Tandy Color Computer - A Brief Introduction

[CRTGAMER]

I realized that I didn't include instructions on how to load a game from a disk (or disk image). Like the C64, the Tandy Color uses some non-intuitive commands - you won't be able to "guess" them on your own.

Does the Tandy have full cursor control? On the Commodores you can arrow move the cursor block ABOVE the command prompt. If the Tandy can do this, maybe a shorthand way to load a game off a multi program disc?

For example, on the Commodore a LOAD"$",8 lists a disk directory on the screen. Follow this by arrowing up to what ever game you want to load and add a LOAD before the game name followed by a ,8: at the end. The colon ignores anything listed to the right. There is also a trick to autorun the load with the RUNSTOP key.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I'm not quite sure CRTGAMER, I'll have to experiment with that. Good tip.

I did learn about the C64 RUNSTOP trick at PAX East this year. I was blown away!

[3703]

This is...sensational! Amazing stuff bone

[BoneSnapDeez]

This is...sensational! Amazing stuff bone

Thanks!

Here's a great website I had planned to link to in my original piece, but it was inexplicably down for some time.

Sock Master's Tandy Color Computer 3 Page

The website designer is a programmer who ported Donkey Kong to the Tandy Color. It's amazing and essentially arcade perfect.

Released in 2007, it looks quite a bit different than the Donkey Kong clones that came out in the early 80s:
Donkey King
Dunkey Munkey
Monkey Kong

Since Donkey Kong is a 2007 homebrew I don't believe there's an official physical release. Though if you're really motivated I suppose you could copy the image onto a blank 5.25" floppy. The disk image is available on the Sock Master's site and functions perfectly in an emulator.

[noiseredux]

dood, I can't believe I managed to miss this when you first posted it. EXCELLENT guide, Bone! I had a Tandy 1000 growing up, and have a lot of fond memories playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a Tetris clone, MTV's Remote Control, some golf game and all kinds of weird stuff via that 2 button joystick. Man, we even subscribed to the Tandy magazine which back then would have pages and pages of code for you to type in to program your own games. Good times.

[BoneSnapDeez]

dood, I can't believe I managed to miss this when you first posted it. EXCELLENT guide, Bone! I had a Tandy 1000 growing up, and have a lot of fond memories playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a Tetris clone, MTV's Remote Control, some golf game and all kinds of weird stuff via that 2 button joystick. Man, we even subscribed to the Tandy magazine which back then would have pages and pages of code for you to type in to program your own games. Good times.

Glad you liked it.

I was actually planning to revise and partly re-write this piece sometime once my semester ends. I wrote this during a couple of lunch breaks at work and was never thrilled with it.

The Tandy magazine was pretty cool. I inherited a bunch from a dude last year, but I ended up tossing them because they were smoky as all hell.

[colorcomputerstore]

Thank you for covering the CoCo.

Ugly grey?

Some people love their battleship grey

Under Color Computer 2, you may want to add that the initial version had a 'melted' keyboard and it was later switched out to a more full-travel design.

Under OS9, might want to add that it was rewritten/released as "NitroOS"

Under joystick, maybe add that there are numerous simple circuits floating around to adapt Atari to CoCo joysticks. Also, there is now a SEGA Genesis to CoCo adapter.

Under games, towards the bottom, maybe it is good to note that there are some SD Card solutions for storing games. Some you can build and some you can buy. They are cheap and strongly recommended.

Also would be cool to mention that there is a CoCo on a Chip using FPGA project (actually, two FPGA projects)

Other tidbits....
* Annual CoCoFest and Tandy Assembly conference
* CoCoCrew Podcast
* Original gamer YouTube Channel
* Facebook group for CoCo

Thank you VERY VERY much for this post !!!!!!