It must be a sickness...I've added an Adam to my collection

[PaulQ]

While driving down the road, I spied what appeared to be a vintage 8 bit computer at a yard sale. Lo and behold, it was a Coleco Adam! A computer which rightfully earned its position at number 3 of the worst computers of all time. Still, my heart went out to it, so five dollars went out of my wallet to buy it. It works fine, though I hate it. I love to hate it. It's a Z80-based machine that runs nearly twice as fast as my C128, but it requires proprietary tapes and disk drives for it are as rare as hen's teeth. You turn it on, and you're presented with a cheesy word processor. Still, I might find some old Colecovision games at the local flea market next weekend to try out on it.

Pictures will soon follow.

[gklinger]

I own a Colecovision and I once owned an Adam too and my feeling is that the Adam left a lot to be desired (I'm trying to be diplomatic) and the Colecovision was/is awesome. The Colecovision arcade conversions were as near to perfect as was possible at the time and have stood up quite well over time. If you spot cartridges for a pittance, grab 'em and then eBay them for a quick profit which you can then blow on the ColecoVision 128-in-1 Flash MultiCart. One of those and a Colecovision and you're set.

Here endth the heresy.

[paytonbyrd]

I've owned and adored my Adams for years. The word processor for the Adam is actually, VERY good considering the 32 character screen limitation. I've actually got some very good software for it, but it's currently all on digital data packs and I don't use them very often because of very low lifespan on both the tapes and the drives.

The disk drives keep popping up on ebay, but someone always wants it just a bit more than me as I've been outbid at over $110 twice. I hope whoever is buying these drives are happy with them and are getting good use out of them.

The Adam's design was actually quite advanced from both a hardware and software perspective. It's a shame that Coleco decided to use that horrible tape drive as standard instead of the 5.25" drive.

[Jeff-20]

blow on the ColecoVision 128-in-1 Flash MultiCart. One of those and a Colecovision and you're set.

I wish someone made one of those flash concepts for 2600/7800. Do they? I think the old cuttle carts and krocidile carts are now sold out and no longer in production.

[Centallica]

While driving down the road, I spied what appeared to be a vintage 8 bit computer at a yard sale. Lo and behold, it was a Coleco Adam! A computer which rightfully earned its position at number 3 of the worst computers of all time. Still, my heart went out to it, so five dollars went out of my wallet to buy it. It works fine, though I hate it. I love to hate it. It's a Z80-based machine that runs nearly twice as fast as my C128, but it requires proprietary tapes and disk drives for it are as rare as hen's teeth. You turn it on, and you're presented with a cheesy word processor. Still, I might find some old Colecovision games at the local flea market next weekend to try out on it.

Pictures will soon follow.

I've had a chance on 2 different occassions to get an Adam for free and didn't regret ever saying no to them. What's the deal with the printer/power supply combo

I agree with Golan great gaming system though!

DigitalQuirk you gotta specialize man or you'll run out room or become too crowded/junky in confined quarters (and in the process drive the wife over the edge)...trust me I'm a collector and this is a battle for me too

I'll be getting rid of my Atari ST 1040STf with monitor to keep my collection "specialized" maybe as a prize for the next Retro Night

[PaulQ]

I know, I know...I've been trying to keep focus. I guess I was thinking it could be used as collateral for swapping or something; like maybe someone has a 1571 or Cinemaware Warp Speed cartridge they'd want to trade for it. I'm gonna see what videogames I can get for it first, clean it up and play with it for a bit, then I'll have to turn it into something Commodore.

[PaulQ]

Well, here's the promised picture:



You know the saying; take a picture, it'll last longer...right after I took it, I took the system down and am currently packing it away. Still trying to source a box big enough to hold everything. I'll probably put it up on evilbay for what I paid and see what happens. That is, unless someone here at Denial has something they'd like to swap for it.

Technically, it'd make a great CP/M system with a Z80 processor that runs nearly twice as fast as that in the C128, and with 80k of RAM, you wouldn't think it'd be a slouch. Logistically, I just don't see it happening.

It really is an impressive LOOKING system, anyway. Too bad they didn't market the datapacks to C64 owners; they're probably faster than a 1541...

[gklinger]

I wish someone made one of those flash concepts for 2600/7800. Do they?

Not that I know of although I haven't spent much time looking as I don't own either of those systems. The guy that made the Colecovision cartridge also makes one for the 5200 (see here) which makes me wonder why there isn't a 2600 or 7800 one. Perhaps there's a technical hurdle that makes it difficult? There was a discussion about this topic recently at the AtariAge forums and someone said there were people working on such devices so there's always hope.

[paytonbyrd]

I wish someone made one of those flash concepts for 2600/7800. Do they?

Not that I know of although I haven't spent much time looking as I don't own either of those systems. The guy that made the Colecovision cartridge also makes one for the 5200 (see here) which makes me wonder why there isn't a 2600 or 7800 one. Perhaps there's a technical hurdle that makes it difficult? There was a discussion about this topic recently at the AtariAge forums and someone said there were people working on such devices so there's always hope.

The 5200 is a completely different animal than the 2600/7800 (which are related). The 5200 is simply an 800XL sans keyboard and analog controllers. The 2600 carts can have lots of hardware such as additional RAM, video display circuitry, etc which is very difficult (impossible?) to simply dump into a ROM file.

[ral-clan]

It is a sickness and it's quite contagious, I'm afraid.

[gklinger]

The 2600 carts can have lots of hardware such as additional RAM, video display circuitry, etc which is very difficult (impossible?) to simply dump into a ROM file.

Are you sure about that? I've got a few thousand dumped 2600 ROMs that work just fine.

[Jeff-20]

The 2600 carts can have lots of hardware such as additional RAM, video display circuitry, etc which is very difficult (impossible?) to simply dump into a ROM file.

Are you sure about that? I've got a few thousand dumped 2600 ROMs that work just fine.

Some of the more simple atari games are ok (I have a 256-in-1 multi cart for the 2600). But as they tried to push the limits of the 2600 to stay competitive, most of the more advanced games added unique hardware inside the cart. I guess it's more complicated than the different memory locations of the VIC because each individual title could have a different physical requirement.

[MacbthPSW]

Sure, for the Atari 2600 there's the Cuttle Cart 2 and the Krokodile Cart.

The main complication on getting different ROMs to run on one cart is that many different bank-switching schemes were invented and used on the 2600 to get past the 4k ROM limit. Some cartridges also contain extra RAM to get over the limitations that the 128 bytes built into the system imposed But both of these cartridges handled most of that just fine. But both were also limited runs, and are sold out at least for now.

Only one 2600 game that I know of had any extra hardware (besides bank-switching and/or RAM): Pitfall 2 had a co-processor of sorts to handle the fancier music and also free up the processor from a couple routine tasks that 2600 games need to do as they render the display.

[Mikam73]

I been thinking of getting Coleco Adam for long time. I dont think that we have any at Finland yet. I guess biggest problem is PSU that is build in to printer. And shipping big printer must cost a lot. If only it would work withouth printer..

I have 3x Colecovision tv-games and 128 Flash cart. But Adam would be nice.

[ral-clan]

There's a hack on the 'net to use a PC power supply with an ADAM. I tried it once long ago before I knew how to use a multimeter and fried an ADAM, though, so make sure you know what you are doing.