CoCo

This book is subtitled "The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer". It chronicles the TRS-80 Color Computer from Tandy / Radio Shack. This was the first computer that my family owned. It was created in the 1980s among competitors like the Apple II, Atari ST, and Commodore 64.

The computer has a Motorola 6809 chip as the CPU. It had a cartridge slot on the side. Initially you could load and store programs from cassette tape. It ran at less than 1Mgz. The original version had 4k of RAM. You could upgrade to 16k or 32k. It had Microsoft BASIC in its ROM. There was an optional Extended BASIC that gave you better graphics, and a Disk Extended BASIC for floppy drive access.

My family upgraded to the CoCo 3 later on. This was a computer still based on the 6809 chip. There was more memory (128K by default). Although not all the memory could be accessed at once. The CoCo 3 had an enhanced GIME chip for graphics. Around the same time, an upgraded joystick was released.

The Rainbow Magazine was dedicated to the color computer. There was a host of companies providing third party support for hardware and software. The legion of Radio Shack stores carried the computer and official Tandy software. There was talk about a CoCo 4. But there were delays and not enough demand.