The "CoCo 2" as it is affectionately called is the successor to the original Color Computer. There were actually three models - 26-3134B, 26-3136B, and 26-3127B which had 16K standard, 16K extended, and 64K extended respectively. The machine was essentially an evolution of the original.
Upgraded BASIC ROMs were also available to add a few minor features and correct some bugs. Also a redesigned 5 volt only disk controller was introduced with its own new Disk BASIC ROM (v1.1) adding the "DOS" command, which was used to boot the OS-9 operating system by Microware. (64K memory required)
User Comments
Jim Gerrie on Monday, January 14, 2013 The Coco was only disappointing for kids who wanted to play video games, which an Atari "computer" was of course very good for (but precious little else). If on the other hand, you wanted to do some serious computing activities like word processing, spreadsheet, programming or hardware interfacing, without paying a mint, the Coco was the superior machine. In 1983 my Coco 2 was capable of running a Unix-like operating system called OS9 level 1, which was a true multi-tasking, multi-user operating system for which excellent versions of C, Pascal, Basic (Basic09!) were available. It also had a superior word processor and very fast spell checker (with over 100,000 word dictionary) in its TSWord TSSpell package. The Dynacalc spreadsheet was a fully functional spreadsheet program equal in functions and flexibility to early spreadsheets for the PC. Comparing the Coco's OS, languages and productivity software to that of Ataris and Commodores is like comparing Sheaffer Pen to a crayon.
Michael Evans on Thursday, April 24, 2008 This was my first computer. I hated the stiff "melted keys", the badly drawn uppercase-only text, the horrible green background and the fact that you couldn't move the cursor where you wanted. I hated how everything stopped when you played a sound (one channel only with no effects), the lack of sprites and the puny 16kb RAM.
Still, I spent many many hours programming this thing, making my own games in BASIC (which was really the only way to have a lot of games on this computer). The first time I saw a friend's Atari 800XL, I realized just how crappy my TRS-80 was. He had hundreds of arcade-quality games on disk while I had cheap home-made games on tape.
It's strange, but I still have some nostalgic feeling for this piece of crap.
 "TRS-80 Color Computer 2")
