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TRS-80 CoCo2 lot

W

willowmoon93

Experienced Member
Joined
Jan 1, 2008
Messages
288
Location
Green Bay, Wisconsin
Hi everybody,

Snagged a good deal on Goodwill's auction site, assuming everything is working fine, the link below is here:

http://www.shopgoodwill.com/viewItem.asp?ItemID=4071919

$7 USD, plus shipping, which came out to $22.65 USD total, not too bad at all.

I already have a couple of TRS-80 CoCo 2's, but never had a disk drive w/controller for the darned things. Now I'll finally have one, plus a few extra games I always wanted to try like "Dungeons of Daggorath." Plus I always loved "Canyon Climber", it was a fun one on the Apple II.
 
Good deal. Don't pull my trick which is to end up with 4 CoCos sitting here. Most of them were so cheap I couldn't refuse. Like I really need 4 CoCos.
 
Yeah, that deal was worth it for the manuals, etc alone so good find. Interesting to see how much Intellivision stuff they have. Think I only saw one thing for ColecoVision but that was all accessories (though sorta neat).

Wish it was a bit easier to find the vintage stuff lol.
 
Typically auctions there get ridiculously competitive, worse so than on ebay, go figure. I guess I got lucky on this one. I used to do pretty good on the goodwill auction site when it was not as well known, much less bidding competition. Oh well !!! :D
 
You can NEVER have enough CoCo gear. I have (4) CoCo 3's, (3) MPI's, at least a dozen FDC's, (2) SCSI controllers, about a half-dozen RS232 paks, and bunches of stuff that would take a month to catalog.

CoCo was my first "real" computer, and I've always had a soft spot...


T
 
I always loved the manuals that came with those original CoCo's. Very well-written, easy to follow, very "friendly", so to speak. Much like the one that came with the Commodore VIC-20 for programming in BASIC.

Oh I definitely wouldn't mind a CoCo 3 - especially with the standard 128K RAM and enhanced graphics mode, I'd be interested in seeing some of the software that took specific advantage of those features, although I'd imagine there weren't too many titles that did that.
 
ok i have the coco i plug in the fd 502 interface and the fd502 drive turn it on and it either boots to color basic or a screen full of crap and some times the drive will spin
 
We used to have to change, IIRC, a lot of 368s in the drive interface from people plugging it in while the computer was on.

Also, there are, I believe, some controllers/drives that you can use with one series (1,2,3), but not with others.
 
Yep, if the cartridge is working, it will say "DISK ....." on the screen instead of just "Extended Basic....". If you do get it to come up and say "DISK .." it will NOT access either drive by itself. On mine, I type "DOS", then I can do a "dir0" or "dir1" for each drive. Yes, I installed a second drive into the cabinet so I have 2 drives.
 
BTW, everything tested out perfectly so I'm happy! I didn't initially notice it at auction time, but when I got everything here at my house, I noticed the "TRS-80 Color Computer 2" was rebadged as "Tandy Color Computer 2" so that's something a little different that I wasn't expecting. And those deluxe joysticks ..... much, much, much better than the original joysticks (the non-centering ones). YAY!!
 
That's a good deal alright!

I bidded on one of those kind of joysticks not long ago but was pipped at the post right at the end of the auction.

Tez
 
chuckcmagee said:
Yep, if the cartridge is working, it will say "DISK ....." on the screen instead of just "Extended Basic....". If you do get it to come up and say "DISK .." it will NOT access either drive by itself. On mine, I type "DOS", then I can do a "dir0" or "dir1" for each drive. Yes, I installed a second drive into the cabinet so I have 2 drives.
Click to expand...

As chuck says, if it works, it will come up with "Disk Extended Color Basic 1.1" or "Disk Extended Color Basic 1.0".

what is the part number on the CoCo2? 64K last run was I think 26-3127B, which was 64K Extended basic. Adding the FD-502, it's ROM would get mapped in, and make it Disk Extended Basic 1.1 I think...

As suggested, clean the contacts on the FD-502 with a pencil eraser.
Also, if ya got an EPROM burner, you might want to try checking to make sure the PROM is OK, by burning a new EPROM.

I have an FD-502 at home, and a 26-3127B CoCo2, so I can try and get back to you - problem will be getting video out of it :)
I have none of the switchboxes around for the TV-out!

Let us know how it goes...

T
 
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