My Official Coleco ADAM rant!

[GrizzLee]

The Adam has a monitor out that uses a Din cable like the Commodore and TI 8-bit computers that terminates to RCA video and audio (mono obviously; the cable looks like this: http://i19.ebayimg.com/02/i/03/53/02/92_2.JPG ). So no, it does not have direct composite out like many Atari 8-bit or Apple II's.

 

Buzzzt! That is not true.

 

The Adam's AUDIO signal comes out on the cable that you have pictured (not the audio and video).

 

The Adam's Composite VIDEO signal comes out on a standard RCA jack on the back of the computer. There are two RCA jacks on the back -- one for RF audio / video, and one for composite video.

 

 

There is only composite video out. There is no composite audio out. To actually get sound you have to use a cable like the one above to get audio and video output. An Adam does little good with just video out.

 

I added an AV RCA jack on the back of my ADAM. I don't understand why they never added this. Otherwise, one had to use the DIN adapter to get A/V. Now I can use a standard RCA jack and leave the DIN connector behind or in the storage bin or... whever, I seem to misplace it.

 

-Lee

[Bill Loguidice]

I'm actually more worried about floppies than data packs. I mean, after all these years, don't these old floppies lose data, even those that didn't get used all that much? Today, I'm weary of using 3.5 inch diskettes in my PC, so imagine how I feel about Adam software on even older 5.25-inch floppies!

 

Everyone's experiences are different with media. I have cassettes and disks from the late 70's that still work fine and of course all of my stuff from the 80's. The only stuff that hasn't seemed to work has been stuff that I didn't know if it worked in the first place. As long as it was stored reasonably well, they seem to hold data well. The thing for me with tape media is that they simply seem susceptible to snapping or unwinding, so personally anything on tape I'm very concerned about. With all that said, of lot of this stuff is well past its intended shelf-life, so I guess we are playing something of a game of Russian roulette every time we use these things. That's why it's nice to have backup images and a means of transferring stuff back to real media in case something goes wrong. The value of that can't be underestimated.

[Murph74]

As a hardcore Coleco and Adam guy in the 80's, I gotta think the initial perception of the Adam is what was the downfall. Had it not gotted bad reviews and faulty hardware out of the gate, it was actually a very nice system at the time. Other than being 'computers' I think the comparison to the Mac is like the battle between the Yugo and the Ferrari during that same era. I used and loved my adam for 5 years non stop. It defined my pre-driving years! About 6 years ago, I rescued a bunch of stuff from a unenet posting and spent about a $100 just to have a few boxes shipped to me from an Adamite who was moving on finally ( he had gotten it from David Carnahan, a Adamite of the highest order!) In July I posted the stuff on Craigslist here in St. Louis as "free to good home". I had moved int a new house recently, and was hoping it would come in handy for someone-- there were parts (stand alone power supplies!), there was a TON of software on disc, there were coleco memos and manuals, there were schematics and newsletters. A real goldmine!

 

The guy who claimed it said he just loved classic computers and the like. I believed him. A week later, it was back on Craigslist for $40. Go figure. anyway, I don't think anyone claimed it from him, so if anyone is interested, I'd say drop the guy an Email, but only offer to pay shipping since he conned me out of it! His name is Charlie, and his email is cqlude3@yahoo.com.

 

As for the rest of the Adam stuff, I was a founding 'helper' with Barry Wilson in the St. Louis AUG, and be happy to share/help with any other memories I can dish out! Man, I miss my Adam days. Still got my main system at my Mom's house, but it's packed up for now... For the DDP's, Sony HF-60's worked great to make DDPs from-- simply had to drill a pair of holes on the large surface B side of the tape under the write-prevent tabs, and run em thru a tape duplicator! Matter of fact, games were indeed able to be copied like this, too! A freind at the time, Chris Mannel I believe, had Dragon's Lair on DDP, and I was able to copy it using 2 tape decks and a set of RCA cables. Took 2 tries to get the volume levels right, but it worked! Of course, this was before I had access to PackCopy or QuickCopy or even the Hacker's Guide To Adam! The memories.... Ahhh!

 

I'm now trying to get the full commercial collection of Colecovision games together, so if anyone is interested in trading me, lemme know-- got quite a few dupes. I'll be Myspacing the list of what I have shortly. Also, any Opcode games anyone has overstock on, let me know-- love to see those in my collection!!

 

Murph

Edited September 11, 2006 by Murph74

[else]

Here's something I bet few people have seen before. This is a page from Coleco's 1983 Annual Report.

 

Check out the Disk Drive and Auto Dialer we were SUPPOSED to get! Notice how the Disk Drive label says "Memory Console + Disk Drive" -- I don't know what that's all about. Also check out the two Adam programs -- SMART LOGO and Dr. Seuss Word <something> -- which are both clearly just pictures glued to gray boxes.

Edited September 12, 2006 by else

[Bill Brasky]

Anyone have Best of Broderbund: AE and Choplifter?

[else]

Yep, have it boxed / complete.

[Tempest]

Okie dokie, going through my box of ADAM crap I came up with:

 

Hardware

-----------

1 ADAM stand-alone console (boxed)

1 ADAM expansion console (boxed)

1 ADAM disk drive (with power supply but no cable)

1 ADAM auto dialer

 

 

Software

----------

I = with insert (aka with the official Coleco inserts)

C = copy

 

Non Games

**********

 

4 Smart BASIC (I)

3 CP/M 2.2 & Assembler (2xI, 1xC)

1 Recipe Filer ©

2 Expert Type (1xI, 1xC)

1 Smart Filer (I)

1 Flash Facts Vocabulator (I)

1 Flash Facts Flashbacks (I) - The guy on the cover looks like he's having a flashback...

1 Electronic Flashcard Maker (I)

1 Sign Shop ©

8 Blank tapes (I)

2 Unlabeled tapes

 

Games

******

1 The Official Donkey Kong Jr (I)

4 Super Buck Rogers (I)

2 Best of Broderbund (I)

1 Dragons Lair (I)

 

1 A Hackers GUide to ADAM (no idea what this is)

1 Lori's Data Pack (no idea what this is)

1 Arcade I © - Has several Colecovision games on it

1 Arcade II © - Has several Colecovision games on it

1 Arcade III © - Has several Colecovision games on it

1 Pinball/Hard Hat Mack ©

1 Jeopardy ©

1 The Pick © - Says its by A&A software

1 Games by Steve Jacoby ©

 

 

If anyone wants to trade programs let me know. I'm always looking for tapes I don't have (official Coleco versions only, no copies).

 

Tempest

[Inky]

 

 

1 A Hackers GUide to ADAM (no idea what this is)

 

 

Ooohhh... Is it a book, disk or tape?

 

The Hacker's Guide To Adam was a 2 book series, which basically got down to the nitty-gritty of the machine. It had memory maps, utility programs to type in, and complete schematics. It was written by a father-son team. I have both volumes of the book. Ithey are a must have. A few years ago, I tried finding the authors, so that I could get permission to put the text on the web, but alas, never could find them.

[Inky]

BTW, I found a site with ADAM roms...

 

http://www.shadyroms.com/index.php?platform=Colecoadams

[Tempest]

 

 

1 A Hackers GUide to ADAM (no idea what this is)

 

 

Ooohhh... Is it a book, disk or tape?

 

The Hacker's Guide To Adam was a 2 book series, which basically got down to the nitty-gritty of the machine. It had memory maps, utility programs to type in, and complete schematics. It was written by a father-son team. I have both volumes of the book. Ithey are a must have. A few years ago, I tried finding the authors, so that I could get permission to put the text on the web, but alas, never could find them.

 

It's a tape.

 

Tempest

[Inky]

 

 

1 A Hackers GUide to ADAM (no idea what this is)

 

 

Ooohhh... Is it a book, disk or tape?

 

The Hacker's Guide To Adam was a 2 book series, which basically got down to the nitty-gritty of the machine. It had memory maps, utility programs to type in, and complete schematics. It was written by a father-son team. I have both volumes of the book. Ithey are a must have. A few years ago, I tried finding the authors, so that I could get permission to put the text on the web, but alas, never could find them.

 

It's a tape.

 

Tempest

 

Ahh. It's the programs from one of the books then. Take a look at it, as it may includ a cartridge copy program.

[Murph74]

Nice roms site Inky... I grabbed the super DKJr rom from there, and found a nice surprise! Playing it with AdamEm-- what gawdawful sound!-- Scene 9 was new to me! Never saw the Pie Factory! (warning: not to be confused with the cement factory in Donkey Kong that is ofter refered to as the Pie Factory!)

 

I knew Mario's Hideout was new over the ColecoVision Version, but the Pie Factory had me feeling 13 years old again! Thanks for the memory...

 

As for the Hacker's Guide-- there is a primitive cart copy prg on there, but it won't work on quite a few games. MMSG+ is the way to go for backing up carts to tape/disk on a physical Adam in my opinion. It's Machine Coded and self booting, vs the Hackers Guide is all peeks and pokes via Basic if I recall correctly.

[Tempest]

Is there a list of all the official ADAM tape software that was released? By official I mean not user made hacks or copies.

 

Tempest

[Inky]

Closest thing I can find is on that roms site.. Go into the Z's, and there's a file called "ZZZ-UNK-Coleco Presents Software For The Coleco Adam"

 

Unzip and run in ADAMEM... It appears to be a list of things that were released and in productions.

 

I'm assuming everything listed with a "d" are ADAM titles.

[Murph74]

Closest thing I can find is on that roms site.. Go into the Z's, and there's a file called "ZZZ-UNK-Coleco Presents Software For The Coleco Adam"

 

Unzip and run in ADAMEM... It appears to be a list of things that were released and in productions.

 

I'm assuming everything listed with a "d" are ADAM titles.

 

That was actually a POS (Point of sale, not Piece Of Sh... nevermind!) cart produced for Retailers if anyone cares. I recall only seeing the cartridge once, and that was in 1984 at "A Video Consultants" in St. Louis on their demo adam machine.

[jblenkle]

Hey, email me about the ADAM!!! sacnewsnet@yahoo.com (just in case it doesn't allow addresses, that's sacnewsnet at yahoo dot com).

 

Also, sign up for the ADAM mailing list at: http://www.adamcon.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/coladam

 

Joe B.

 

 

 

Ok, here it goes...

 

 

The Coleco ADAM was a Flop, no doubt about it, and it almost sank Coleco the company with it. There is no two ways about it, BUT....

 

 

I bought one back in 1991 for $10.00 N.I.B at a yard sale after I had to sell my awsome C64 setup to pay for car repairs. And I used that thing untill 1995 for writing letters, playing colecovision carts, and atari 2600 carts with an adaptor I picked up a year later at another yard sale for 10.00. I even bought a 300 baud internal modem for visiting BBS's from a defunct mail order company that must have bought out some coleco wherehouse, because they had EVERYTHING for the ADAM. Disk drives, tape drives, tapes, and ram expanders among others...

 

Anyways, in 1995 I finally upgraded to a IBM computer and sold the ADAM, but not the tapes or carts, I've kept those for all these years. Well, I recently found and bought a well used ADAM system at a yard sale, and dug out all my old tapes, and carts. I "Upgraded" the system to dual tape drives, and a 300 baud modem, and I've played with it quite a bit lately, and I can't figure out why this system failed so badly. I know the first run of units hadc major defects, but I assume that that was worked out as both the ones I've owned have worked well, and the printer is Slow, and LOUD, but it prints a letter quality page that is Perfect.

I used mine for Games, letters, databased my parts dept in my shop, and for surfing the Pre-net, I always felt the computer had TONS of potential, but no user base or software base to exploit. the few programs I had served me well, but compared to the C64 it was a joke.

I've compared the two and I think the adam could have been every bit as good as a C64 had the wind blown the other way.

 

I mean it was easy to expand. had slots for an internal modem, 2 super fast and mostly reliable tape drives with higher capacity then the 1541. and also a slot for ram expansion. upto 256K as I remember and it was used just like the 1764 ram expansion for the C64. as a high speed ram drive.

It also could be equipped with a disk drive, although it wasn't really needed, and you could get a card for hooking up a dot matrix printer.

 

 

 

 

The other major problem I have is that Of all the computers that came and went, Almost all of them have a dedicated userbase, and an internet presence with most if not all Programs avalible on the Net.

I have searched High, and low, and I find a few very brief websites about the ADAM, but no software depot.. I'm talking about the 100 to 300 actual programs for the ADAM not the colecovision.

 

I only have about 10 programs, most of them are no longer of any use to me, but I can't even find a I copy of any of them on the net..

 

I know there is a nice emulator for the ADAM, but with nothing but coleco cart dumps out there, no one else is ever going to get to see how the adam worked.

Isn't it time for the old timers out there to upload there long hidden collection of adam tapes to the net? You can transfer the tapes to IBM computers using a null serial cable between the two and a simple terminal program.

 

 

 

Am I the only one that cares? I see they have a ADAMCON every year but it seems nothing every comes of it. Its a shame that all those datapacks are sitting there gettting bit rot, and there are no ADAM Software CD's out there to replace them...

 

 

 

Well, thats it, Thats my Rant... I'm mostly a Lurker on the 2600, and 7800 boards, I recently completed my 7800 cart collection, but this Adam thing got me to come out of hiding to speak my mind.

[Bill Brasky]

Is there a list of all the official ADAM tape software that was released? By official I mean not user made hacks or copies.

 

Tempest

 

I have an ADAM's House catalog somewhere that I printed out around 1995 and it has stuff in it that I don't think he has listed anymore. Sold out or just not offering it, I don't know?

[Murph74]

Is there a list of all the official ADAM tape software that was released? By official I mean not user made hacks or copies.

 

Tempest

 

I have an ADAM's House catalog somewhere that I printed out around 1995 and it has stuff in it that I don't think he has listed anymore. Sold out or just not offering it, I don't know?

 

Adam's House-- legit or Terry selling questionable copies then too? lol

 

Anyway, I think the big question the software list is where to cut it off-- I think a 'retail' list is going to be fairly simple-- I don't recall anything other than Coleco branded stuff making it to store shelves... So, do we cut it off at anything with dot matrix labels? Most of the homebrew type stuff (waltersoft, Niad, Sage, etc) all had printer-made labels as opposed to professional packaging. Not that labeling diminishes the product at all, but there should still be guidelines I'd think. Otherwise, the type-in programs from Family Computing (remember the Adam magazine anyone!? THAT was a disappointment!) would make the list, and would be hella hard to track.

 

Another website to go along with Joe's is http://ann.hollowdreams.com/... I invited the host of the page to join us here-- he still produces Adam images monthly, so maybe he can shed some light on the archiving process.

 

Game ON!

Murph

[Bill Brasky]

BTW, I found a site with ADAM roms...

 

http://www.shadyroms.com/index.php?platform=Colecoadams

 

Pretty good but it's still missing several titles. No Super Donkey Kong, Family Feud, AE/Choplifter, Super Front Line demo, others I'm forgetting.

 

 

I bought Best of Broderbund at Kaybee Toys in retail packaging back in the day. I'm almost positive I've seen the retail version of that B.C's Quest/Grog's Revenge compilation on Ebay. I'd love to get my hands on mint, boxed copies of the supergames that came in those mini-arcade cabinet shaped boxes. Did anyone here ever own or see in person the EVE voice synthesizer module? Adams' House sold a Star Trek game that works with it so I know it's not just a figment of my imagination.

[Tempest]

Anyway, I think the big question the software list is where to cut it off-- I think a 'retail' list is going to be fairly simple-- I don't recall anything other than Coleco branded stuff making it to store shelves...

 

Yeah that's what I'm interested in.

 

Tempest

[MopedFreak]

That Rom site had a good pile of Adam Images. I've been looking for someplace like that FOREVER!

 

Lets keep digging, and see what else we can dig up.

 

I'd Love a copy of Adamlink Version 3, 4 or 5 All I have is 2 and it offers no file transfer options

 

 

I'm Surprised to see such a responce to my original "Rant" I thought I was in the vast minority on the whole ADAM thing. I'm glad to see I'm wrong.

 

 

I'm in negoatiations with someone trying to get my hands on a disk drive for my Adam, and if it goes through I'll transfer my Adam softwre to the Net. I have one (slightly Buggy) homemade database program that I wrote in 1994 in Smartbasic. Its the only ADAM program I wrote. I haven't looked through them all, but I think one or two of the blank Datapacks I have here has some other PD software I downloaded from a ADAM site in the early 90's

If its still there I'll upload that as well.

[Pixelboy]

I'm Surprised to see such a responce to my original "Rant" I thought I was in the vast minority on the whole ADAM thing. I'm glad to see I'm wrong.

Oh, you'll find a lot of fans here of the bulky-yet-fun-to-use-underdog-of-the-8-bit-computing-world. Seing the response here demonstrates that we talk about it all too rarely. Although it's true that there's not a ton of stuff to talk about where the Adam is concerned...

[Murph74]

Did anyone here ever own or see in person the EVE voice synthesizer module? Adams' House sold a Star Trek game that works with it so I know it's not just a figment of my imagination.

 

Yeah, it was in a radio shack project box, and had an IDE style ribbon cable (about 2 inches) to attach to the adam's expansion interface. The cable allowed the unit to sit on teh main CPU and the ribbon ran around the side. It also had a clock/battery backup in it. Was neat, but more a gimmick than anything in my opinion. I had one, but can't remember which Adam User's Group member I got it from-- maybe Father Al (Fitzgerald), maybe Barry Wilson... And not sure who wound up with it either.

 

The one piece I have is a 1989 cart from Trysidsoft. Had an RCA input jack and a Gain knob on it. Says "Look who's talking now!" on it. Never seen or heard of it until I came across it in a bundle of stuff I grabbed on the net one day (the manual/hardware lot mentioned earlier). Appears to be a sampler device of some sort, but haven't tried it yet.

[Pixelboy]

That Rom site had a good pile of Adam Images. I've been looking for someplace like that FOREVER!

 

Lets keep digging, and see what else we can dig up.

I found more here, although there's not much more to find than at ShadyRoms, and all the Adam software is mixed up with CV cart ROM images.

[Bill Brasky]

I keep seeing certain games mixed into the ADAM files. Has anyone run these to see if there are really different versions from the CV versions?: Campaign 84, Evolution, Gateway to Apshai (I know about Temple)? Is there a difference between Troll's Tale tape(25k) and disk versions(376k) because the disk version is listed as being much larger?

 

I've got these that I didn't see on those other pages: Modem Chess -(play without the modem). Zork 1, 2 and 3 which I believe have to be run under CP/M. I've never tried them.

 

Modem_Chess__Play_Without_The_Modem__coleco_Adam_.zipzork1.zipzork2.zipzork3.zip