Icky made me do it - TRS-80 CoCo

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, I blame @Icky totally for this purchase!!

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After all he sent me 2 books on the TRS-80 CoCo, so what was I supposed to do?

The packaging was interesting, but also effective:

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Overall not in bad condition for it's age, need to pull it a part and see what it looks like inside, and also see if the COCOSDC works with it, after all it and the Dragon 32 share DNA and it works with the D32

More on this to come.

[stephen_usher]

Hehe. You'll run out of space soon.

[rubber_jonnie]

Hehe. You'll run out of space soon.

That's what my wife tells me too

[rubber_jonnie]

And it's a runner:

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It's pretty standard with 16Kb RAM, but what I find odd is that it has no monitor out like the Dragon 32, just RF. It surprises me since they share a reference design, but I guess Tandy were being cheap.

So I'll need to get a Composite mod done, apparently the same sort of board used in the 2600 will work equally well, so that is on the cards for this machine after it gets a good clean.

I'll have a look and see what it takes to boost the RAM, it wasn't hard to take the D32 to 64Kb from 32Kb, so fingers crossed I can get this little fella up to at least 32Kb.

Amazingly all the keys work on the keyboard, so not a bad little machine with the exception of the display output.

Pleasantly surprised by it

[stephen_usher]

Lovely display that. Very colourful, oh and a green desktop behind the coloured snow too.

[rubber_jonnie]

Lovely display that. Very colourful, oh and a green desktop behind the coloured snow too.

Snow in February, how very British...

[rubber_jonnie]

Ok, so the Coco is now apart:

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It's pretty clean inside, but one of the screw posts was rattling around inside, so that is now glued back on ready for reassembly.

Interestingly it also has jumpers for 64KB:

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So once I've figured out what RAM it needs I will upgrade it. Tandy graciously put all the RAM in sockets, so it'll be a much easier job than on the Dragon 32.

I'll be pulling the modulator later today and fitting a composite mod to it, hopefully it'll chase the snow away

[rubber_jonnie]

Rivets for the RF shield, good grief

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[stephen_usher]

Not much helps the display on the CoCo and D32/64, it's just the way the NTSC to PAL conversion hack works. Just as HereBeDragons on Twitter.

[rubber_jonnie]

Not much helps the display on the CoCo and D32/64, it's just the way the NTSC to PAL conversion hack works. Just as HereBeDragons on Twitter.

Yeah, the display isn't one of the strong points of these machines.

On a positive note, the 'rivets' turned out to be spring clips, a bit like you find in car trim.