This video looks at the sad story of the unreleased ColecoVision II console. Please support my creative work on Patreon: / lairdslair #RetroGaming #History #ColecoVision
I was born in oct 1971, french. I had a vectrex. And the day my parents bought me a cbs coleco, the store seller brought us an..... Adam !!!! By mistake! We saw that giant box and said nothing, came back home with adam for the console price! But the adam needed the console to work. So we bought the coleco console. ( that was now 2 times 1700 francs)... Back home, i plugged all the machines and... The Adam never worked... Now in your video i can finally understand what was the issue, a magnetic issue erased the BUCK Rogers game !!?? ... But i did not know back in the day. Could not return the adam as it was an selling error. I finally gave the adam mint in box to my neighbour. And i played donkey kong cbs for hours and hours. But at the end, nothing has been as good as my fantastic vectrex that i still have in 2023, full MB collection CIB.
Another great video. Too bad Coleco didn't build MSX machines under their own brand. They were in a great position to do so and could have made a killing importing Japanese titles for an affordable home computer that could have perhaps rived the NES and maybe even carved out a space between Commodore and IBM in the home computer market. This period in tech history is full of fascinating "what ifs" and "could have beens".
Yeah I agree. Rather than develop the Adam they should have just released their own MSX machine, especially when the likes of Spectravideo were selling ColecoVision adapters for their computer.
@@TheLairdsLair A few updates to the Colecovision hardware to bring it up to MSX2 standards + backwards compatibility and commercials showing the better look and sound compared to the NES, maybe playing up the fact that it can run DOS, and you have a pretty good Christmas 1986 release.
They could have made it MSX compatible but with their own twist for enhanced games just for theirs. MSX was a lost opportunity for the computer industry not to have gone IBM clone.
Didn't Bit Corporation (out of Hong Kong I believe) have a home computer that was Colecovision compatible? I remember reading about that many years ago, along with an Atari 2600 compatible computer. I'm not sure if those computers came out, but they did release a Colecovision/SG-1000 clone console in the form of the Dina 2-in-1. So they already knew the hardware. If that computer did actually come out, Coleco could have re-badged it with their own logo and distributed it in the US without having to get into the hardware business again.
As a 10 year old in 83 I had the 2600, but my cousin who was 20 had the Colecovision AND Intellivision. So I’d go to his place and play them, the Coleco was by far my favorite. The sounds and visuals bring back so many memories. I now at 47 years old have all 3 systems and play them on a CRT tv. That’s what’s cool about these games, you can literally experience the same exact thing as you did back then.
Born in 72, also had the disgraceful 2600.....I had the sales brochure of the Colecovision on my wall but it was too expensive in Austria. I still adore it, for me it was the most perfect console for its own time. Not even the Playstation this good at its time.
@@Hirthirthirt You're wrong about the PlayStation, it didn't have any competitors close to it when it was released in 1994. Nintendo 64 was no match. Sega Saturn maybe, but just didn't get the support. PlayStation was groundbreaking, every game was 3d I think.
@@fuzzywzhe The focus was 3D, but the console had 2D hits like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, Mega-Man X4, Street Fighter Alpha/Alpha 2/Alpha 3, Night Warriors, Mortal Kombat Trilogy and perfect arcade compilations from Atari, Midway and Namco.
I remember buying the Colecovision with my first pay check from my first professional job with Yale. Coleco was incredible, to this day I say it was THE BEST game system for it's time!!! I miss those days!
Very interesting video. Sad that Coleco never made a Colecovision 2, as others have replied it would of done well. For a company who wasn't in the video game market long they made a hugh impact in the industry. I heard Coleco were the ones that got Nintendo interested in making their own home game system when Coleco went to Japan to get the rights for Donkey Kong.
The Adam "is that legal" comercial is especially Ironic given that the girl in the commercial would grow up and be caught in a scandal last year where she bribed school officials to get her daughter in USC here in Southern California. Pretty funny!
I thought the AtGames Coleco handheld that plays Sega Game Gear was a bit of a stretch, but like you said, it's all the same lineage. The ColecoVision is a straight pipeline to the Master System... that's as close to a ColecoVision II as we're ever going to get. I loved the second gen console renaissance of the late 1980s, by the way. Awesome.
LOVED my Colecovision as a kid, but man, that ad has got to be the most misleading ad ever. I’m glad I didn’t see it before Santa brought me the console, because I would have been really disappointed without the awesome 3D graphics.
From a business standpoint, Coleco had shot themselves in the foot with the problem-prone Adam. What started as a critically acclaimed computer system, ended as a hardware glitch embarrassment. The video game market had crashed, and Coleco was not going to go down with it. In hidsight, perhaps they should have released the Colecovision II where they could have ridden the Nintendo wave back into being the predominant system. But I've been part of that type of board room meeting, and I would have voted that it wasn't worth the risk. What Coleco COULD have done, is re-entered the market with a system to compete against the Playstation, Xbox and N64, at a time where the video game ressurgence was much more secure and stable.
I owned the ColecoVision and later added the ADAM Expansion Module which ironically dwarfed the console. I used it a lot throughout high school, and fortunately didn't experience any issues with tapes getting zapped until much later when my SmartBASIC tape-of all things-took a hit (unlike other personal computers, Coleco stored the built-in word processor on ROM and the BASIC programming had to be loaded from tape). Out of sheer desperation, I ended up having to steal a SmartBASIC tape from an ADAM box at the store, since it wasn't available for purchase separately. It happened again eventually, but by then people were selling copies via computer magazine ads. I also owned the 300 baud modem as well as the disk drive, which would enable me to copy the ROM of game cartridges I rented from the video store.
Connecticut leather company (COLECO) was the company that built my pools liner. Just noticed it over last weekend when i was prepping the pool to open it and fiund a long tear after 40ish years. They havent made leather and vinyl in years
My first computer was an ADAM that christmas of 1983. Learned BASIC on it and played a few games. I remember Buck Rodgers and Family Feud were my favorites. I used to print my high scores out and show my folks but they didn't care. Ahhh, to be 7 years old again.
In the American home console market, I think Colecovision had more name recognition than Sega or Nintendo, which absolutely could have been leveraged successfully. Importantly, though, Coleco had SEVERE financing problems. For example, they could not get short-term loans to buy raw materials, so they had to leave their assembly lines idle while waiting for sell-through so they had cash to buy more raw materials. It's the direct reason for the notorious shortages of Cabbage Patch Kids, and probably the biggest reason the ship date for Adam slipped so many times. Coleco was a sad story of initial ROUSING success with HUGE potential, all undone by horrible strategic errors and poor management. RIP, Coleco....
That is poor management if they could not convince a finance company of the opportunity. Full order books but an idle factory due to cash flow is exactly the opportunity a finance company would appreciate.
The Adam was delayed because of persistent technical problems, first with the wafer drive, then the high speed cassette drives. Coleco was constantly in the news in Connecticut, where I grew up, and there weren’t any rumors of finance problems. Maybe you have access to information that never came out? Coleco stock jumped from a few bucks to 50 in 1983 on the assumption Adam would be a huge success. Coleco knew the drives and other components weren’t working right, and that they were going to miss the crucial Christmas season in 1983, but they hid that information from the public. The stock holders filed a class action lawsuit in light of the deception. The irony is that once they got the bugs worked out (around March, 1984), Adam was a fine “family” computer. By then it was too late. The computer’s reputation had been destroyed. You are right about the rousing success and huge potential, undone by the incredible mismanagement. Same things can be said about Atari.
The History of the ColecoVision is very interesting , however I will admit as an owner of the first ColecoVision. You playing various games during the video brought back memories of games I forgot I even played !!!! Thanks !!!
ColecoVision was my favorite childhood game system. Then I went more toward games on my Apple IIGS. Then Sega was my favorite post-computer era game system, over NES by leaps and bounds.
This a great overview of Coleco, but I haven’t seen any evidence provided of this Colecovision ll. What are your sources? You haven’t devoted 30 seconds to this mythical console. In 1983, Coleco devoted virtually everything (in electronics) to Adam. They “bet the farm” on it. In short, I can’t believe Coleco gave any serious consideration to a follow up to the Colecovision. They were busy struggling with the Adam in 1984 and they sure as heck weren’t going to release a new console in the teeth of the Videogame crash. Just because someone may have mentioned a Colecovision successor over a cup of coffee doesn’t mean the company gave the idea serious consideration. The head of Coleco’s Videogame division often shows up at retro game conventions. I’ll ask her about Colecovision ll. I’ll bet you a copy of Ladybug that she says a Colecovision ll wasn’t remotely “in the works.”
It was planned before their was a video game crash, the video even mentions that. One of the people who talked about a ColecoVision II with me was their former VP Mike Katz, so you can call him a liar too if you want. It wasn't a completely new console either (as I explained) so there wouldn't have been much to "work on". Including all the add-ons in one case was very much a no-brainer to me, seems strange that somebody would doubt they would do that.
@@TheLairdsLair Much of the confusion rests in that you spend 3:24 to 3:54 (30 seconds) offering the few details of the Colecovision ll in a nearly 14 minute video about Colecovision ll. If you spoke to Mike Katz, that should be in the video, along with exactly what he did and didn’t say. At issue is whether Colecovision ll was merely a concept or instead was somehow something close to reality. Think about it. CV rolls out early fall 1982. They devote 1983 to the Adam, essentially a Colecovision add on. The crash comes in 1983. Simple timing: if CV ll was “planned” before the crash, then it had to have been “planned” within months of the CV release. Are we to believe that while they were furiously trying to bring ADAM to market, they were simultaneously gearing up to produce a Colecovision ll, within months of the release of the first Colecovision? I’m not saying Katz is a liar, I’m saying CV ll was nothing other than a concept. Every console manufacturer from Atari on forward understood and understands that the current hardware will “someday” be obsolete, or can be improved upon, and every manufacturer’s development team constantly bandies about ideas for future hardware. Turning such brainstorming into an “unreleased console” that we almost had is entirely misleading. I will ask Jannell for her sense of things if she turns up at the Portland retrogaming convention. But I know what she’s going to say: “Sure, we had all sorts of things on the drawing board. But it went no farther than that.” If Katz told you they had a working prototype and were ready to pull the trigger, say so. They never even had a working prototype of the Super Game Module (which, unlike CV ll, was announced) because they couldn’t get the stringy wafers to work (thus cassettes for the ADAM). SGM I can nevertheless accept as an unreleased piece of hardware. Colecovision ll, no way. Coleco was the king of vaporware (hardware and software) and this CV ll was just an idea.
In my youth, I knew a friend whose parents actually purchased the Adam computer! Unfortunately, it was way too complicated for us 9-10yo kids at that time. I had the Colecovision which was simple. During the 80's, computers were still considered niche rather than necessities.
Of course a Colecovision II would have been successful but only if they didn't release the Adam. The Adam really tarnished Coleco's name in electronics. That said, I owned one, it was my main computer for 3 years and never had the problems reported except for the Daisy wheel printer shaking the power cable lose. Coleco was in a better position to release a new console in 1985 and have it be successful more so that Magnavox, Atari, and Mattel. We almost got a Colecovision II console again in the form of Hasbro's Control-Vision . Code named NEMO. A canceled 1989 console that ran games off VHS tape. It was based around the upgrade Colecovision hardware. It was cancelled 2 months before release because it was deemed too expensive to market. I know one game was ported to the Sega CD years later called Sewer Shark. You probably all know this but its piece of info I never get to bring up. For me, Coleco/Hasbro was the greatest what if. More so than other rumored systems.
I should have mentioned the ControlVision actually, given that I already did a video about it! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-c5UfgZ76q_o.html
A cheap 1980s servo deck that only accepted Coleco's slightly manipulated cassettes, but that was only one of many design faults with the Adam. And when it shipped, at least half of them didn't work at all due to no QA. Provincial corporate greed at its worst.
The second generation was just before my time and my knowledge of the subject is limited (I started with the Nes and Master System in '86). From what I have gathered from research, is the Colecovision was the console to own for the second generation. It was more powerful than the other four (2600, 5200, Intellivision, and Bally Astrocade) main consoles of the time. Had there not been a crash I could see Colleco fighting it out with Nintendo and Sega for dominance with their own 3rd generation machine. Perhaps this machine would have really been something special. I honestly believe had Colleco continued their next console would have resembled the Master System in build.
Thank you so much! Nice to learn about the details of this era I lived through. I was just a kid, 10 years old when the coleco hit and I wanted it so badly. I have a flashback now and we enjoy it a lot. I wish coleco had stuck with video games instead of being lured into the home computer market, they were legends with videogames but amateurs with computers
Since this video was uploaded CollectorVision has released the Phoenix (a ColecoVision and ADAM compatible console), which has built-in hardware that provides Super Game Module specs without the tapes. Also, back in 1987 the Dendy 2 in One was released in the U.S. It has two cartridge slots. One for ColecoVision carts, and the other for Sega SG-1000 carts. It was rereleased in the U.S. in 1989 as the Telegames Personal Arcade. It was sold via mail-order and sold for $40. Now you'd be lucky to find one for ten times the money. Both versions were made by Bit Corp. Telegames had the Coleco license but no evidence that they had a license with Sega. The system knew which BIOS to use based on which slot had a cartridge in it. The Sega Master System was released in North America in 1986. Imagine a world where Sega partnered with Coleco instead of Tonka, leading to a console that could play both SMS and ColecoVision games. Tonka was the distributor of the SMS in the U.S., until Sega got fed up with them and bought back the distribution rights.
You mean Dina 2-in-1, not Dendy. Telegames didn't have a Sega licence which is why SG-1000 isn't mentioned on the box for their version, as I have detailed on the channel before.
I would love to play Master System racing games with the Steering Wheel! And yes, I think Coleco would have been the USA distributor for Sega in this alternate world. Take it one step farther, didn't Atari turn down distributing the NES? Imagine a world where Atari was fronting Nintendo games, and Coleco was fronting Sega games. Wild stuff!
@@TheLairdsLair the culmination being the Atari PlayStation X, when they add the Sony CD attachment to their imported Nintendo system. I wonder what number in the system they would have gone with? LMFAO
Personally, I think the turning point was the bad decisions on the Adam Computer. Here are the 3 things that I think would have saved it and paved the way for greatness: 1. Pack the system with a dot matrix printer that was not also the power supply 2. Dump the tape drive completely and pack system with one floppy disk drive 3. 128k RAM instead of 80k with the option to expand. From there it could have expanded and possibly had future Adam versions with upgraded hardware.
I got an Adam for xmas 83 (my first computer) and have both a stand-alone and a CV exp module #3. I heartily disagree. And I'm not a fanboy--I far preferred my Atari 400 computer that I got after we returned the Adam after getting it serviced multiple times to no avail--although I loved my Adam and it was a great computer in its own right. The only things that they truly messed up on with the Adam was the power on EMI erasing tapes, having a hostile 3rd party software agreement and not openly-shared programming documentation, and not getting enough built before xmas 83, to prevent the C64 juggernaut from running them over in sales and having a nearly impenetrable market share. The daisy wheel printer allowed for true letter quality printing. It was far superior for text printing than the dot matrix printers of that era (prior to the 24-pin N(ear)LQ printers, which still were a far cry from LQ). The PSU surely should have been separate--but that wasn't a serious deal breaker nor defect of the computer. They should have released a licensed version of the Okimate 10 color thermal transfer printer or gotten a similar printer built for them in the Far East. It could have been an optional peripheral add-on and bundles with both could have been sold. That would give the option best of both worlds--color graphics with tractor feed support (for banners and such) and LQ text. The tape drive system was amazing, and functioned in a random access manner with sectors and a FAT-like structure. It was also faster than a C64 w/1541 w/o a fast loader and stored far more data (256K without flipping). FDDs were still quite expensive in 83, and never got as cheap as the 8-bit computers themselves. 64K + 16K video/graphics RAM was better than the standard config of any of the competition for the home at the time. 64K base-config machines were still new for the home market, and their video/graphics RAM was allocated out of their 64K. And that was more than enough for most home usage of a computer at the time. Only the IBM PC-XT, which had just been released earlier that year, and not even the IBM PC, had a higher minimum config (128K), and perhaps some other, niche, business micros. and the video boards on the PC architecture (but not the PCjr) had their own RAM, just like with the Adam. Coleco released a board, that was easy to install, which upgraded it to 128K + 16K. The system was designed to support up to at least 2MB of RAM (+16K video/graphics RAM). This is far more than the PC and PC-XT were designed to support, although the video boards on the PC architecture (but not the PCjr) also had their own RAM, just like with the Adam.
@@TheLairdsLair It was actually the other way around. The huge Colecovision library was compatible with the Adam, and the MSX would have benefited from being compatible with it (except that Japan was it's main market, and the Colecovision cartridges would have had to be imported, since Coleco didn't release it in Japan, I'm pretty sure). MSX wasn't released until the end of Oct 83, so they both came out at the exact same time (almost to the day). So, there was no MSX library until the Adam was released. MSX never became a market force *at all* in the US (Coleco's largest market by far), so MSX compatibility would have been more useless as CV compatibility for MSX (more useless since at least there was already a CV library at the time of launch of the systems).
I think they were right that home computers were a good market but they abandoned the lucrative market they were good at. They should have created an add on that turned the Coleco2 into a home computer. That could then have formed the basis for a Coleco computer whilst they carried on selling Coleco2.
My favourite console of the time, it is a shame they didn't return to the market as they could have fought off the 2 main Japanese imports, instead licencing their games on their console.
I've done a video all about the Adam too if you're interested: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Z4MAInsS0hg.html&ab_channel=TheLaird%27sLair
Personally, I think everyone was gonna get smoked by Nintendo anyway! The NES was a juggernaut. I own a Colecovision and I love it...and it was a definite upgrade over the 2600. But, I have to believe a Colecovision II just would have been killed in short order by the NES. That said, maybe they could have made enough money before the NES really got rolling to help the company last a bit longer. What might have been...
I had a coleco Adam the only thing I ever got to work on it was Buck Rogers the Planet Zoom, like two times. I played mr. Do a lot and I play Donkey Kong jr. All the time.
@Neb6 It was both. The Atari VCS had much success with original titles. But, you're right. If you were gonna have one back them, quality arcade ports was the right choice. Playing systems now, I much prefer original games (even ports, they don't have to be exclusive), because I'd usually much rather play the arcade original, even if under emulation.
Coleco would have flopped. People romanticize it now but coleco was a mess that couldn’t execute. The initial release was great and well done - made a bit splash, they beat the 5200 to the market with the next gen home graphics and sound. But then games releases slowed to a trickle and what came out was markedly down in quality - subroc, time pilot etc. Games magazines at the time expressed disappointment and so did coleco owners. The 5200 surpassed the CV in sales rate… then came the crash and worse the ADAM. The adam was so absurdly bad, coleco lost all of it’s legitimacy and reputation. They just never executed well after the first 6 months…..
I think the problem that all those early game companies had was that they continually created devices that competed with themselves. Look at Atari. At one point, they had two competing systems, along with 2 computers. All competing with one another. Coleco made the same mistake. Anyone buying the Adam wasn't going to buy a Colecovision, and vise versa. Nintendo never did this. Look how they dominated the gaming world for a decade or more.
No, the Adam was created as an upgrade for the CV (expansion module) and also standalone. There were many folks with CV that upgraded to Adam (like my family), and it was a selling point for the system (parents wanted to buy a video game console that was upgradeable to a computer over others that weren't). There were also many folks who bought the Adam who weren't interested in a game console. Same thing for Atari, and they had to create new game consoles and computers to keep up with the competition and the old systems then become the budget systems (with large back-libraries that still expand). They would have shot themselves in the foot if they didn't do this.
The Coleco Adam is basically the computer version of the ColecoVision but with the printer as the power supply and combine that with a defective tape drive and low-budget build quality. (2:26, 4:47, 6:21, 8:39)
It looked like a good idea that they should have been able to achieve. Except for the printer, ludicrous to think you could bundle a daisy wheel printer with that. Thy should have advertised the printer as an extra needed for business. Perhaps what they could have done was build a modem into the computer and offered email with Compuserve. That way they could offer software for download as well.
@@wayland7150 The system was designed for word processing as the #1 usage. There was a huge need for this, especially for students. This is one of the main reasons why my parents bought one.
"Expansion-model II was a little less interesting"???? It was the dream of every child, man! Expansion-model I was uninteresting. Who would have bought a Coleco to play the pathetic 2600 games????
The US gaming console seemed to be different in unique ways, compared to their asian etc competitors. We all know who won out. We see the with cartoons as well. Being we had cartoons and they had anime. We've now understood and experienced the difference. I hope we see a return of the U.S. made consoles and games being the massive changes in the worlds dynamics. We'll have to wait and see.
Nintendo NES coming out a year later...Colecovision II would have been destroyed. Why? Even if Coleco survived the 1984 video game crash, Nintendo's aggressive 3rd party software agreements would have rendered Colecovision II into something like the Atari 7800. Nice system with old fashioned games that people were sick of.
Nintendo were only able to do that due to the lack of serious competition, had Warner not sold Atari and launched the 7800 worldwide in 1984 then I think the picture would have been VERY different.
A Colecovision II would have been great, but it would have to have been a 16-bit system to keep up with the arcades. Coleco just didn’t have the expertise to design and support such a machine. They DID catch “lightning in a bottle” with the original ColecoVision and it’s library of “arcade quality” games. The saddest part was that the build-quality of Coleco’s consoles and controllers was so relatively poor. Whereas many Atari 2600, 7800, and Intellivision systems remain playable four decades after their introduction, a “working” Colecovision is far less common. I have a good Colecovision set-up, plus a few spares. My original was repaired twice back in the 80’s. Ultimately, I moved on to gaming on the Atari 800/800XL and (later) the AtariST. But I still enjoy Colecovision.
Atari was a fundamentally different company; it survived the crash in name only. Tramiel bought the company to make computers and ditched video games until Nintendo revived the market. Atari was a behemoth in 1982. It was an afterthought in the world of video games when the 7800 was finally released in 1986.
@@mrmojorisin8752 That's a myth. Atari Corp was selling selling the 2600 and games for it and the 5200 the whole way through. The 7800 was tied up in a dispute with the 2nd party company that Atari contracted to design it, otherwise it would have been released sooner. As it was, it was released in May of 86, months before the nationwide release of the NES. And not much more than half a year after the test market release of the NES to NYC and LA. It wasn't done as a reaction to the NES, either. Tramiel was a of a singular focus on the ST and a cheapskate, so, with a skeleton crew, it made sense to focus solely on the ST, while selling what could be sold w/o paying a company more money than he thought it was worth it for the business (video games were not selling well at the time, ofc). Once the ST was out and on its own feet, he worked out the 7800 issue to his favor (time passing often makes people accept less).
Good luck trying to find a Super Game Module now. Well certainly finding one at a price that's affordable LOL! The developers didn't make nearly enough and seem to have no interest in making more.
There was never a Colecovision 2. Had a CV with a tape drive been released, it would have flopped. Tapes take forever to load. There really wasn't enough RAM in it to make a difference because the RAM in the expansion module also has to hold all the game code loaded from tape. By 1984, 32k ROM carts were already a thing. As a computer, the Adam was obsolete before it hit the shelves, especially in video. It's one of the main reasons the MSX was a total flop in America and Britain.
You are wrong about tapes taking forever. I owned an Adam that came with what I assume is the tape drive they intended for the CV SGM, and those tapes loaded fairly quickly. Granted the Adam disk drive was faster, which I later bought when they became available, but the tapes were not too bad and should not be lumped in with the normal tape drive that other computers used. They were rapid FF/RW, and random access. The game play for Buck Rodgers, Donkey Kong and Dragon's Lair (the three games on tape I played the he** out of and remember the most) was fine. When the game needed to load more data, the game kept playing with what had already been loaded into the RAM and then when the new data was written, the game would have a natural transition, such as bringing out the boss or moving to the next level, etc. Yes, the initial load was slower than a cartridge, but once loaded, the games played fine, the Adam automatically loaded what it needed. I never played another computer system with a tape drive, but my nephew had a tape add-on with several games for the Atari 2600 and that required you to stop game play to load the next level. I don't know if that was how the games on tape for other computer systems worked, but if they did, I can understand the frustration.
Tapes can load at 1k a second so a 32k computer program loads in less than a minute. The problem is all the button pressing on the tape player. Had they made a more automated tape player that the computer could operate and perhaps make it a bit more digital so it would load faster still then tapes would have been fine. As it was they were a barior to operation. On more serious computers the disk drive is used to extend the capabilities of the computer because programs and data can be loaded and saved to make RAM go further. A home computer with the business applications on a cartridge solves part of the problem. Once you have a disk drive, printer and modem you've got a serious computer. Home computers skipped those to make sure it cost the magic price that people were prepared to pay. They ended up with a computer that really could not do serious work.
@@paulprobusjr.7597 Aside spending a ton of money on the tape drive add-on, what is the benefit to the consumer? It's not like Coleco would have lowered prices on the tape games. Coleco already had a very low out the door including shipping price, five bucks (I read that in a magazine allegedly quoting a Coleco employee). Also, the tapes would have been slow. Maybe not as slow as a C64, but slow nonetheless. This would hardly qualify as a new or upgraded console. Plus, as I mentioned before, the ROMs were already quite cheap. I think they could have gone to megabit (128k) cartridges by 1985 or 1986 at most. In 84, they could have done 384kb (48kB). Big first party releases were commanding up to $40-$50 Sorry I never got back to you. I just happened to stumble across this reply because I didn't know I had this seen this video and clicked on it.
@@wayland7150 What they could have done and what they did are 2 different things. ALL of the tape loading schemes of the early 80s were slow. Reliability was considered much more important than load speed. You waiting a long time didn't cost them a dime. Them replacing a slightly stretched tape that will no longer load will cost them money. They ALL had this incentive. Commodore even required the use of a Commodore tape drive and so they knew what level of quality of tape drive to expect because they themselves made it. The computer also controlled the motor and turned the motor on and off automatically. You could press play on the tape drive and it won't turn on until you type load "filename",1 Even Commodore used a very slow scheme. Whether it was Apple, IBM, Atari, Commodore, Sinclair etc, they ALL used very slow tape routines. In the US, most people who owned a computer used disk drives. The tape drive was not really what these computers not especially useful. To begin with, most people had no real use for a computer. People bought them because they were fashionable or because they wanted their kid to have a computer. I was a kid at the time and wanted a computer to learn how to program, but I was one in a thousand. But second, even if people had a genuine need for a computer, most of the 8-bit home computers were completely unsuitable for doing actual work. The screen resolution was too low. They primarily used a TV as a display device. They didn't have enough RAM. Apple was really the only one to buck this trend. 80 collumn cards were readily available, RAM upgrades were readily available and there was software support for both. These things and others allowed the proliferation of professional software productivity packages. They were sold at computer stores where they got support (and not Kmart where C64, Atari 800 etc were sold).
@@paulprobusjr.7597 There was a different tape-based technology, Exatron Stringy Floppy, that was supposed to go in the Exp #3 and also the Adam. They abandoned it, due to issues, and developed the amazing, but slightly-less revolutionary (but larger storage) tape drives of the Adam as we know it. The Adam tape drives were truly remarkable! They worked just like a floppy disk drive, with a FAT-like structure. At the Adam OS-level, software interacts with them identically. It's the only system like it. They were also faster than the C64 w/1541 w/o a fast loader and stored far more data (256K without flipping).
The full PC itself was successful because it was a complete business computer with a proper sized text screen and proper file storage. Add your choice of printer and software. Home computers were all terrible business computers. They were really for people to learn about computers and play games. Not to do actual work on. PCjr did have a disk drive but then it was not fully PC compatible so no better than adding a disk drive to any other home computer.
@@tarstarkusz The PCJr is as underrated as the Adam. It is almost completely PC-compatible. And is very expandable. I have a couple myself. And a couple Adams.
Well both ADAM and EVA who were those 2 first persons in the world,both caused problems because eva caused all the troubles in this this world by eating an apple from the forbidden tree of life while ADAM caused an atom bomb to coleco with their adam computer expansion,hahaaa🤣🤣🤣
Exatron Stringy Floppy was differnt than the Caset taps you show in this video. The taps were about the size of a business card and had a continuous loop of tap like a Eight Track Tap. I had them for my TRS 80 I system. they were much cheaper then floopy drives and were almost as fast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exatron_Stringy_Floppy
