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Manufacturer |
Tandy Radio Shack (US) |
Model |
Color Computer Model 1 |
Date Launched |
July 1980 |
Price |
Approx. £350 A matching TRS-80 colour monitor as shown above was available, for the same price as the computer. |
Microprocessor type |
Motorola 6809E @ 0.894 MHz |
ROM size |
8 kilobytes 16 KB with Extended BASIC |
Standard RAM |
4 kilobytes Later increased to 16 KB |
Maximum RAM |
64 kilobytes |
Keyboard type |
Calculator style, with a stiff action |
Supplied language |
Microsoft BASIC An extended BASIC giving full access to the graphics and sound was an (almost essential) optional extra. |
Text resolution |
32 x 16 characters Only uppercase letters were available. |
Graphics resolution |
From 64 x 32 up to 256 x 192 pixels. Needed the 16 KB memory pack for high resolution. |
Colours available |
Black on green for text. Eight colours plus black for graphics. Number of colours on the screen at one time varied with the resolution, from 8+1 colours at lowest resolution to 2 colours at highest. |
Example Screenshot |
The text and block graphics display of the Color Computer 1. Notice there are no lower-case letters, but the reverse-video capitals shown near the bottom would appear as lower-case on a standard printer.
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Sound |
Single channel through television. 'PLAY' command in extended BASIC made it easy to produce tunes. |
Cassette load speed |
1500 baud Tandy recommended the CTR-80A cassette recorder for use with the Color Computer. This was just a normal but high quality mono audio recorder so in fact most domestic cassette recorders could be used successfully. |
Dimensions (mm) Weight (grams) |
369 x 344 x 94 Not known |
Special features |
Had ports for two analogue joysticks and ROM cartridge. Disc drives could be added and an operating system called OS-9 from Microware was available. This was a multitasking operating system, long before Windows 3.1. |
Good points |
The supplied manuals were excellent for newcomers to computing. The optional Extended BASIC had better graphics and sound commands than most other BASICs of the time. |
Bad points |
The lack of lowercase characters and black on green text gave the machine an old fashioned feel and made applications like word processing difficult. It was not possible to mix text and graphics on the screen without a lot of effort. |
How successful? |
Very popular in the US but less so in the UK. |
Comments |
The Tandy Color (sic) Computer was affectionately known as the CoCo. The Dragon 32 was almost identical to the Tandy CoCo, with more memory and a lower price.
In 1983 the Model 2 was released which was internally the same as the Model 1 but had a white case and a proper typewriter keyboard:
Review of the Color Computer 1 |