My CoCo Hstory

Way back in 1981, as I approached my 13th birthday, i was bitten by the computer bug. My friends had game consoles like the Colecovision or Atari VCS or 5200, some had computers like the famed C64. My dream computer at the time was the Atari 800 – while I eventually got one, then sold it, it was years later. After much discussion with my mom’s family (several members had computers), it was decided that for my birthday that year, I’d get a TRS-80 color computer – but I’d have to work for the peripherals. Not a big deal, as I was already working like crazy on cutting grass, snoe removal, and newspaper delivery.

What I didn’t expect was that when my birthday came, I ended up with the CoCo, baut also a tapr drive, floppy drive and an OKIDATA 82A dot matrix printer.  My display was a Hitachi 13″ color tv. Rather quaint by today’s technology, but it was my intro into computers, and little did I know at the time, that battleship grey computer would set the tone for the rest of my working life.