case, an inadaquate keyboard (CoCo1) and artifically
limiting system software (for
example, the CoCo ROM's required DP to be "Page Zero" - and hogged most of
it).
But the ROM could be switched out and the machine run with a RAM-only
memory map. If you had any sense you booted OS-9 which did this and which
gave you a multi-tasking OS, the best I/O system I've ever come across,
and some very nice languages (a decent C, ISO level 0 PASCAL, and the
best BASIC I have ever used on a micro [1]).
[1] Yes, this does include BBC Basic. IMHO BASIC-09 was better than even
that language. It supported user-defined types for one thing, and the
ability to call subroutines written in other languages.
-tony