A Brief History of the CoCo and CoCo Friends Disk Magazine
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The TRS-80 Colour Computer or "CoCo" was first manufactured by Tandy in 1980 and initially distributed through its retail chain, Radio Shack. The introductory CoCo had a 0.89MHz Motorola 6809 processor and had 4K of RAM -- which could eventually be expanded to 32K. The CoCo's ROM had Microsoft BASIC built-in, and could save to cassette as well as run programs (games, word processors, etc.) off of cartridges. A special cartridge was available which allowed a user to connect up to four 180K 5 1/4" floppy drives to the CoCo. A host of peripherals were available including serial printers, joysticks, music synthesisers, modems, etc.

Tandy later introduced the CoCo 2, a machine very similar to the original CoCo except that lowercase characters were supported and up to 64K of RAM was available through bank switching. As this required disabling the built-in BASIC, it was a feature mainly of use to more advanced programs and operating systems, such as Microware's alternate disk-based operating system, OS-9.

In 1986, Tandy introduced the CoCo 3 which significantly advanced the design. The CoCo 3 supported up to 512K of RAM, twice the processor speed, and much improved graphics. The CoCo 3's maximum resolution was 640x225 pixels at 4 colours, or 320x225 at 16 colours, each drawn from a palette of 64 possible shades.

Though Tandy discontinued the CoCo in the '90s, interest did not wane. In 1991, Rick Cooper -- an enterprising CoCo enthusiast and proprieter of Rick's Computer Enterprises -- created CoCo Friends Disk Magazine ("CFDM"). The magazine was aimed at the casual hobbyist community, accessible to those with only a rudimentary understanding of the CoCo's built-in BASIC (dubbed "RS-DOS"). It was a very social community. Members exchanged programming ideas, personal letters, and art created on their CoCos.

The first 61 issues of CFDM ran under Rick's editorship until 1998 when he turned over the reins to Jim Davis, a fellow-CFDMer. CFDM ran a further 10 quarterly issues and was untimately discontinued in January 2001 after nearly a decade of operation.

CFDM consisted of a "flippy" disk. (CoCo disks were only recorded on one side, so the disk had to be physically removed from the drive and flipped over to read the other side. Floppy disks with the correct notches to do this were called "flippy" disks.) On one side was a magazine reading program, full of subscriber-contributed articles as well as some graphics and small programs or animations. The other side contained programs, games, additional art, etc.

In the initial phase of this online project, the magazine sides of all 71 issues have been converted to HTML and placed online on these pages. Additionally, the program sides have been made available for download as virtual disks, for use with real CoCo 3s and their emulators. If there is sufficient interest, more of the program-side content (e.g. music) may also be placed online in a modern web format. If you'd like to show your support, please leave a note in the guestbook.

In addition to CFDM, Rick also introduced a six-issue experiment in the form of PC Friends Disk Magazine. PCFDM ran quarterly from September 1995 to March 1997. It was originally conceived as a hobbyist community disk magazine for the PC, but as of issue 2, it was revamped as a PC-based digest for the CoCo community. Issues 2 through 6 of PCFDM included the full issues of CFDM that ran concurrently, as well as the newsletters of Adventure Survivors, the Glenside CoCo Club, a summary of the Delphi CoCo discussion group and other CoCo-related contributions.

For more information on the CoCo, visit the links page.

CoCo Friends Disk Magazine is a creation of Rick's Computer Enterprises ©1991 Rick Cooper.
Web version of CFDM created by Jeff Vavasour.