expansion differences (was Re: Micro$oft Biz'droid Lusers) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

26 Apr 2002

...
  -----Original Message-----
 From: Richard Erlacher [mailto:edick@idcomm.com] 
...
  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  
As with any computer, you'd need software.  Let's take that 
into account, and say that you could certainly get software on 
ROM cartridges, and that you could plug a normal household tape
recorder in and store data on cassette.  Sure, it's not the
greatest thing in the world, but it will "balance the checkbook"
that way.

...
  you write and
 compile a Fortran program?  Could you save your work in any  
I'm not sure whether there were any compilers available that 
didn't require disk drives.  It would have been possible (not
fun) given the proper programs.

...
  meaningful way?
 Given that you had a printer, could you attach it and use it?  
Yes, if it was a serial printer.  Most software that used a printer
depended on having a serial printer plugged into that port on the
back of the system.  If it was parallel, you'd need a converter.

...
   What software
 was there, that you could install and use?  How and where 
 would you install 
Cartridge slot or cassette tape.  Again, there was some available.  
I'm not sure that it would be enough to constitute "lots," but there
was certainly some of most types of software.

...
  it?  When you finally decided you had to build your
own 
 hardware and write
 your own software, wouldn't it have been easier to use a 
 wirewrap card and a
 CPU chip and start from scratch rather than having to work  
I'm sure it depends on what you're doing.  It seemed to me that
the bus slot in the side would have been simple enough to use for
hardware add-ons, and you could certainly program the thing in 
machine code, if nothing else.

...
  hardware didn't cost less if you used one of the
"toy"-based 
 systems, and the
 software wasn't any more available than if you'd used a 
 "real" computer.  It 
Home computers have never been in the same class as "real 
computers".  I'll be the first one to suggest that; they probably
never will, either.  I would say that it depends on whether you
wanted to do "home computer" things, or something more.  Certainly
it would cost quite a bit of money to make them do something they 
weren't designed to do, but if your needs fit the design, they were
probably fine.  Even adding disks would have still been less 
expensive than the "real computers" of the day.

...
  near the bottom.  For something equal to, say, and
Apple][,. 
 I'd say you'd pay
 nearly twice what a well-purchased Apple][ would have cost 
 for a RS product of
 nearly similar actual capabilities.  RS never did build 
 something genuinely
 intended for expansion though, did they? 
That was a complaint of mine too.

Chris

Christopher Smith, Perl Developer
Amdocs - Champaign, IL

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'