TRS-80 Color Computer

A 16K model TRS-80 Color Computer.

The TRS-80 Color Computer (nicknamed the CoCo) is an 8-bit personal computer created by Tandy Corporation and first sold through Radio Shack in 1980. Though the name suggests it was part of the TRS-80 series, it was not backward compatible with any earlier TRS-80 software. In 1983, the Color Computer 2 was released which had better technical specifications and a cost-reduced board, but was fully compatible with the original. In 1986, the TRS-80 Color Computer 3 was released which had a new GPU. While it could run nearly all of the software for the first two models, any software designed for the new GPU would not work in previous models.

The computer used a Motorola 6809E CPU and collected a pretty impressive software library, but few publishers targeted it for original software, so, it mostly only saw ports. Despite having rather impressive hardware, the CoCo was out-competed by more affordable rivals like the Apple II, Commodore 64, and the Atari 8-bit line of computers. It boots into Color BASIC. The CoCo was rebranded with minor hardware changes as the Dragon 32 and Dragon 64 in Europe and appears to have served as a basis for Fujitsu's Fujitsu FM-8 and Fujitsu FM-7 computer models.

One interesting aspect of the TRS-80 CoCo was the popularity of using a mouse in software for a computer released in 1980. Mice weren't common for IBM computers until the 1990s.

Personal

My uncle had a CoCo around 1985 and I was enamored by it. At that age, I enjoyed pretty much anything that emitted beeps and colorful graphics, and being able to play games on it was fantastic. My cousin showed me several games that he had for it. I remember playing Lurkley Manor, Motorcycle Jump, and some other game he had typed in from The Rainbow magazine.