Is anyone else here a fan of the Color Computer? I have a TRS-80 CoCo 2 here in my room, and I think it's an interesting little machine.

Recently, I've found some games for download (some appear to have the author's blessing even) that I was able to load via cassette interface and try them out. Some of them seem pretty good and a lot of them look mediocre.

The problem is I guess that I have a CoCo 2. All the CoCo 3 games look spectacular, because the CoCo 3 was capable of putting 16 colors on screen at once, while I believe the CoCo and CoCo 2 can only do four.

I'm actually thinking about sourcing a disk drive, or at least building a serial cable for use with DriveWire so I can try out some of the disk-based games that look good, like Gantelet (a Gauntlet clone, obviously).

Unfortunately, eBay sellers seem to want a mint for their CoCo disk drives, as well as their CoCo 3s. If all else fails, though, I can get a CoCo 3 refurbished from Could 9 Tech for $40 and try to stick with DriveWire.

Oh also, while I could load some of the games, I couldn't really play them because I have no joysticks.
After I source a pair of joysticks I might try to track down some cart games like Dungeons of Daggorath. Or I could just skip sourcing Tandy joysticks and build a CoCo to Gameport adapter, as apparently Gameport joysticks are electrically identical to Tandy joysticks, just with different plugs and with support for more buttons.

Anyway, I just wanted to start a topic and see where it went with this.

Wow, there's no other interest at all in this? How sad.

Anyway, I got a Color Computer 3 in yesterday, from this auction:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=350363238088

And, surprise, surprise! When it arrived, I found a 512K upgrade inside!

Needless to say, the first thing I tried out to take advantage of the 512K was Sock Master's arcade perfect version of Donkey Kong for the CoCo 3.

Oh yeah, and an update about joysticks, PC joysticks are apparently wired in reverse to CoCo joysticks, so it's a no-go on adapters. Also the CoCo works on voltage division rather than measuring resistance.

I just found this thread. I have a COCO 3 with the box joystick controller. I've had it since it first came out. It was actually my first computer as a kid.

Still worked the last time I hooked everything up and surprisingly the disk drive still worked. That was a shocker for sure as it sat in my parents attic in the hot summer heat for at least 12 years.

Yup, I got the box joystick too. One of the kind people over at coco3.com actually shipped it to me free!

I wish I had a disk drive for mine, but they always sell for at least $50 on ebay, when they're complete. At the moment, I'm uploading programs to the CoCo via serial cable, using DriveWire 3 and an HDB-DOS EPROM. Unfortunately, not everything works that way, as some programs use customized disk access routines that can't be redirected to the serial port by any means.

I just check out the Cloud 9 site..

Had no idea there were so many mods for the coco systems. I might have to pick up one of there storae systems.

Yea the Diskdrives are a bit much for what they are. Big bulky and slow haha..


I just ran across this bad boi and I must say its peaked my interest
http://www.coco3.com/community/2009/10/serial-pak