Quick noteable sale...

Radio Shack Tandy 128K Color Computer 3 CoCo3 TRS-80

Here's what I'd consider to be an average (at best) CoCo3 going for a decent price. Must be the box (looked like a nice box at that...). Another eVilBay seller, mkandrac36, had several nice CoCo3's that took multiple auctions to get rid of, tho I don;t know if his had boxes. Just one of those things, I guess.

Later,
mccm

eVilBay Rundown

Okay, there are a few interesting auctions on the 'Bay right now, so, without further ado...

Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer Spectaculator

Disk version of Spectacultor. If you don't recall, and I'd say you lived under a rock if you don't, Spectaculator is a spreadsheet program for the CoCo. I never used it so I have no idea of it's capabilities.

Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer Personafile

Disk version of Pesonafile, which is basically a personal database. Again, never used it...

Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 CoCo Color Computer Scripsit

Disk version of the 'Shack's word processor. If you like it for collectors purposes, I'd say go for it. For actual use, there are much better wp's for the CoCo (TW-64 to name just one).

Tandy TRS-80 Radio Shack CoCo EDTASM with ZBUG Editor

Disk version of EDTASM w/Z-BUG. If you want to do Assembly language programming on a real CoCo, you'll need this (or something like it.)

TRS-80 Color Computer Homebrew Style Drive & Controller

Just what the title says. If nothing else, the spare controller is a good find. They ain't makin' any more of them...

That's about all that caught my eye out of the current auctions. There is some hardware (meaning CoCo's) on eBay, but, nothing out of the ordinary.


Now, let's look at some recent sales:

TRS-80 Radio Shack COLOR COMPUTER 2 - Mint Condition

I'd like to have got this one. Looks to be an HJL keyboard on this CoCo2. Would've been worth it just for the HJL, IMO.

Tandy Radio Shack CoCo TRS-80 Color Computer FHL O-Pak

This FHL package, I think, would HAVE to fall into the ultra-rare categroy. In the three years I've been tracking the CoCo stuff, this is the first I've seen. Whoever zepplin71 is, I'm sure he's happy...

Lot Tandy TRS-80 CoCo Computer Friends Disk Magazine

Another one I'd like to have gotten my hands on. I know you can download the CFDM still, but, to have original with the hard copy, I dunno, just seems kewl...


Thant's about all for now. I've got another project coming up in a few months. My daughter's Girlscout troop is going for their badges in computers (who'da thunk it). Since I'm the only parent with any computer knowledge, I get to help them with this one. So I get to sit with 22 five to ten year old girls for two hours and give them the basics of computer use and terminology. Figured I'd also give them some exposure to the CoCo by having them type in a quick basic program on it. Maybe something that will allow them to print their name or something on a dot matrix printer.


Later,

mccm

Scored a few...

Well, I scored a couple Rainbow's last week from seller mkandrac36. I got Dec 1985, Jan 1988 and May 1988. Still waiting on them to arrive; should be early next week.

Not CoCo related, but, I scored a Tandy 1000 SX box at a flea market last weekend also. I figured it could be a really nice repack project. Took it home, cleaned it up and figured, what the hell... I plugged it's composite out into my 25" tv, hooked up a power cord and I was greeted by a message at the top of the screen that said 'System Memory 384k', the floppies did their seek and the machine went to a 'No operating system found' message. I couldn't believe the thing worked. So now I'm debating whether I want to part out the motherboard (the 5 1/4" & 3.5" are staying regardless) or try to restore it. I was looking on eVilBay yesterday and the hard drive cards this thing took were nowhere to be found (not a surprise). I've got a few ISA HDD controllers, but, I think they are all MFM or RLL and I know those drive are hard to come by and when you do, more often than not, they gave up the ghost long ago. Oh well, I have time to figure it out...

Oh yeah... I paid $5 for it...

Later,

mccm

Oh Christalmighty he's back...

I would be speaking of KP's Surplus. Few months ago I railed him big time on a few of his auctions being WWWAAAAAYYYY over priced. Well, check out this auction for a CoCo2 that I dare say is as yellow as my house. And he wants $149.99 + $20 shipping. If I had any use for it, I'd offer him $5.00 for it, but I'm afraid he might take it just to get some money out of me...


mccm

eVilBay seller firehoarse...

Has a TANDY COCO 3 + RARE MULTIPAK INTERFACE in BOXES listed for $649.00 Buy It Now or Best Offer (eVil gRin). So me being the smart ass I am, I bid $15.00. That expired without a response. So this morning I went back to bid $10.00. I was greeted with this:

Hello random_rodder! (Not you?)
Warning
Unfortunately, this seller has decided that you are not permitted to place best offer on their listings. You may contact the seller via the Ask Seller Questions feature if you want additional details.

Please note: You may not use other eBay accounts to place best offer on this seller's listings. Doing so may result in your indefinite suspension from eBay.

I thinks it's humorous. But I do think it's quite ridiculous to be asking the kind of money he is for these items. The MPI and CoCo3 in a box would be worth no more than $100, IMHO, and that depends on the condition. The CoCo3 looks pretty good, but without other pics it's hard to say for sure. The MPI looks okay, maybe a little yellowed, but again, it's hard to say from just one pic. Of the two items in this auction, only the MPI would be considered hard to get hold of. There are two other auctions on eVil Bay for Coco3's right now. And you can get a grade A fully tested and guaranteed CoCo3 from Mark at Cloud9 for $50 + shipping. Add another $40 and you've got a 512k CoCo3. So yeah, this auction gets my vBSOD for the day...

mccm

What in the Blue Blazes is going on???!!!

Okay, I don't know what the deal is but Vintage Computer Museum Services has got a buttload of vintage computer stuff listed. It'll also take a buttload of cash to get the things he has listed; $70 for a CoCo Mouse? $116.00 for a Model III Clone Keyboard? Man I wish I had some of whatever he's smoking. Looking at a few of his past auctions, I'm pretty stunned. Someone actually paid $150 for Microsoft Windows 3.0 unopened NIB. Whatever.

There is a little CoCo goodness happening on EvilBay. EvilBay user crime420 has a few CoCo related items up for grabs.

That's about all that caught my interest for this round. Hopefully as the summertime wanes I'll be able to be a little more active.

mccm

Quick eBay update

I don't have time to do a full EvilBay update, but, they have re-added the categories under the Vintage Computer section, which includes the TRS-80 category. Hope to have some time to look through and do a proper 'Collector' update shortly...

Message Board Archive

I've done a crude text based archive of the CoCo Hut Message Board. If someone ever gets a chance to edit and format it nicely, go for it. ;) Basically I just dumped the entire contents of the MB, sans the admin forums, to a text file.

The current board configuration is too much to maintain. Alas, I simply don't have time to clean it, promote it, install the updates, and hold the spammers at bay. And I'm not comfortable asking someone else to take on such a massive job. (Special thanks to manequinn for his heroic efforts trying! He is truly one of the CoCo community's treasured participants and has my undying gratitude. As does everyone who posted and took a stab at it.) At this point, I'm inclined to remove it completely. Everyone's thoughts welcome before I do something, one way or the other. Pretty sure we can call it dead. And honestly, for the Hut's purposes, the blog posting format is a) perfectly acceptable, b) way more secure, and c) much easier to maintain.

This is step one in streamlining the entire CoCo Hut site(s) and making it easier and more friendly. This archive of posts is here:

http://www.clubltdstudios.com/files/coco/2008cocohutmsgbrdarc.txt.txt

-Capt.

BAK. Sorta.

In the where the hell have you been department... :)


It's WAY too long a story. Lots of personal business to attend to and a career change have seriously messed up my CoCo enjoyment time these last many months. I DID scan through my private email (captcpu@clubltdstudios.com) account and see many CoCo related emails. I will endeavor to answer every one of the ASAP, with my sincere apologies to the senders. The weeding of the copious amounts of junk mail and advertisements is about finished.

Things have only slowed marginally for me, though, so I won't be on terribly much for the immediate future. However, I'm making a strong effort to spend more time with my beloved CoCo and will post those outings and opines when possible.

I'm posting a not-so-quicky on copyrights and CoCos that I wrote back in January (See below). This has ALWAYS been an issue with CoCoists, with a lot of misinformation floating around, so I decided I'd finally wieght in on the issue. This is not to stir things up, nor is it intended as any sort of final word. It's is strictly IMHO.

On the CoCo side, mostly I've gotten to pop in a program pack now and then. I also wrote a quick BASIC program to help my eldest daughter (8) with her math skills. It was actually a lot of fun. Not terribly challenging and nothing particularly new learned, but it's nice to find ways to actually use the CoCo in a practical sense. If you've done similar stuff, be sure to post about it! I think we NEED more "simple" stuff in the CoCo world from all levels of experience and expertise.

As for the site(s) and such, expect big changes as I come back online more and more this year. The first order business will be severely streamlining everything to make it more usable and compact. That includes only one site (this one) for everything. My inclination at this point is to remove the message board and all external, non-blogger material. Anything that can be posted to the blog format will be reposted. Following that, more contributors to the blog would be awesome. I'll post specifics as they happen.

My sincere thanks to Brian and the rest of the gang here for posting. And my sincere apologies to anyone I haven't responded to via email. The collector updates on eBay, the new CoCo experiences and the "where the hell are you?" messages are greatly appreciated.

Angel's Luck,
Capt.

Well... I'm still alive

Is anyone else artound here????