Tony Duell wrote:
The Color Computer clone was the Dragon, best
known in the UK. It
Strictly, those 2 machines were not clones. They were both based on the
same Motorola Application Note (for the 6883 SAM), and both ran Microsoft
BASIC, but there were several differences.
Once you've decided to use a 6883 SAM + 6809E CPU + 6847 video chip,
there's not a lot of choice in what else you put in there.
Yes, I noticed when I finally got the Motorola App Note that it was
identical to at least half of the Color Computer Technical Reference.
One of the most annoying differences between the
Dragon and the CoCo was
that the BASIC tokens were in a different order. A tokenised BASIC tape
CSAVEd on one machine wouldn't CLOAD into the other and run. All the
keywords would be swapped round
That was annoying even when the Micro-CoCo showed up -- it was 100%
compatible with Standard Color BASIC, but the tokens were wrong. I made
a bunch of tapes for customers by offset-loading the standard tapes to
a machine with a disk then saving them back with the appropriate bytes
changed.
has the
advantage over the original of having a parallel port --
necessary for attaching a Windows machine as a hard disk interface
under OS-9. I've decided I want a Dragon to add to my three
generations of Color Computers ever since I discovered that last.
It should be pretty easy to add the parallel port to the CoCo. According
to 'Anatomy of the Dragon' and the CoCo TechRef, there are only 3 port
lines left free after the ones for the video control/sound/etc have been
taken. They are on the second PIA (U4 in a CoCo)
(snip)
I know, there were kits on the market for years, and lots of instructions
in the magazines.. Not presently easy to find, and I've admitted before
that I haven't done much soldering since the late 70s -- hated burning
myself then, and lately my hands are strarting to get arthritic due to a
bad choice of ancestors -- this shouldn't happen at 42, then again most
of my ancestors had full heads of grey hair by 35, and I've barely started
-- I'd rather have full use of my hands and go bald.
--
Ward Griffiths
Dylan: How many years must some people exist,
before they're allowed to be free?
WDG3rd: If they "must" exist until they're "allowed",
they'll never be free.