, could you attach it and use it? What
software
was there, that
you could install and use? How and where would you install
it?
A base CoCo, without any type of expansion, could run
non-game applications such as the following:
- Audio Spectrum Analyzer (real time waveform display of audio input)
- Color Scripsit for the Color Computer (word processing program)
- Typing Tutor
- Videotex
There are plenty more but these are the ones that I own that
I can think of off the top of my head. All are in cartridge format
so they don't require a disk drive. Of course, there's always the
internal BASIC. Without that addition of the disk drive, you could
always use the cassette interface. There was even a version of the
CoCo1 that was sold as a terminal with the Videotex software in it's
ROM vice BASIC.
nearly similar actual capabilities. RS never did
build something genuinely
intended for expansion though, did they?
Yes, RS liked to do odd things so that you couldn't expand
thier systems. They didn't do it to all of their systems though.
Except for the console cased 1000EX/HX, most of the 1000 series are
pretty expandable, nearly equal to any other XT-clone as long as you
knew some of the odd quirks to watch out for. The Model 2000 has 4
16bit expansion slots, though unfortunately few boards were made to
work in it. Others such as the Model III and 4 had minimal expansion
options internal but came standard with cassette, serial, parallel
and external bus extensions. RS was actually one of the earlier
adopters of built-in I/O ports while other micros still required you
to purchase them seperately. Their SL/TL series even had built-in
DAC's for sound input/output about the time the SoundBlaster and
AdLib cards were becoming popular.
Jeff
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