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suggest use for an old coco (or any vintage computer in general)

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carangil

Experienced Member
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Jun 3, 2009
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Location
Oakland, CA
Hi,

I have a properly working Tandy coco version 2 with rs232 adapter and disk drive. I'm wondering if anyone can suggest a use for it? I have it sitting in the corner collecting dust; I would love to find some way to work it into my normal set of computers.

I'm thinking of maybe using it as a dumb terminal for a headless linux box, or something like that. It seems kind of silly, but it would be awesome to surf the web in lynx over a serial line on such an old computer.

Anyone have any better ideas?
 
lol *nix terminal is always fun. It kinda depends how geeky your life is and want to be. Practical uses can be anything you can connect via rs-232. A paging system, some folks connect it to RF power switches and turn on and off their lights or other things via "command central", or some sort of interesting security monitoring device with a little home brew basic code showing you green or red areas based on sensors.

Usually it's just fun to code on them or see what you can think of and try and learn enough to implement it. Practical uses for just about any computer I think are kinda dependent on how eager you are to apply them. It's difficult for me to figure out why I have a new computer besides wasting time or searching for old computers.

- John
 
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Packet radio is another great use for one. You can use CB on some channels, the rules aren't very clear about that, but if nobody says anything...

Definitely check out the chuckwagon, there are games there last I checked. If not, check back tomorrow, someone is very likely (hint hint) to list some.

DarthKur, thanks for the link!
 
I use a DOS machine all the time. Currently I am using a p133 with 128Meg and 6Gig drive because I wanted the best functionality possible and that setup was convenient. A coco would really do the same if that's what I wanted to use.

What I do is write a lot and DOS is the best (to me) environment for handeling text. I'm sure the coco could be set up for the same thing. The software "suite" includes a bunch of text processing utilities, spell check, thesaurus, and several choice editors.

My regular linux box is used for surfing and page layout and more power hungry stuff like that, but with an FTP server (proftpd) on it, I can transfer files almost instantly to and from my DOS machine. FTP essentially allows me to mount my whole Linux file tree on my DOS machine. With a KVM box, it is like working on one machine and the whole thing is very fast and convenient.

You may want to use the coco with orig screen and kbd, so my setup is not exactly what you want - but perhaps it can give you some ideas. :) I think the trick to using older machines is networking. Get a network card and you can work on old machines as clients. Servers are trivial on newer machines so that's why you do it that way around.

My main DOS machine is also connected to a secondary DOS machine which boots up as an INTERLNK server which has a 5 1/4 drive for convenience. Just flick the switch and I have those extra resources.
 
rs232 ideas

rs232 ideas

I would LOVE to have your setup right now.

I would set it up with a HAYES COMPATIBLE modem, and set it up to be a simple DIAL-A-JOKE kind of service, or something cool, where it would let you call and talk to a simple AI program like ELIZA, or tell you a joke then hang up, or leave msg's,.. etc etc..

If there is native support in a programming language, just make up something cool and simple that would let you dial into the COCO and use the service.

If you want a CHEAP dedicated line to it, get a MAGICJACK, (requires testing which I am doing for my own 8088 based BBS toy thingy) and you can set the local area code for the number you get assigned, and people can dial directly to a separate line for very cheap, and you can put that sucker out there for the amused and retro entrenched people like me/us/we/them to play with.



Lock de la Lion
 
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