FmrAdamuser

@Christo930 - I'm not sure what joystick you are referring to. Granted, it has been a LOOONNGG time since I used an authentic A2600 joystick, my son did get one of those Atari 2600 joystick replica with built-in A2600 games, back in the early or mid 2000's and I want to say that the joystick had a pretty authentic feel to what I remember, which was not very good. My nephew had a Gemini A2600 "clone", back in the day, that had pretty good joysticks (I want to say that the paddle controller, which was built into the other end of each joystick, got in the way at times). I forget if it was him or my cousin, but one of them had the Tron controller that came with the Tron game and I recall the controller was pretty good, I did not like the game, though. It was a bit bulky, though, so even though it was better than an original A2600 controller, IMHO, I still did not use it much. A5200, Can't comment, never knew anyone with one. My cousin eventually got an Atari computer, I am not sure if it was the 600 or 800 XL, I believe it played A7800 cartridges and I think he had 7800 controllers for it (I know they were not the 2600 controllers and were not the 5200 controllers, not sure if the computer came with controllers or if he had to buy them separately, if separately, likely they were 7800 controllers). I liked his computer and its compactness. I'd probably have bought one had my third Adam not worked out (the first two I bought, I had to return because they did not work, had the third one failed to work, I would have had to walk away from Adam completely).

@NIAD - That might be true that Coleco had not thought that far ahead when they originally released the Adam, but had the Adam been successful enough to keep Coleco afloat, I am sure they would have tried to develop upgrades to keep the Adam fairly fresh prior to a second generation. At the very least, assuming again the Adam was successful enough to generate a second generation (i.e. an "Adam2" ?), I believe they would have had to confront that situation since, at least by then (I'm thinking around 1988-1989 timeframe is about the timeframe an Adam2 would have been brought out) there were enough inexpensive, decent quality 3rd party printers available to make the same kind of bundling that the original Adam had, less appealing to Coleco. But then, at this point, its all mental mast... er I mean gymnastics. ?

It's all in what you get used to, and perhaps a mixture of youth thrown in ?. I had played the Atari 2600 prior to getting my CV, my cousin had one and every time I went over to his house, we played it. But then I broke my leg and was laid up for quite a while, right around Christmas time, then I received my CV as a Christmas present. So I played the s&$t out of my CV and got so used to the controllers that when I finally got back over to my cousin's house, I had a hard time using his 2600 controllers. It was the same story when I would go over to my friends' houses (I was the only one with a CV, all of them had Atari 2600's as well) to play their Ataris. I even found it easier to play Atari games on my expansion module using the CV controllers, when I would borrow one of my friends' games. I kind of joke about the youth part, but I do believe that plays a large part. Not only having flexibility in getting used to a controller, but also the controller is likely better suited for smaller hands of a pre-tweener (8 or 9) to about mid-teens. I have not set up my CV in years, so I am sure I would have problems adjusting to those controllers now, especially after getting used to more modern controllers while using emulators to play my favorite CV and Atari games. The controllers that I felt were not very comfortable to use were the CV Superaction controllers. I did not like the joystick portion, it always felt too tall for me. Back to the topic, though, having also owned an Adam, I would have to say that it is very likely Coleco wanted to pull an Apple in that they wanted you locked into their world for any upgrades and peripherals (the comparison to Apple is for the Mac which were not as internally upgradeable as PC's were). You could not easily use a 3rd party printer, you had to devise some way of powering the Adam without the included printer as well as provide an interface to the printer since the Adam did not come with a standard serial or parallel port. (I know that third parties came up with solutions after Coleco dropped the Adam.) I am sure had the Adam been successful enough to keep Coleco in business, they would have offered a dot matrix and perhaps a thermal transfer printer (I believe that's the technology that Okidata used for color printers) for those wanting to print graphics, and those printers would like have come with the the power supplies so you could disconnect the stock one and use the "upgrade" printer without missing a beat, but again, you'd be forced to use their HW. Now I'm sure third parties would have cropped up to circumvent Coleco's plans even had Coleco stayed in business, as it happened after the Adam was orphaned, but I still see that as Coleco's plan and what they would have done and they probably would have tried to sue smaller third parties out of business.

Without being there to hear the sounds, the answer may be yes or no. I received my CV as a Christmas present in 1982 and from day one, the joystick would make some cracking sounds. At first, I thought they would break, but they never did, of course, I have not played my CV since the mid 90's when I moved out on my own and have not had room to set it up. Same with my Adam. My cousin who had an Atari 2600 used to make fun of my CV controllers because of the cracking sound and how uncomfortable they were, at least to hm. I got used to them, although I'm not sure how I would feel using them today. Ironically, I found the A2600 controllers to be awkward to use after getting used to the CV controllers. Speaking of Adam, I want to say that I do not believe the Adam joysticks had that same cracking sound, but then I was so used to it that it may not have stood out to me. What would be great is if a company made CV/Adam/Intellivision compatible controllers in an SNES form factor (probably about my favorite controller form factor, Genisis was my second choice). I think I have seen it advertised here that someone/some company (Opcode?) has one that is about as close to that form factor as I have seen. The one that OldSkool linked to is more of a arcade form factor, which I never really liked. I came to the conclusion that arcade game controllers were not intended to promote comfort and extended gameplay, they were intended to keep players just uncomfortable enough that they run through their lives and have to pump in more quarters. Something home console makers did not need to worry about. But each their own, I understand that some like that style, but I think there's a reason why no console ever shipped with those style controllers as part of the normal release (I would not count a special edition console offering that came with one). Yep, found the thread I saw, Opcode, although the thread is from 2019, not sure if they are still offering them:

Mind you I haven't used them since the '80's but I remember the controllers being comfortable to hold, but found using the joystick to be awkward. You can use Genisis controllers if you want, you just need to have a CV controller plugged into #2 to select the level.

I used mine in MS, HS but not college. My college provided computers for students when they started their freshmen year. Since I only had room for one computer desk and only room for one computer on that desk, the Adam had to go into boxes and stored away. I had put away my CV because the Adam was able to play all the games I had for the CV and A2600 (I had the Exp. Mod #1), so after putting away the Adam, the CV came back out until I moved away from home. I definitely liked the print from the Adam better than the pretty decent dot-matrix printer I bought through my college, but the Adam printer was definitely noisy (I would never have been able to print out my papers while pulling all-nighters like I did in college). Laser printers only came down to my price range when I was about a junior in college. We had one in our HS computer lab, but that was the only one for the entire HS. I am probably one of the few, but I actually used the electric typewriter mode to fill in forms for job and college applications. It was such a pain my parents eventually got me an electric typewriter that I used for that task as well as for small papers (one to two pages) that needed to be typed in HS.

I do not know the answer, very likely someone who has a NOS unit or kept all their paperwork with their Adam may have the original scholarship flyer and requirements and I am sure the restrictions are mentioned there. I want to say that 15 came to my mind after writing that last sentence, but that is likely wrong. Honestly, I don't think they planned on having the program last more than a year, so that limits the number of people, not to mention that not everyone who bought one would be eligible or would remember to fill out the paperwork to register (I can't remember for sure, but I would imagine you had to register your computer within 30 to 90 days or some other limited timeframe and were not given an unlimited timeframe). I highly doubt they planned on having a "savings" account, they likely figured that they'd make enough profit on Cabbage Patch kids, CV and Adam to be able to payback the promised scholarship. It was to be paid in installments and not one lump sum as mentioned earlier in this thread, or perhaps another that I had responded on, and not all of those collecting would be collecting all at once. There may have been a couple to few years where there was a "peak" number of people collecting (say if the majority of Adam bought during the program were by/for 12 year olds, likely they would be going to college at around the same time, making those 4 years the "peak" years of payouts). By the time the "peak" happened, Coleco was banking on having other great selling products, such as Adam 2, CV 2, etc.

I know this is a very old response, however, I will add my experience. I too received their scholarship. I think I received $125, total. It was after or during the bankruptcy because I think they contacted me. I can't remember if I had to surrender the certificate they sent me for registering for the scholarship, or if I threw it away, but I was still in HS when they paid out. I think that was part of the bankruptcy settlement was to give those who registered for the scholarships some money to buy them off (is my guess). I am guessing they did not send you any more after the bankruptcy was because you had already collected some. I see below you mention that when you went to college you were given or had to get a PC, pretty much the same for me. Unfortunately, I had to pack my Adam up because I only had room for one computer on my desk and have not had room to set it back up since.

I know this is an old thread, but I will add in my experience. I bought my Adam in 1984, I was 13 at the time, and filled out the form and sent it in immediately along with all of the required documentation (if that was a copy of the receipt, UPC label off the box, etc. it was sent, I don't remember, that was a long time ago someone who bought a NOS in the box with all the documentation probably knows what was needed). That was back as soon as I bought my Adam (actually the 3rd one since I had to return 2 before finding a good one). The idea was that you would contact Coleco when you were accepted to a college or started college to be able to collect the scholarship, I believe they sent a certificate of some kind back that we kept in a lockbox along with our other important papers (by "we" I mean me and my parents). I think that certificate was supposed to be sent back to Coleco at the time you were accepted/started college. You did not need to keep the receipt until you started college, since that should have already been on file when you registered your Adam. When Coleco went belly up, though, they paid out, unfortunately not the full $500. I think I only received $125 (again, that was a long time ago, I don't remember the details only the general surprise they actually paid out and my gratefulness they actually did), which I was grateful for that, I had pretty much written off getting anything from Coleco. They paid earlier because of the Chapter 11 (or whatever Chapter used for their bankruptcy) proceedings and I was still in the middle of HS when the check came. I can't remember if I had to send in my certificate or not, regardless, it is long gone. Either thrown away or sent wherever the Bankruptcy needed it to be sent to collect.

OK, that is what I did and it still did not recognize the 320K image, for some reason. It recognized the 160K right away. When I would type "catalog,d6" it gave an I/O error. I will try it again. Perhaps it was because it was an image created by Adam Image Manager? Again, I'll try it both ways, creating an image from AIM and also a d/l'd image from adamarchive. Really, the only two reasons why I wanted to load SB from a ddp was to, first confirm my memory of being able to do that back in the day and second to troubleshoot why booting using a SB disk image, I still could not see the 320K disk image. Since the article in AUG made it sound like SB needed the "dos" disk included with the drive to be able to work with the disk drive, I thought it loaded some extensions into RAM that SB needed to be able to access the disk drive (under the assumption that in the rush to get the Adam to market, Coleco left out the capability to use a disk drive). However, when I still could not read the disk, I knew it had to be something else that went wrong, so when I was able to have SB access the 160K disk image created by AIM and not the 320K disk image, I concluded, wrongly apparently, that SB cannot access it. Other than that, I really don't wish to go through all of that to boot to SB, I'll just use the disk image and keep my blanks in one of the other drives. At this point, I am not sure I will ever feel the need to actually write a disk image to be used my Adam. Not sure I'll ever set it back up, though it is on my bucket list. BTW, I don't mean to go off topic, but are you a member of SmartBasic.net? I registered for an account there a week ago, yesterday and it still has not been approved. I used the form on the site to contact the administrator and still have not heard if I needed to do anything else. I keep checking my Spam folder and trying to log into the site and my account is still inactive. I see some fairly new comments there (from earlier in this month) but am wondering if its pretty much a defunct forum or if the Admin is busy. Thanks, Paul

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

Issue #2 from first post is resolved! Unlike what I suspected was happening in my previous post, I found the answer to my question while investigating why I still could not get SB to recognize the second disk I wanted to load/save SB code to. Thinking there was something I was forgetting about the "Catalog" command that I spent about an hour going through some old Adam newsletters and found my answer in one of the issues between #3 and #5 of the Adam User Group's newsletter that reminded me that the disk drive came with a rudimentary "dos" disk that was needed for SB and SmartWriter to be able to "see" the disk drive. Which confirmed what I knew, that I did not have a separate SB disk. After about an hour of searching adamarchive.org and passing over a file called "AdamDiskManager (1984) (Coleco).dsk" over on adamarchive.org, I decided to give it a try and when I put that disk in drive #1, and boot it up. While I can't say that all my memories came flooding back, I did see a very familiar screen and did have some memories come back. It was a rudimentary, quasi-gui that allowed you to use the special keys to select different actions, and you could use the cursor keys to select any files or programs shown. The special keys allowed you to switch between disks and datapacks and allowed you to run SB from the datapack or essentially exit the dos and go to SW. Anyway, now I remember that that is how I used to use SB and my DD together since I only had (have) a basic Adam system with a single cassette drive and single disk drive. In the end, I find you don't need all that, but it helped me to diagnose that I was using the wrong blank disk format. I had selected the 320K disk format under the assumption that someone had found a way to get double the capacity out of it, but still be backward compatible with SB. Unless I am missing something, it is apparent the original verison of SB is not compatible with that format of disk. Once I switched to a 160K format disk, I was able to simply book SB using the disk image version in disk drive #1 and was able to read the disk in #2 using the "catalog,d6" command. Took a long road to figure it out since I have not played with Adam stuff, literally, since 1989 (except for playing just the roms on emulators, not trying to actually use SB). Sorry about being long winded, but it has been a bit of a journey re-learning the in's and out's of an Adam, even virtually. Thank you for your help, Paul

Thank you, I did find AIM and it was giving me issues which I why I was searching for an alternate. I finally got it to work, but I had to downgrade to 1.0 instead of using 1.1. Whenever I tried to add a file to an Adam disk image, the app would close itself with no error message and without writing the file. Using v1.0 will write the file and not crash. If there's a newer version than 1.1 (which I found on adamarchive.org), I would appreciate a pointer to it so I can give it a try. Thank you, again, Paul

Is this still available anywhere? Apparently Codeplex is shutting down and this is no longer available from those links. Thanks, Paul

OK, then the reason I never ran into that issue is likely because I added the disk after. I only bought one disk drive for my Adam, so I needed to use the cassette for SB and saved my basic programs on the disk.