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TANDY Disc-o (Rainbow 1981-08)

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Home / Publications / Rainbow / Rainbow 1981 / Rainbow 1981-08 - TANDY Disc-o (Rainbow 1981-08)


According to a "very highly placed source" in a Texas location which will herein go unnamed, the long-awaited Color Computer disc will make its appearance in August or September.

We pass along this information, so you can -- if you are of such mind — 90 ahead and Place sour order for one of the disc systems now.

In connection with the disc, Radio Shack will announce a memory upgrade for the Color Computer. We're not in on what form it will take. but it be upping the memory to 32K.

What we DO know is that four disc drives will be available. Drive "0" will have a ROM-based DOS, so it will use up a minimum of that all - to -precious memory.

It'll plug into the ROM Cart port on the right side of the Color Computer. Word is the DOS will be about the same as TRSDOS, except no Debug and Clock functions.

The reason for this, we understand, is because of basic differences between our 6809E and their Z-80.

The Projected price for Drive "0" is about $595. The other three are to be in the $300-$400 area. Tandy expects the waiting period to be 30 to 60 days, so, if you want one quick, we understand you can place an order.

By the way, 32K is about it as far as the Color Computer is concerned. The way we hear it, there IS another 16K in there, but BASIC can't use it. You CAN Poke into it -- if you have the memory — and its a good place machine language. But you can't just write a program in BASIC and use that additional 16K.

Frankly, the way we see it, Tandy is changing its tune a little on the Color Computer. It was originally planned to be a "home" and "entertainment" machine and that was sort of a company line. We don't hear that so much any more. All we do seem to hear is that because if (1) the screen and (2) the keyboard, the Color Computer isn't going to be very good as a word processing device. Well, we'll see.

Links

See Rainbow Magazine 1981-08 Pag 5, in archive.org