BDS Software

COLOR COMPUTER

New for 2024:

          New Research Papers:
                    including Malky's Warren: The First Training Quest version 1.0.1 (Bug Fixes),

                    and Bippi's Cave: The Second Training Quest version 0.0.1 (A Work in Progress);

                    as well as Printer Operations Routines For the ML Foundation System.

                    and Preliminary Thoughts on a Stack Engine.


From 2023:

          Research Papers:
                    including Malky's Warren: The First Training Quest (A Proof-Of-Concept).


From 2022:

          BASIC Quiz Games in Mathematics, Geography, and the Bible.

          Research Papers.


From 2021:

          A Database of CoCo Magazines.


Background:

The Radio Shack (Tandy) Color Computer, aka the CoCo, was manufactured from 1980 through 1991. The machines used the Motorola 6809E 8/16-bit processor. In my opinion, the CoCo was pretty much the Raspberry Pi of its day.

To run any of the programs, games, or puzzles I provide in this section, you'll generally need either at least a 64K Color Computer 2, or a CoCo Emulator (See last paragraph on this page) on your desktop or laptop computer.

The Color Computer 1 (1980-1983) came with 4K, 16K, or 32K of RAM, and a built-in BASIC interpreter in ROM. Available peripherals included a cassette tape drive, a 5.25 inch floppy disk drive, joysticks, a pen tablet, and various game and utility cartridges.

The Color Computer 2 (1983-1986) came with 16K or 64K of RAM; and a Disk BASIC ROM cartridge was available for improved use of floppy drives.

The Color Computer 3 (1986-1991) came with 128K of RAM, and could be upgraded to 512K. Available software included the OS-9 Level 2 operating system with BASIC09, C, and Pascal compilers.


Legacy Software:

BDS Software was initially formed in the 1980s for the primary purpose of providing the King James Version of the Bible on 5.25 inch floppy disks for the CoCo. (The "BDS" stood for "Bible Disk Systems"). These were plain text files and seem insignificant compared to the complex Bible software available today. But, it was the only Bible available for the CoCo at the time. The KJV files are still available on my
CoCo KJV page.

In the 1990s, I developed and BDS Software marketed a 1983 Standard Forth for the CoCo. That system is now available on the
CF83 System page. Why the 1983 Standard rather than the more universal ANSI Standard?

CF83 is more than just a program: it's a complete Operating System which replaces BASIC. As such, its underlying foundation had to be built in Assembly Language using Disk EDTASM. That foundation can be found at my CF83 Development page.

Emulators:

It's been over 30 years since the last CoCo came off the assembly line. It's getting harder to find a CoCo today. However, I've also been using the free Virtual Color Computer (VCC) Emulator and find that it seems to work quite well. I found other emulators advertised on the Glenside Color Computer Club's Resources page, but they don't appear to work on Windows computers. I haven't tried any of them on Linux or Mac (your milage may vary).


You could also try the JS Mocha - The (Online) HTML5 CoCo 2 Emulator. which also seems to work fairly well. Unlike VCC, however, JS Mocha doesn't have any provision for emulating the serial printer.