24 Feb
2014
24 Feb
'14
2:04 p.m.
On 02/24/2014 08:42 AM, John Many Jars wrote:
My memories of this system, as a 13 year old kid, was
that it was best
used as a doorstop.
Now, I'm not criticising anyone who has one, or collects one. Heck, I
wish I still had mine... I could use a door stop or two.
Basically, my dad bought the wrong thing. It cost about 1/2 what an
Apple //+ would have cost, and was about 1/8 as useful. You couldn't
develop any BASIC programs that ran faster than an utter crawl (and I
wasn't too bad when I was 13) and to do anything in assembler required
spending at least a much as a //+ on extra hardware.. the expansion
box, a disk drive, more RAM, etc.
If you were lucky, it might overheat and set fire to your house. Then
you could claim the insurance money.
The console never ran hot. I have three plus one I modded.
The brick on a rope however had a faulty or incorrect fuse or no thermal
protection
and could cause a fire if the transformer inside failed, though mine
never got
particularly warm. I opened mine and added a thermal protector.
As to being slow, seriously it was. It was also very late into the
market and silly
expensive for the performance it offered. I bought mine (first one)
during the
great sellout and it was far cheaper or maybe closer to the right price.
As a collectable, they were like house files. But they did represent a
moment
in computer history. It was a good example of late and bad marketing.
IT was
a stellar example of putting a muzzle on what was a very good cpu to
save a buck
in hardware. One has to remember at that time 16Kx8 of DRam was about
$26 OEM
cost never mind supporting hardware so the hardware was cheap till it hurt.
I see it not unlike the original TRS80 with its bus noise and keybounce,
or the Commi PET
with the horrid chicklet keyboard to name a few other notable goofs.
Allison