Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

[Tony Duell]

On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 6:55 PM Liam Proven <lproven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, 26 May 2020 at 18:25, Tony Duell <ard.p850ug1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Yes we did!. The only TRS-80 that I know not to have been officially
> > sold in the UK was the Color Computer 3
> [...]
>
> As I said -- I saw them in the shops. I know they were sold. I just
> never even heard of a single person who *bought* one. :-)

My late father and I? Over the years we bought a Model 1 (and then
later the expansion interface and disk drive), several Color Computer
2's (and a couple of disk drive units) and a Model 100. The Model 3
and Model 4 I bought second hand, and as I mentioned I had the CoCo 3
shipped from the States.

> > Hitachi certainly made 3" drives (I have some), they may well have
> > been the originators of that disk. I don't think the Amstrad drives
> > were Hitachi though, the ones I saw were nowhere near as well made as
> > the Hitachi drives I have
>
> IIRC -- very possibly erroneously -- Amstrad bought in the early
> units, then realised that there was a good margin on the media and
> took over making its own, around the time that the OEM discontinued
> them because 3.5" had won in the market.

You might well be right. I bought some of the Hitachi drives when they
were being sold of as they were cheap storage for my Color Computer,
etc). But the only Amstra drive I came across was much later in a
friend's CPC6128. That would have been late enough for Amstad to have
been making their own I guess.

-tony