[Coladam] Miscellaneous ideas

[Frances and/or Richard Clee]

Now everyone knows I am a Cluster-class curmudgeon, so this need not be 
taken too seriously. But frankly, I'm not sure all of this is that big a 
deal.

I have a few Colecovision power supplies, at least some of which work. I 
have lots of Adams too including printers which of course contain the 
power supplies. In fact I have some busted printers with perfectly good 
power supplies in them. Any offers most carefully considered.

But I am not sure I would want a Blu-Ray optical disc. We are dealing, 
in the Adam, with a grown-up 8-bit game machine, where a 20 kilobyte 
(not megabyte or gigabyte) program is so huge as to be ungainly and 
nearly impractical. I suspect a simple DVD would hold everything ever 
written for the Adam; certainly a dual-layer drive would.

This doesn't mean I wouldn't like a USB interface for the Adam. Maybe 
something to plug into the serial slot, then run to an 
externally-powered four-port hub, or something? If that would allow us 
to run disc drives, maybe memory sticks or equivalent, and generally 
storage peripherals, that would be super neat.

But keyboards? OK, I have a ton of them anyone can buy, working if not 
pretty, so I'm prejudiced. But how Adam would respond to a passel of 
keys it never heard of - like about 30 more than Adam's 78 - is 
something I'll let someone else experiment with, thank you very much.

And the idea of S-video and stuff - why bother? The games are written 
for the abilities of the TI chip (9801?) and your home television with 
its NTSC screen. Anything else is overkill; you can get an increase in 
cost, but would the quality be as good or even worse?

I'm all in favour of stuff that will add capabilities to the Adam that 
are useful. But I get a little sceptical of technology for its own sake.