Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Part II: The Monk Takes The Booty

In my previous blog post I explain how a late night of working at Microware led to the my discovering CoCo related equipment in a cubicle. I shared that discovery with a  co-worker, Scott McGee

Since no one at Microware really had expressed any interest in showcasing the CoCo 3s and other Color Computer related hardware, Scott had the raving idea of donating the CoCo 3s discovered at Microware to Brother Jeremy at the upcoming CoCoFEST. I wasn't particularly fond of the scheme, but didn't put up much resistance to it at the time. Looking back, I should have made a bigger wave and kept the CoCos where they were and made more of a point to display them somehow at Microware's headquarters.

While I cannot remember the exact year, I believe it was either 1995 or 1996. The Chicago CoCoFEST was coming up during its usual April/May time frame. James Jones and I would take the drive every year from Des Moines to Chicago to attend. Scott drove and attended separately, as I recall, with the haul of Color Computers destined for the fest.

Brother Jeremy took possession of the CoCos at that ChicagoFEST and for years thereafter, brought them with him to every fest he attended, setting them up at a booth for display. I'll give him credit -- he took care of the systems and made them accessible for the CoCo Community to see.

However, there was a casualty in this -- the rest of the haul. I cannot recall what happened to the boxes of ROM Paks and the DS-69B digitizer, nor do I know what happened to the original Tandy documents that were house along with the rest of the hardware. It reinforces in my mind that the entire collection of stuff should have never been disbanded.





2 comments:

  1. Did Scott have the rest, or were they still at Microware? In 2000, at the PennFest, Mark Hawkins had a Tandy document on the CoCo 3 (the one that mentioned the 256-color mode which Nick Marentes has a scan of on his site). Do you think he saved the others? It was he that came to me, after reading my references to the "CoCo 3 prototypes" being at the CoCoFEST, and told me that we most certainly didn't have the prototypes because he knew they were still in storage. He and John L may have been the only ones left who knew where it was when the building was being cleaned out.

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  2. Allen, all the Microware CoCo 3s went to Bro. Jeremy, but the carts and the rest of the stuff, I have no idea. Scott really took it on himself to do what he did, and I don't know what else he gave Bro. Jeremy. I don't think the carts went, but I could be wrong.

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