Things have been real busy lately at Sub-Etha Galactic Headquarters… Here are some updates:
CoCoWiFi
The CoCoWiFi has been tested on the bitbanger serial port and things seem to work just fine.
On the RS-232 Pak, a modification was needed to make the pak actually receive data (forcing the carrier detect signal). This has been done by an easy soldering mod to the DB9 connector. The downside is that it does not provide true CD, and there is no support for hardware flow control or DTR to drop calls. For just a bit more, there are RS232-to-TTL adapters that provide hardware flow control, which might help for doing high speed transfers. However, the lack of carrier detect and DTR means they won’t work with a BBS like they should
Thanks to David Chesek, new RS232-to-TTL adapters were located that include all the signals. These would be the best choice for running with an RS-232 Pak. I have two different types of adapters, but have only done some initial testing. I was unsuccessful getting the first adapter to work. I plan to test the second version this week.
I hope to have a hardware announcement to make before the CoCoFEST!
SirSound
I learned much while working on CoCoWiFi, so I returned to work on the previously “announced” SirSound project. I got everything wired up properly and was able to write a BASIC program to make it play tones. I also worked with John Strong and migrated the prototype over to an Arduino Nano (matching the original Arduino sound player board he sent me last year).
The next phases is to figure out the various modes that sound module will run in. I have proposed:
Direct. This mode just passes bytes to the sound chip, the same way you might do with a POKE command if it was a memory-mapped chip. BASIC is very slow at ANDing and ORing bits to make the messages, which is how my test program works, but this could be heavily optimized. This mode is mostly here to allow someone to port over code that was written for one of the other platforms that use an on-board SN76489 sound chip, though some of the bit-blasting players would probably not work as well over slow serial.
PLAY. This is the BASIC mode, that will simulate the PLAY command. You will be able to send a string of notes to SirSound and play them just as easy as in EXTENDED COLOR BASIC. There are a few things that have to be adapted, like support for the multiple channels of audio, and sub-strings. Last year, it was suggested to look at the MSX computer’s PLAY command for examples of how Microsoft did this very thing. I may follow that syntax. MSX also ads a PLAY() function that can tell is background audio is in progress, and we will be able to achieve the same results using the Printer Read/CD signal on the bitbanger port. I plan to also add some sequencing extensions so repeating music loops don’t have to be sent over and over again.
Optimized. This mode would be for assembly programs, and would pack data into 8-bit values rather than longer ASCII strings.
Interactive. I am planning on having a shell/command-line interface (CLI) available which could be accessed. It would be used for testing the device without needing to write a BASIC program.
I have been experimenting with hooking up low-cost ESP8266 WiFi modules to the Radio Shack Color Computer (or anything with an RS-232 port) using cheap RS232-to-TTL adapters. Most of these adapters only support 3-wire RS-232 (transmit, receive and ground). This is fine for most uses of the CoCo’s built-in Serial I/O port (bitbanger) since it is only a 4-pin DIN connector with TX, RX, GND and CD, and most things do not rely on carrier detect.
But, for the Deluxe RS-232 Program Pak, a hardware 6551 UART chip is used and that chip requires to see carrier detect before it will receive any data. A workaround is to simply tie some of the TTL converter pins together to make it always present DCD to the RS-232 Pak:
This works fine if you are just connecting to remote systems, but if you want to run a BBS, those often rely on carrier detect to know if a caller is online. If a caller disconnects without properly logging off, the system may sit there forever (worst case) or until some software timeout is reached and the system resets. During that time, it would be possible for the next person connecting to resume that session.
This was a real and common issue with BBSes back in the 1980s, for this very reason – lack of carrier detection.
Another issue is the lack of hardware flow control. There could be times when the ESP8266 could try to send data faster than the computer could process, and there is no way (other than XON/OFF, which can’t be used for binary transfers) to tell it to pause sending.
I have found RS232-to-TTL adapters that provided 5-wire signals (adding RTS and CTS), which is needed for this hardware flow control. Those are a bit more costly (I found one for $9 on Amazon), and still do not address the carrier detect issue.
Once again, David Chesek comes to the rescue. He located an adapter that supports all the RS-232 signals, including RI (ring indicator). It is available for $11.50 plus shipping from a company in Las Vegas called Pololu (and might even be manufactured there):
Pololu RS-232 to TTL adapter with all signals. (Photo taken from Pololu.com)
https://www.pololu.com/product/126
I took a gamble (pun intended) and ordered a few. I will report back as soon as I receive them and have had a chance to try them out.
Meanwhile, knowing such a thing exists, I did more searching and found a similar one on e-Bay from a seller called MDFLY. They have them for $3.25 plus shipping, and are shipped from California:
eBay seller MDFLY RS-232 to TTL adapter with all signals. (Photo taken from their eBay listing.)
The board layouts are quite different, but the functionality should be similar. I will be comparing both of these (and noting shipping time) when I have them.
With either one of these boards, properly wired to additional pins on a full ESP8266 development module, it should be able to provide hardware flow control and carrier detect. (Sorry, the ESP-01 module only has two I/O pins, so we’d have to pick and choose what to support on that one — like DTR and DCD for BBS use, or CTS/RTS flow control.)
Built-in serial ports disappeared from modern computers a long time ago, but USB RS-232 adapters are available in case one is ever needed. For our 1980s Color Computer, RS-232 is one of the only available interfaces to the outside world.
The built-in 4-pin DIN connector (marked Serial I/O) is not a real serial port. Instead, it is just a set of pins that can be toggled on and off (to RS-232 voltage levels) through software. By writing software with the proper timing, this port can send out serial data. This technique is called “bit banging” and it was very common in systems of this era. (And, today, if you use an Arduino, the “SoftwareSerial” routines which turn any I/O pin into a serial port are doing the same thing.)
There are many modern things that use serial for communication, but they are doing so at chip-level voltages – called TTL level (transitor-transitor level). An example of this would be the I/O pins of a Raspberry Pi or Arduino. There are also a myriad of small devices that work over a TTL-level serial port, such as USB interfaces, WiFi modules, Bluetooth, and many more.
To interface one of these with an old computer with an RS-232 port, you can use an RS-232 to TTL adapter such as this one from Amazon:
This device has a DB-9 RS-232 port on one side, and pins on the other that represent the common signals of Transmit (TX), Receive (RX), Ground (GND) and voltage. Voltage is usually 5v or 3.3v depending on the device and what it will connect to. (An Arduino UNO has 5v I/O pins. A Raspberry Pi and some other models of Arduino use 3.3v pins.) The adapter has to match. Some are smart, and adjust based on the voltage they are given. Thus, if you are hooking an RS-232 device to an Arduino, you would power this TTL adapter from a 5V pin of the Arduino, and it should operate at 5v. Some adapters claim to adjust, so if you hook them up to a 3.3v pin on an Raspberry Pi, they work at 3.3v. The RS-232 side should be the same (traditional RS-232 voltage levels) in either case.
I have recently been experimenting with devices such as the ESP8266, which is a tiny (and cheap!) module that provides WiFi for about $2, and interfaces with TTL level serial. Using the CoCo’s built-in Serial I/O (bitbanger port) and a cable, I was able to hook the CoCo to one of these RS-232 TTL adapters and then hook that to the ESP8266. It worked great, limited only by the baud rate of the bitbanger! (Most older CoCo 1/2 terminal programs could only go about 1200 baud. The CoCo 3 has at least one terminal program, Twilight Term, that can operate a 9600 through the bitbanger port.)
ESP8266 development board to RS232 converter.
Since the bitbanger port only has TX, RX, CD and GND (and CD is not really used unless software specifically uses it), hooking it up like this worked well. But, when trying to connect to the more robust RS-232 Pak (which can operate at speeds of up to 115200 baud), I ran into some problems.
The 6551 can transmit data just fine, but in order for it to receive, it expects to see a carrier detect signal (DCD). If you just hook up the RS-232 Pak cable to the TTL adapter, using only TX, RX, and GND, that signal will not be active and terminal programs will not read any of the incoming data. You can send, but not receive.
In order to make this work, you have to trick the RS-232 Pak into thinking there is a DCD signal. From exploring various mailing lists, Facebook groups, and web postings, I found several suggestions on how to do this. The overall method looked like this:
RS-232 port modification to make it operate without needing real DCD and other signals.
By tying certain lines together on the end that goes to the RS-232 Pak, the Pak will think there are signals present that really are not there. This makes it work, since it now thinks there is a carrier detect.
The above modification can be done on an RS-232 to TTL adapter with a soldering iron and a bit of wire. A small solder blob can be used to connect pins 7 (RTS) and 8 (RTS), then another blog can connect pins 1 (DCD) and 6 (DSR), then a jumper wire can be ran from that solder blob over to 4 (DTR).
Dave Chesek did a modification on is cable and it looked like this: (And apologizes to Dave if he isn’t proud of his soldering skills. They are much, much nicer than what I can do!)
David Chesek’s modification to the RS232-to-TTL adapter, connecting pins 7+8 (RTS+CTS) with solder, and pins 1+6+4 (DCD+DSR+DTR) with solder and a jumper wire.
Once that is done, you can use a DB25-to-DB9 cable (I ordered one from Amazon) and connect it to one of these RS232-to-TTL adapters (I ordered one from Amazon) using a gender changer (I ordered one from Amazon) or a serial cable that already had the proper ends on them. (The one I used was a Male to Female cable, so I needed the gender changer.)
This modification is enough to trick the RS-232 Pak into allowing receiving of data.
For those that don’t solder, you can also order some DB9-to-terminal block adapters like this:
I picked up a pair for around $8 because I wanted to find out which of the various suggestions would actually work. Through process of elimination, I found that the DCD+DSR+DTR was needed, but RTS+CTS was not. (And, some RS-DOS terminal programs worked with just DCD+DTR, which was one of the suggestions I was given.)
I hooked up short jumper wires like this:
Minimal wiring required to get an RS-232 Pak to talk to a 3-wire RS-232 interface (TX, RX and GND).
For the CoCo’s RS-232 Pak, this works great for various RS-DOS programs I tested (Greg-E-Term, Ultimaterm) and OS-9/NitrOS-9 (Supercomm).
I had read that the RS-232 Pak won’t send without a certain signal being present, but from my experiments this week, this does not seem to be the case. Only the DCD situation must be taken care of.
With this information, you can now get an RS-232 Pak out to an RS232-to-TTL adapter and then hook up various devices. In the case of my ESP8266 experiments, I was powering the TTL adapter off the ESP8266 module. If I were trying to use something stand-alone, like an HC-05 bluetooth module, I would need an additional 5v or 3.3v power source to power the module and the adapter.
2018-02-05: Thanks to Dave Chesek, this issue has been solved. He took the wiring diagram below and modified his RS232-to-TTL adapter with a bit of solder. He put a blob connecting pins 7 (RTS) and 8 (CTS), and then soldered together 1 (DCD) and 6 (DSR) then ran a jumper wire from those two over to 4 (DTR). It worked fine. My efforts to do this with jumper wires must not have been making good connection (perhaps one of my DB9 pin holes is not as deep – TX, RX and GND all worked fine with the jumper wires). I will do a bit more investigation to see what the minimum required. Thanks, Dave!
The 6551 serial chip will not receive unless DCD is active. Modern adapters do not provide DCD. I am trying to find a way to do this so I can hook my WiFi device (which only has TX, RX and GND) to the RS-232 Pak.
I have been trying to jumper wires to fake the DCD signal but nothing has worked. I do not know if my Pak is defective, since I have nothing else to connect it to for testing,
Many sites suggest a wiring example like this:
Has anyone done this? Nothing modern has DCD so surely there is a simple solution figured out long ago.
2018-02-05: Added crude drawing showing how I wired things up.
2018-02-25: Fixing board support URL to include “http”.
If you want to get your Tandy / Radio Shack Color Computer (CoCo) on the internet (or any other 80s computer with a serial port), here is a dirt cheap way you can do it.
Cheap WiFi: The Early Years
Just a few years ago, adding WiFi to an Arduino meant buying a $60 add-on. My solution at the time was to get a much cheaper Ethernet and then use a cheap TP-LINK WiFi router hooked to it. I later found a source for a $10 Ethernet shield that made the overall cost even lower.
In 2014, the internet lit up with the discovery of the ESP8266 – a complete “WiFi on a chip” solution for under $5! Initially, all documentation was in Chinese but folks managed to figure out how to use it and, as they say, the rest is history.
Today the ESP8266 family of products is used in all kinds of things. There are now internet-enabled light switches, and front-ends for 3-D printers, and many other devices that get online thanks to this low-cost solution.
And, this includes all these retro computing platforms!
Cheap WiFi: How To
If you want to experiment, you can order an ESP8266 development board from Amazon for $8.79. This contains the low-cost ESP8266 module and then runs out all the various connection to pins, and also has a USB-Serial adapter built in. This USB port allows you to plug it up to a Mac or PC and upload new firmware, or use the device directly through a serial connection.
Here is the module I purchased. You can find many variations, some costing more, and others costing less. I wanted one I could get direct from Amazon using 2-day Prime delivery, but if you don’t mind waiting, you can find a similar part shipped from China for about $4.
An ESP8266 development board, available for under $9 from Amazon. (And much less from China!)
Since my 1980s computers do not have a USB port, I needed a way to hook them up to the old-style RS232 serial port instead. For that, I bought a cheap RS232-to-TTL adapter. Here is the one I purchased for around $7, shipped from Amazon with 2-day Prime shipping. I see there are some for a few bucks less which might work just as well, and if you don’t mind waiting a few weeks to get something shipped from China, I have seen them for about .67 cents!
RS232-to-TTL adapter.
Now all I had to do was connect the two modules together using some jumper wires. I needed four wires to connect Voltage (mine needed 5v), Ground, Transmit and Receive. You can buy a bundle of these wires for just a few dollars.
Once connected, it looked like this:
ESP8266 development board to RS232 converter.
I can power the module using a standard micro USB cable and charger (just like you might already have for an Android phone or Raspberry Pi or some models of Arduinos).
After this, all I needed was a NULL Modem cable to connect that DB9 connector to the Serial I/O port of my Color Computer. In my case, I used a “Driverwire cable” which has a 4-pin DIN connector on one end and a DB9 on the other. I needed to use a NULL Modem adapter to get the signals talking.
ESP8266 ESP-12E devkit wired to DB9-to-TTL adapter and connected to a CoCo Drivewire (null modem) cable.
Cheap WiFi: ZIMODEM Software
The final step I needed to do was to install different firmware on the ESP8266. The firmware that comes on the module does allow you to type certain “AT” commands and connect to WiFi and remote systems, but I wanted something easier and more compatible. I found this ZIMODEM firmware:
https://github.com/bozimmerman/Zimodem
This makes the ESP8266 look like an old-style Hayes Smartmodem. Instead of using commands to dial a phone number, the commands will “dial” a remote telnet BBS. i.e., instead of:
ATDT 515-555-1212
…you can dial a telnet connection:
ATDT "coffeemud.net:23"
There are new commands added to display all nearby WiFi base stations, and connect to them. There’s even a command to retrieve a file from a web server! You can find full documentation on the ZIMODEM website.
Any terminal program can be used to make these types of connections. You can also configure it to receive incoming connections, and when someone telnets to your IP address, you will see a “RING” (just like the smartmodems did) and can have the system answer. Yep, it would be very easy to put an old-school BBS on the internet with this!
I was able to use this to connect an old Radio Shack CoCo to a remote BBS using the Greg-E-Term terminal program over the bitbanger port at 1200 baud (oooh, speedy).
Building and Installing ZIMODEM
I got these steps from the Amazon page for the ESP8266 part I purchased. I have edited them with additional notes and links.
Instruction & Steps of How to use:
Download the latest version of the Arduino IDE. Today, there are versions of the IDE that run in a web browser (I have not tried these), as well as ones available for Mac, Windows and Linux. I used one for Windows 10, downloaded from the Microsoft Store.
Install the IDE. (Well, duh…)
Configure the Arduino IDE with support for the ESP8266:
At this time, I do not know what you would use for Mac or Linux.
To test that things are working, in Arduino IDE, look for the old fashioned Blink program (File->Examples->ESP8266->Blink). Load, compile and upload. If it worked, the module will have a blinking LED, indicating it is now running software you build using the Arduino IDE.
Now all you have to do is download the ZIMODEM software, then open the main “zimodem.ino” file in the IDE (the other files will open in different tabs, automatically), and build and load it to the ESP8266.
UPDATE: I did not need step 4 when I recreated these steps on my Mac, so maybe they are not even needed on the PC side these days.
These steps worked for me, but I want to go back through them (as well as finding Mac instructions and Linux if someone can assist me with that) and add photos and more details.
FTP, IRC, TELNET and more! Oh my!
ZIMODEM was created for Commodore computers, and has some special features in it for translating normal ASCII to Commodore’s PETASCII. It also comes with steps on how to use it with a Commodore from BASIC (with some assembly language routines used for high-speed reading and writing to the modem – sound familiar?). They have source code for various internet utilities such as:
WGET (get a file from a website)
FTP
IRC (chat)
TELNET
TELNETD (for connecting to the Commodore remotely and using BASIC over the Internet)
WEATHER (a two player network game from the Commodore PET days)
…and others.
With DriveWire on the CoCo, some of this exists but only for OS-9. It is my hope that we can easily port these BASIC programs (and even replicate the assembly language routines) over to the CoCo and do the same thing.
Last year, Sub-Etha Software “announced” the Sir Sound, a sound add-on for the Radio Shack Color Computer that would plug in to the Serial I/O (i.e. printer or bitbanger) port. The prototype looks like this:
Prototype “Sir Sound” sound module for the CoCo (or anything with a serial port, actually).
The idea was, by making this device “smart”, you could send simple, small commands to it and it would take care of the actual music playing, freeing up CPU time for the program. Since the device was “smart,” firmware could also be expanded with new features added.
The plans will be available for anyone who wants to build their own, and the source code will be posted to my Github repository. For someone like myself, with little or no hardware skills, you will be able to build this just by plugging wires into a breadboard (like the prototype). It’s not pretty, but it’s cheap and easy. And fun!
Various Sir Sound options…
I have contemplated designing a custom board for this, which would have a handful of chips and parts on it as well as a serial port and USB plug. Basically, it would be a board version of the prototype. The cost on this would be pretty low, but since I am not a hardware guy, I likely wouldn’t want to be the one soldering all the parts together.
Another option would be to just make an Arduino Shield that plugs in to a cheap Arduino UNO clone. You can get a good-quality Arduino for around $6, shipped from the USA by resellers on e-Bay. This could make the cost of the “Sir Sound” portion lower, though you’d still need an Arduino. You can buy a fully-made Arduino for less than the parts to build a clone, so this seems like a good way to reduce costs.
So which is better: Full board with everything, or add-on Shield for an Arduino?
I am not sure if the cost of the Arduino header pins is more expensive than the few chips it takes to just make the Arduino circuitry on a standalone board ;-) But, for folks who already have an Arduino, the add-on Shield is a great way to re-use existing hardware (and you can then use it for other projects when you are not hooked up to the CoCo). And, even for for those who don’t already have an Arduino, it might still be cheaper than the fully custom solution.
Sound + WiFi?
But what if it could do more than just sound?
Recently, I started playing with the ESP8266 WiFi chip. This device has a built in networking stack and WiFi hardware. It also has RAM and flash storage, and you can load it with custom firmware. This module is cheap! I ordered a “developer kit” with a USB port for less than $9 from Amazon.
An ESP8266 development board, available for under $9 from Amazon. (And much less from China!)
See those pins on the bottom? These developer modules make all the I/O lines available, it would be possible to make a small board with the sound chip and serial port on it that this plugs in to. This could give you sound and WiFi!
For the bitbanger serial port, baud rate on WiFi and Bluetooth would be limited to a slower speed, but if could also be plugged up to an RS232 Pak for high speed networking.
And, this looks like it would be cheaper than using an Arduino! More features for less money?
And, for a few bucks more, there is a module that adds Bluetooth as well, giving you sound, WiFi and bluetooth!
To be continue…
Let’s just say there are a few prototypes in the works right now… And they are all very cheap.
Sub-Etha Software to attend 2018 Chicago CoCoFEST!
Des Moines, Iowa – January 11, 2018 – Iowa-based Sub-Etha Software has announced plans to attend the 2018 27th Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! The event will be held April 21 and 22, 2018 at the Heron Point Convention Center in Lombard, Illinois.
“We’ve missed a number of years over the past decade or so, but we don’t plan to miss this year,” says Sub-Etha co-founder and current operator, Allen Huffman. “Missing these shows sucks. And this year we don’t want it to suck.”
Sub-Etha Software plans to demonstrate Roger Taylor’s “CoCo on a Chip” FPGA project, as well as a few “vaporware” items from the company’s past, including the CoCo-VR project and CoCo Answering Machine project.
A selection of N.O.S. (new old stock) Sub-Etha items may be available on (probably unreadable) 5 1/4″ floppy disks in original (“vintage”) packaging.
There will not be any Jolt! Cola, because that no longer exists. And there might even be Jolt Cola, because thanks to a tip from L. Curtis Boyle in the comments, it went back in to production in late 2017!
About Sub-Etha Software
Sub-Etha Software was founded in Lufkin, Texas in 1990, as a partnership between Allen C. Huffman and Terry S. Todd. It made it’s first CoCoFest appearance at the First Annual Atlanta CoCoFest in 1990, and it’s first Chicago CoCoFest appearance at the First Annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! in 1992. They may be contacted online at www.subethasoftware.com
Can you believe this year will mark 38 years since Radio Shack released the TRS-80 Color Computer (later nicknamed the “CoCo”)? According to the always reliable wikipedia, the Color Computer was announced on July 31, 1980. According to a calendar printed in the July 1987 issue of Rainbow magazine, the CoCo was introduced (made available for sale?) on August 20th that same year:
August 1987 Rainbow, anniversary souvenir calendar: “August 20 – Radio Shack introduces the 4K TRS-80 CoCo for $399. First computer to offer easy graphics and sound programming from BASIC. 1980”
That date always stuck with me because it is my birthday. Too bad I didn’t know anything about computers in 1980, else I might have asked for one. Instead, I didn’t get switched on to computers until a few years later, with my first machine being a Commodore VIC-20 (“the first full featured color computer for under $300”) in 1982.
In my early days of owning a computer, I also owned some computer magazines. I remember Family Computing, COMPUTE! (wow, they published in until 1994), and later COMPUTE!’s Gazette, which focused on the Commodore VIC-20 and 64 (wow again, for them publishing until 1995). Somewhere I still have a box with all my old magazines in them.
When I switched from VIC-20 to Color Computer in 1983, I was still able to make use of some of those early magazines that contained CoCo versions of program listings. I remember being annoyed at seeing the CoCo version rely on BASIC’s single-note “PLAY” command for music, while they had to use assembly language routines to do the same on the Apple 2. If they were using assembly code, they could have done the same on the CoCo and gotten 4-voice harmony music out of the machine! But instead, that “easy graphics and sound programming from BASIC” must have made sticking with one-voice music the easier path. I think that always made the CoCo versions look worse than they had to.
Shattered by a Rainbow
At some point, I learned about an all-Color Computer magazine called The Rainbow. I think my first copy of Rainbow was the November 1983 “Data Communications” issue. I’ll have to dig out my storage box and see how well my memory has held up over the past 35 years!
In a way, it destroyed some of my hopes and dreams. When I made the decision to get a CoCo, part of the reason was because of the small selection of software Radio Shack sold for it. I thought, with such a small software base, it would be a great system to program for! I could become rich in such a desolate marketplace!
The 300+ pages of Rainbow, full of program listings and ads for hundreds of software and hardware items, made me give up those dreams. Looking back, I wish I hadn’t. The market was large enough for some programmers to make their living off of it. Even in the late 1980s, I heard about one shareware programmer who helped pay his way through college by writing CoCo software!
In addition to Rainbow, I also learned about two other CoCo-only publications. Color Computer Magazine was published from March 1983 to October 1984. There was also Hot CoCo (Wayne Green Publications), which lasted a bit longer, publishing from June 1983 to February 1986. (Those links lead to full scans of all the issues over at the Color Computer Archive site.)
Although I did buy a few issues of Color Computer and Hot CoCo, the only one I subscribed to was The Rainbow. As a junior high school student, I didn’t have the income for multiple subscriptions, though I wish I had – I expect I would have benefited from the other two publications.
I chose Rainbow because it was the largest. In December 1983, Hot CoCo had 148 pages, Color Computer Magazine had 146 pages, and Rainbow was larger than both of them put together at 340 pages!
I could read through the two smaller ones, and probably find an article of of interest, but Rainbow always seemed to have dozens of things I liked. If I could only afford one, it just made sense to go for the biggest. (At the time, Rainbow was more expensive, with a cover price of $3.95 versus $2.95 for the other two.)
Back to the Beginning
Sometime in early 1985, I must have been contemplating completing my collection of Rainbow because I decided to order a back issue of the first issue from July 1981. I think I spent $2.00 or so for the issue, plus $3.50 postage and handling.
Imagine my disappointment and surprise when it arrived and it was a photo copy of two sheets of paper, printed doubled sided by a dot matrix printer that didn’t even have true descenders for lowercase!
Could this be? Did this nearly-400 page behemoth of a magazine with it’s glossy, full color cover really start out as a two page newsletter?
Indeed it did!
But rather than complain, I ended up writing in to The Rainbow and suggested that reprinting this early issue inside the magazine would be a neat thing to do. In the July 1985 anniversary issue, they printed my letter and included a reproduction of that original two page newsletter:
August 1985 Rainbow, letters to the editor.
Editor: I have an idea for your upcoming anniversary issue that you may like. I was told that THE RAINBOW started off as ·a two~page newsletter. Since many CoCo owners were not a part of that beginning, me included, I thought it would be nice to
see some reprints of the “early RAINBOW.” You may not think this is a big deal, but I would be more than happy to see how the # 1 CoCo magazine got its start. I think others share this curiosity as well as I do. Allen Huffman Broaddus, TX
Editor’s Note: Great idea, Allen. So, for Allen and all of you helping us celebrate our fourth anniversary, we’ve reprinted our very first Issue in its entirety in this issue (see between pages 98 and 99) – a little birthday treat from all of us to all of you!
I think I had at least two other letters printed in the magazine, but this was the one I was most proud of. (Notice my little white lie about “I was told that…” I knew darn well it was a two page newsletter because I felt ripped off paying over five bucks to get a copy of it!)
Let’s do the time warp, again!
The days of monthly magazines with computer programs you could type in is long gone. But, the history of them has been preserved thanks to the efforts of folks willing to scan in old paper and make it available online for a new generation to discover (or for us old folks to use to relive our younger years).
You can find issues at Archive.org, but I think the best collection is at the previously-mentioned Color Computer Archive site:
That link will take you to a repository that contains scans of every issue of Rainbow, from the original two page newsletter in 1980, to the largest of the glossy magazine editions, down to the final newsprint issue of May 1993. Some scans are just images of the pages, but the above link had been OCR’d so you can do text searches on it (mostly).
Until these archives, I had only seen the issues that I owned, from November 1983 to sometime around 1991. I recall ending my subscription in protest because Rainbow had decided to not cover any of the “next generation” CoCo-style machines such as the MM/1. Looking back, that was something I regret. Had we all kept subscribing and supporting them, maybe they could have continued a few years longer.
With all of this said, I have decided to start an interesting project. I plan to read all the issues of Rainbow, starting with July 1981. I’ve actually made it through the first six issues, where it grew from two photocopied pages into the first “magazine style” issue with 19 pages in December 1981.
And boy is it a time travel experiment! It’s stunning to see the tiny thing that birthed the magazine I loved so much.
If you are looking for some retro reading for 2018, why don’t you join me? I bet we (re)learn many things over the course of the year.
It’s quite interesting reading news about Radio Shack working on a “disc system” for the Color Computer, and then reading a review of this new $600 add-on a few issues later. That, and all the mentions of COLOR BASIC, and why you might want to upgrade to 16K or 32K and EXTENDED COLOR BASIC, really take you back to an earlier time.
And I have yet to see the name “CoCo” used. That would come later.
I’ll share interesting tidbits as I run across them. I’m sure I will learn quite a bit about the early years before I was involved. Maybe you will to.
The internet is an interesting place. Quite often, things I am trying to find end up not findable (far too often), but I almost always end up somewhere I didn’t intend to be finding something I didn’t mean to find.
Recently, I went in search for a Chromaset game that was referenced by L. Curtis Boyle on CoCoTalk Live (the nation’s leading weekly Color Computer talk show) episode 17. A reference had been made to this “Zero Gravity” (I think that was the title) game being disassembled and ported to OS-9, and I was curious to see what kind of game it was.
During this search, which was unsuccessful, I ended up at some random home page that had an archive of newsletters in PDF format. The one I found was from 1983, and it contained a review of the Chromaset subscription service (which I think was a cassette tape full of programs you received each month).
It was a fascinating read, including an article talking about rumors that Radio Shack was working on a “CoCo III” model. (That article was a gag, though, but no doubt rumors of a CoCo 3 must have started circulating as soon as the CoCo 2 came out.)
Reading through this newsletter was like stepping back in time. 1983 was when I received my first Radio Shack Color Computer. I remembered newsletters like this.
Today, archive sites like archive.org and the Color Computer Archive do a great job at trying to preserve much of this old information. I have scanned and submitted several newsletters and manuals, myself. One could easily spend weeks going through all that is there, which is why I expect none of us have done it. (I wasn’t even aware of this “ETUG” newsletter until I stumbled on it accidentally.)
Wouldn’t it be neat…
With retro computing so popular these days, wouldn’t it be neat if there were some kind of subscription service that would mail you physical paper copies of newsletters from the past, on a schedule just like they were back then? I’m not talking about anything new, but actually representing a point in time as if you were subscribing to them back then.
All it would take is finding as many of these newsletters as possible and getting them organized by date. Then, when someone subscribed, they’d start receiving newsletters each month, starting with the earliest time available.
Or, you could sign up starting at a specific month (say, the year you first got your computer).
Subscribers wouldn’t be in sync with each other, so discussing the “latest” news would be problematic, but since all of this exists digitally, it would be as simple as…
Hey, I just got the August 1983 issue of CoCo Chronicles out of East Texas. There’s this cool BASIC program that makes sound like a synthesizer with no machine code! Here’s a link to the PDF of the issue…
Think of all the great tips and programs we’d (re)discover this way, as a new generation wades through the cutting edge information of 35 years ago.
There might even be a way to automate something like this, through a service that will print and mail on demand.
Sure, we can all go download any of these for free… But have we? It’s much easier to pay attention to something when it shows up at your house, versus you having to remember to go out and find it. (Amazon, anyone?)
There are some problems, of course: Copyright. Low quality scans of copies that might be hard to read. Zero interest in this…
But if such a service existed, would you sign up? How much would you be willing to pay? Who would have the time to run something like this?
I have made it back from the 2017 26th annual “Last” Chicago CoCoFEST! It was a pretty spectacular year with many new hardware items being demonstrated, as well as new software projects. I will try to share some details and photos when I get caught up.
