La CoCo Strangiato

8/3/09: Geocities will be shutting down. DON'T PANIC! This site has been backed up and will move to a new home soon, and without ads... woohoo! _-Bob

12/3/04: How to power your CoCo3 with 12 volts DC. I posted a short article (with photos) on the subject.

9/23/04: Marty Goodman's DC Modem Pak to RS-232 Pak conversion. Thanks to Ray watts for the scans!

8/17/04: Added archive copies of Paul DeMarni's webpage and the CoCoFAQ. Both have lots of valuable info. Also uploaded RetroRick's freeware disk RMK-CoCo.ZIP, see the Programs page for more info.

7/4/04: Happy Independence Day! It is with great pleasure that I announce the release of Color FOG v1.0, a graphical file management tool exclusively for the Color Computer 3. There are some minor bugs, some missing features, some slow screen refreshes, but hey... it's all written in Basic! And I had to force myself to get to a point where I could step away and call it release-ready, so that I can share my work with the CoCo community, even though I feel that there is still a lot to do before I'd call it done. This will probably be the last release to support stand-alone DECB 1.1.

4/16/04: Wow, almost a year with no updates... shame on me. I've finally added a page of my Portable CoCo3 photos.

5/10/03: I've added a link to Brad Grier's Java CoCo emulator Mocha (link updated) and also added a download of the ROC emulator to the links page for posterity.

3/14/03: I've assembled a complete map of Downland

3/1/03: Speech & Sound Cartridge High Speed Hack
I have hacked together two other hacks plus my own hack to make a new, auto-switching hack. I no longer have to worry about what speed my CoCo is running when I use the SSC.

12/20/02: Don't miss my repack page. Currently just some photos of my own CoCo3 repack, but lots more on the way.

12/8/02: At long last, an updated beta release of Color FOG is ready. New features mainly consist of multiple file selection and a Setup utility for customizing your FOG. Still not working are File Info and Un-Kill, and color palettes are limited to presets, with custom user palettes to be added in the future. There is still much to do, which I will eventually get around to.

5/31/02: Finally, a chance for you to test-drive my Disk Basic GUI, Color FOG. This beta version is not quite complete, but is mostly functional. Un-Kill is not yet implemented and the Print routine hasn't been tested. Let me know what you think, and remember that it's a 100% BASIC program! I'll add a more detailed page for this program soon.

5/16/02: Well, I've been working hard on a GUI file manager for DECB1.1 and it's coming along nicely. Here's a screen shot.
It will be a free download when complete, and will include Alan DeKok's Custom Color Basic, which has some great SECB enhancements and has allowed this program to be surprisingly responsive for a BASIC program running at less than 2 MHz. Thanks Alan! I'll post updates on the maillist and the Yahoo CoCo groups.

2/19/02: Added Richard Lorbieski's Turbo Light article - inexpensive and handy little circuit tells you when your CoCo is cruising at full-speed.

12/16/01: Updated the Tech info page a bit and added instructions for making a CoCo3 to CGA/EGA monitor adapter

8/27/01: Finally put up some of my own CoCo graphics, most of which I created using my own BASIC drawing program. It was crude, but effective. I will be adding more stuff as time permits. If you have CoCo artwork you'd like to share with the rest of the world, e-mail me (If it's not your own, include proper credit. If possible get permission). I'd like to get a nice gallery going here. The page currently contains less than 200KB of images.

8/19/01: Updated the tech page slightly to (hopefully) make it easier to follow.

7/6/01: Finally joined the CoCo Webring.

6/28/01: Happy anniversary to me... four years :). Finally did a little updating. I fixed an (apparently ongoing) error on the Tech page which I think caused problems mainly for Netscape users. I've also released an updated version of my ctrl+alt+reset emulator, so check it out! =b Currently as time permits I'm working on a whole new site with a different provider. I plan to add downloads and who-knows-what.

2/6/01: Finally got around to updating my site... added information and a patch utility to allow 40, 72 or 80 track floppy drives under RSDOS. Also fixed a few glitches that seem to have cropped up. The message board went away... no big loss, but thanks for the positive feedback I did see there. I can still be reached by e-mail or found at bit.listserv.coco.

10/31/00: Happy Halloween!

9/10/00: Finally added something to the Projects page... check it out. Next update I plan to add the info about using 40 and 80 track floppies.

9/1/00: No updates yet... I've recently started a new job and have been spending lots of time learning the ropes of non-linear video editing. :-)

8/3/00: Ive added some Tech Info on using double sided floppy drives with RSDOS (Disk Basic) and will be adding more soon. Minor changes to Home page format.

7/27/00: Finally added some more short programs, including one of my own creations from 1984. I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to get an old EGA monitor to accept RGB analog. I'll post something on the projects page if I ever get it working.

7/19/00: Well, everything seems to be working...(this is my first real web page, btw). Be sure to check out my programs page, and if you only type in *one* program, type in the first one 'Dang It'. It's the longest program there, but still short, fun and addictive, and you can't beat the price! It works on real CoCo's or emulated ones.