From the Bookshelf: CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer
I took particular interest in the news there was going to be a new book written about the Radio Shack/Tandy Color Computer, the "home computer" my family settled on and stuck with in the wide-open days of the 1980s. The book would be written by Boisy G. Pitre, who's had a long connection to the Color Computer community, and Bill Loguidice, who takes a wider perspective in the subject of these old computers. It also seemed significant the book was being published by a "real publisher" where some other recent books on different computers were more "self-published." When my own copy arrived after much waiting, though, I discovered its signatures had been mixed up so that it seems to make a sudden leap years forward and then fall back in time to where it had been. On deciding I'd try and exchange it, I got a message back saying it was out of stock and could only be returned for a refund, so I decided to keep the mixed-up copy. It was still interesting for all of that, of course, but in its numerous details and "inside information" I did find myself asking new questions.
Beginning with a history of the Tandy Leather Company and how it bought the Radio Shack chain did seem germane to the Color Computer, but a history of computing starting with Colossus felt sort of broad in scope to someone like me. As it closed in on the microcomputer age, though, a brief discussion of how Commodore might have bought Apple Computer or sold its own machines in Radio Shack stores was interesting. After that, though, the book began to focus on the Tandy machines that led up the Color Computer itself, starting with a telecommunications terminal for tobacco farmers in Kentucky built into the keyboard case of a TRS-80 Model I but using chips from Motorola. That one of those off-the-shelf chips would soon provide the Color Computer's graphics did get me thinking of how the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 had both been equipped with graphics chips designed for the specific purpose of video gaming. I did know the Motorola chip had been used in other computers and add-on systems, but not from the book itself.
It might be that the mere fact of other home computers not quite registering on me back in the 1980s makes me a bit more intent on comparisons with the Color Computer these days, and maybe the subtitle of "Underdog Computer" brought comparisons to mind as well. With the full reality of each computer a little faded these days, specifications alone might begin to matter more, and there the black, white, and red and blue "artifacted" from that (there are several anecdotes in the book about how Tandy's engineers had to keep making sure they weren't "improving" the video circuity to the point of eliminating the artifact colours) of the Color Computer's graphics might begin to look less exciting. The book touches on "platform rivalry," but not so much on what Color Computer owners might have told themselves to keep their spirits up.
The book devotes a good bit of space to the Rainbow, the biggest and most beloved magazine devoted to the Color Computer, and the one that seemed to cast all the others in the shadows. That left me thinking in turn, though, that while even in its later years I'd say the Rainbow was thicker than "system-specific" magazines devoted to other home computers there was still more than one notable magazine left in those cases. That left me wondering if the particular nature of Radio Shack's computers, sold through an exclusive chain of stores that only offered a limited selection of software, made "one big magazine" important as a way for everyone else to advertise their products. For that matter too, I wondered about the Color Computer community outlasting the one using Radio Shack's "Z80-based" computers and Tandy's whole-hearted embrace of MS-DOS PC clones.
After some enlightening discussion of a "Deluxe Color Computer," apparently once rumoured in the magazines that almost made it to production that would have had better sound but not better graphics, the book goes into a good bit of detail about the development a few years later of the Color Computer 3, which had better graphics but not better sound. I did get to wondering if the wait for the Color Computer 3 had led to a "vote of no confidence" in the Rainbow's last major competitor (and a magazine published by a bigger firm) being folded, but the book didn't go into that detail. It did, however, seem to say something just by omission in talking about how the design of the Color Computer 3 had been driven by a rigid cost target; there's a lot of loose talk online these days about how the computer had been deliberately limited by management fiat to not interfere with Tandy's MS-DOS line, reminiscent of similar dark comments made about the Apple IIgs. The book didn't seem to support "conspiracy theories" to me.
However, the Color Computer 3 seemed to more just keep what community there was going a while longer than anything else. The book mentioned how the Radio Shack catalogues eventually seemed to focus on game cartridges, which does remind me of laments about "it's all games nowadays" I've seen reading scanned Commodore 64 magazines from about the same time. After the official plug was pulled, though, there were efforts by small companies to create computers that would run OS-9, and the book describes them, even if its coverage of OS-9 did leave me with the same uninformed opinion I had reading through the Rainbow, that somehow just getting the multitasking operating system to run was more important than finding new and more advanced programs to run on it; the book mentions some impressive third-party applications I'm familiar with that didn't need OS-9. (In the meantime, Tandy did seem to try and replace the Color Computer at the low end of the price scale with an apparently not very well-selling CD-ROM box, but in this case it seems more reasonable the book wouldn't cover it.)
After the last newspaper-format issue of the Rainbow had been published and my family had put its Color Computers in the basement, though, the book continues to describe what was happening with those people left running them. Although this continued tale was a little tricky to follow with the mixed-up pages I'd mentioned, it did provide a positive sort of conclusion. I did sort of muse that if the Color Computer's capabilities kept being defined by rigid production budgets, what the book had space to cover might also be constrained in the same way. What I did learn did seem worth it, though.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/207459.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.
Beginning with a history of the Tandy Leather Company and how it bought the Radio Shack chain did seem germane to the Color Computer, but a history of computing starting with Colossus felt sort of broad in scope to someone like me. As it closed in on the microcomputer age, though, a brief discussion of how Commodore might have bought Apple Computer or sold its own machines in Radio Shack stores was interesting. After that, though, the book began to focus on the Tandy machines that led up the Color Computer itself, starting with a telecommunications terminal for tobacco farmers in Kentucky built into the keyboard case of a TRS-80 Model I but using chips from Motorola. That one of those off-the-shelf chips would soon provide the Color Computer's graphics did get me thinking of how the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 had both been equipped with graphics chips designed for the specific purpose of video gaming. I did know the Motorola chip had been used in other computers and add-on systems, but not from the book itself.
It might be that the mere fact of other home computers not quite registering on me back in the 1980s makes me a bit more intent on comparisons with the Color Computer these days, and maybe the subtitle of "Underdog Computer" brought comparisons to mind as well. With the full reality of each computer a little faded these days, specifications alone might begin to matter more, and there the black, white, and red and blue "artifacted" from that (there are several anecdotes in the book about how Tandy's engineers had to keep making sure they weren't "improving" the video circuity to the point of eliminating the artifact colours) of the Color Computer's graphics might begin to look less exciting. The book touches on "platform rivalry," but not so much on what Color Computer owners might have told themselves to keep their spirits up.
The book devotes a good bit of space to the Rainbow, the biggest and most beloved magazine devoted to the Color Computer, and the one that seemed to cast all the others in the shadows. That left me thinking in turn, though, that while even in its later years I'd say the Rainbow was thicker than "system-specific" magazines devoted to other home computers there was still more than one notable magazine left in those cases. That left me wondering if the particular nature of Radio Shack's computers, sold through an exclusive chain of stores that only offered a limited selection of software, made "one big magazine" important as a way for everyone else to advertise their products. For that matter too, I wondered about the Color Computer community outlasting the one using Radio Shack's "Z80-based" computers and Tandy's whole-hearted embrace of MS-DOS PC clones.
After some enlightening discussion of a "Deluxe Color Computer," apparently once rumoured in the magazines that almost made it to production that would have had better sound but not better graphics, the book goes into a good bit of detail about the development a few years later of the Color Computer 3, which had better graphics but not better sound. I did get to wondering if the wait for the Color Computer 3 had led to a "vote of no confidence" in the Rainbow's last major competitor (and a magazine published by a bigger firm) being folded, but the book didn't go into that detail. It did, however, seem to say something just by omission in talking about how the design of the Color Computer 3 had been driven by a rigid cost target; there's a lot of loose talk online these days about how the computer had been deliberately limited by management fiat to not interfere with Tandy's MS-DOS line, reminiscent of similar dark comments made about the Apple IIgs. The book didn't seem to support "conspiracy theories" to me.
However, the Color Computer 3 seemed to more just keep what community there was going a while longer than anything else. The book mentioned how the Radio Shack catalogues eventually seemed to focus on game cartridges, which does remind me of laments about "it's all games nowadays" I've seen reading scanned Commodore 64 magazines from about the same time. After the official plug was pulled, though, there were efforts by small companies to create computers that would run OS-9, and the book describes them, even if its coverage of OS-9 did leave me with the same uninformed opinion I had reading through the Rainbow, that somehow just getting the multitasking operating system to run was more important than finding new and more advanced programs to run on it; the book mentions some impressive third-party applications I'm familiar with that didn't need OS-9. (In the meantime, Tandy did seem to try and replace the Color Computer at the low end of the price scale with an apparently not very well-selling CD-ROM box, but in this case it seems more reasonable the book wouldn't cover it.)
After the last newspaper-format issue of the Rainbow had been published and my family had put its Color Computers in the basement, though, the book continues to describe what was happening with those people left running them. Although this continued tale was a little tricky to follow with the mixed-up pages I'd mentioned, it did provide a positive sort of conclusion. I did sort of muse that if the Color Computer's capabilities kept being defined by rigid production budgets, what the book had space to cover might also be constrained in the same way. What I did learn did seem worth it, though.
This entry was originally posted at http://krpalmer.dreamwidth.org/207459.html. Comment here or there (using OpenID) as you please.