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soviet

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Hey Soviet!! Any chances that you have the schematics for that monitor?

If positive, can you please share?

I have one monitor just like this white one on the pics!

It's sitting here, without any use because some components have their identification erased!!

The schematics would help me a lot to fix this!!

Please, if you have it or know where I can find, tell me.

I'll be very happy if I can fix this stuff!!!

Thanks in advance!!

Edited by fisher
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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi fisher i'm sorry to disapoint you, but i don't own the shematics for this particular monitor, they of curse erease the IDs from the ICs, tipical done by uruguay hardware "companys", this monitors don't deserve the attention are very look quality and the video look like shit they also have lots of noise on the small audio amp included inside much better for you to build an adapter and use any composite video tv.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi the last weekend my brother get me this nice colecovision including some games.

What call my attention is that is build by "KENIA" i belive is a factory located on Argentina Patagonia.

Also theres some fake games inside them theres a eprom and they have a switch to choose 2 games.

Some pictures below

 

 

20150714_224351.jpg

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20150714_225711.jpg

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20150714_225726.jpg

20150714_225735.jpg

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  • 7 months later...

I was searching on Adam Coleco vision on Google and I came across this post. Seeing all the pictures from Soviet's tapes felt me with nostalgia.

 

I was born in Uruguay, and my father, an electronics engineer, was a supplier for the Adam business in the country. My father built the tape duplicator that the company used to create those tapes that appear on Soviet's pictures. He also helped with other engineering aspects. I think that he also created the PCB design for those horrible amber/green monitors and helped with the custom power supply since Adams in Uruguay were typically sold without the printer. I was 10 years old and my father died almost two decades ago so my account may be a bit distorted at times. But this is what I recall from my memory:

 

- The importer who brought the Adam in Uruguay seemed to have purchased containers full of disposed Adam bits and pieces (tape drives on their own, consoles on their own, joysticks on their own). Vans would unload all the components in a room at my father's shop and would form "mountains" of Adam rubbish. Most of the components were faulty; tape drives would not start, or would not read tapes, joysticks would had faulty number pads, etc. It seems to me that the importer bought unsold stock directly from the factory, before any quality checks, because this part I do remember clearly: most components were broken. I think that it took like 3 to 5 broken Adams to put together a fully working one (console, tape drive, keyboard, 1 joystick) ready for sale.

- I had never seen any original "retail" Adam boxes. Again, my guess is that the importer bought untested factory stock rather than unsold retail stock.

- In addition to the factory stock, the importer also had piles (infinite to my young eyes) of Buck Roger's and SmartBASIC original tapes. These piles I had seen at the importer's office (not my dad's). Presumingly, these tapes were overwritten with games and other software using the tape duplicator. The tape duplicator I think would copy 5 or 10 tapes at once. I do not know what the process was, I just remember seeing the duplicator in action at the importer's office.

- Other than SmartBASIC and Buck Roger's, the importer sold a huge catalogue of (most likely illegal, or abandon-ware) games and software. The importer published a printed catalogue in Spanish (with a red cover; I still remember) and produced the tapes with simple bi-chromatic covers. Since most people had never seen an original Coleco cartridge, they assumed this was the way Adam software was released. Luckily, I had all the games I wanted; my father just had to ask his customer, and if any of my Adam's would brake, I would just need to go to the pile of Adam rubbish and test each component until I found a working one. I replaced my tape drive twice and my joystick another three times by just scavenging the Adam rubbish piles at my father's shop. As far as I remember, the cost of the Adam parts was close to zero. The cost of an Adam in Uruguay was actually the cost of scavenging, testing and putting together a working one as far as the importer was concerned. As such, I don't remember any inventory checks. There was just an oversupply of Adam parts all over the place. To me, this situation was more akin to that of the infamous E.T. Atari cartridges buried in the desert. In fact, saying "importer" is sort of a bold statement.

- The Adam as meant for the American retail market included no monitor but a printer that also doubled as a power supply. In Uruguay, the Adam was sold without the power supply, so custom power supply was included, and the console was bundled with a monochromatic phosphorous amber or green monitor. This made the Adam look more like a mini PC. In short, the typical Uruguayan Adam bundle consisted of:

* The Adam console with a custom power supply

* A small (I think 10") Amber/Green monitor

* A QWERTY American non-Spanish keyboard

* A joystick/numeric pad

* Original tapes: Buck Roger's and SmartBASIC

* A game catalogue (red cover) in Spanish

* A SmartBASIC original manual in English (I'm not so sure if this was part of the bundle, I had one at least)

- I am not sure as to why the importer concluded that the monochromatic monitor was necessary. Maybe it was to differentiate it from the Spectrum and Commodore 64 and make it look more like a pseudo-PC. In fact, it did look like some sort of a poor man's XT.

- Most of my friends had Spectrums (or Commodore 64s). My father had a dim view on the Spectrum given its rubbery keys and said that the Adam was much more professional. Years later my father was given a C128 and then I bought myself a TK-90 (Brazilian Spectrum clone) by saving my pocket money and doing errands so that I could trade games with my friends. When I left Uruguay in 1992, I had, at a given point, an Amiga 500, a C128, a TK-90 and still the Adam which was finally inherited by my step sister. One thing I remember fondly of the Adam is that it had proper graphics and sprites in "full resolution". On the C64, multi-colour games ran at 160x200 with rectangular pixels, and on the Spectrum you had colour clashes. The Adam was the most faithful to the Arcades at least for the old games around 1984.

- The custom plastic cabinets to house various components were outside my father's scope so I have no clue about them.

- I learned BASIC on the Adam (and a bit of Logo) and wrote many games. Adam was, with shame, or pride, my first computer.

 

P.S. Again, my above account are the memories of a 10 year old kid. Surely there could be errors.

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Uruguay undoubtedly holds a special place in the history of the Adam computer, particularly in light of its entry and significant impact on the Uruguayan market after Coleco stopped production.

 

Thanks so much for tracking down this site and sharing these details about your family's involvement with the Adam; you definitely had a unique place to watch how all of this unfolded!

 

You should try and track down an Adam and relive some more memories :)

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  • 7 months later...

Sexton thank you very much for getting this piece of history here, i found it very interesting and also for years like to know.

Sorry to call the monitor horrible i suppose it was designed to be cheap and to get you something to use the computer.

 

 

I was searching on Adam Coleco vision on Google and I came across this post. Seeing all the pictures from Soviet's tapes felt me with nostalgia.

 

I was born in Uruguay, and my father, an electronics engineer, was a supplier for the Adam business in the country. My father built the tape duplicator that the company used to create those tapes that appear on Soviet's pictures. He also helped with other engineering aspects. I think that he also created the PCB design for those horrible amber/green monitors and helped with the custom power supply since Adams in Uruguay were typically sold without the printer. I was 10 years old and my father died almost two decades ago so my account may be a bit distorted at times. But this is what I recall from my memory:

 

- The importer who brought the Adam in Uruguay seemed to have purchased containers full of disposed Adam bits and pieces (tape drives on their own, consoles on their own, joysticks on their own). Vans would unload all the components in a room at my father's shop and would form "mountains" of Adam rubbish. Most of the components were faulty; tape drives would not start, or would not read tapes, joysticks would had faulty number pads, etc. It seems to me that the importer bought unsold stock directly from the factory, before any quality checks, because this part I do remember clearly: most components were broken. I think that it took like 3 to 5 broken Adams to put together a fully working one (console, tape drive, keyboard, 1 joystick) ready for sale.

- I had never seen any original "retail" Adam boxes. Again, my guess is that the importer bought untested factory stock rather than unsold retail stock.

- In addition to the factory stock, the importer also had piles (infinite to my young eyes) of Buck Roger's and SmartBASIC original tapes. These piles I had seen at the importer's office (not my dad's). Presumingly, these tapes were overwritten with games and other software using the tape duplicator. The tape duplicator I think would copy 5 or 10 tapes at once. I do not know what the process was, I just remember seeing the duplicator in action at the importer's office.

- Other than SmartBASIC and Buck Roger's, the importer sold a huge catalogue of (most likely illegal, or abandon-ware) games and software. The importer published a printed catalogue in Spanish (with a red cover; I still remember) and produced the tapes with simple bi-chromatic covers. Since most people had never seen an original Coleco cartridge, they assumed this was the way Adam software was released. Luckily, I had all the games I wanted; my father just had to ask his customer, and if any of my Adam's would brake, I would just need to go to the pile of Adam rubbish and test each component until I found a working one. I replaced my tape drive twice and my joystick another three times by just scavenging the Adam rubbish piles at my father's shop. As far as I remember, the cost of the Adam parts was close to zero. The cost of an Adam in Uruguay was actually the cost of scavenging, testing and putting together a working one as far as the importer was concerned. As such, I don't remember any inventory checks. There was just an oversupply of Adam parts all over the place. To me, this situation was more akin to that of the infamous E.T. Atari cartridges buried in the desert. In fact, saying "importer" is sort of a bold statement.

- The Adam as meant for the American retail market included no monitor but a printer that also doubled as a power supply. In Uruguay, the Adam was sold without the power supply, so custom power supply was included, and the console was bundled with a monochromatic phosphorous amber or green monitor. This made the Adam look more like a mini PC. In short, the typical Uruguayan Adam bundle consisted of:

* The Adam console with a custom power supply

* A small (I think 10") Amber/Green monitor

* A QWERTY American non-Spanish keyboard

* A joystick/numeric pad

* Original tapes: Buck Roger's and SmartBASIC

* A game catalogue (red cover) in Spanish

* A SmartBASIC original manual in English (I'm not so sure if this was part of the bundle, I had one at least)

- I am not sure as to why the importer concluded that the monochromatic monitor was necessary. Maybe it was to differentiate it from the Spectrum and Commodore 64 and make it look more like a pseudo-PC. In fact, it did look like some sort of a poor man's XT.

- Most of my friends had Spectrums (or Commodore 64s). My father had a dim view on the Spectrum given its rubbery keys and said that the Adam was much more professional. Years later my father was given a C128 and then I bought myself a TK-90 (Brazilian Spectrum clone) by saving my pocket money and doing errands so that I could trade games with my friends. When I left Uruguay in 1992, I had, at a given point, an Amiga 500, a C128, a TK-90 and still the Adam which was finally inherited by my step sister. One thing I remember fondly of the Adam is that it had proper graphics and sprites in "full resolution". On the C64, multi-colour games ran at 160x200 with rectangular pixels, and on the Spectrum you had colour clashes. The Adam was the most faithful to the Arcades at least for the old games around 1984.

- The custom plastic cabinets to house various components were outside my father's scope so I have no clue about them.

- I learned BASIC on the Adam (and a bit of Logo) and wrote many games. Adam was, with shame, or pride, my first computer.

 

P.S. Again, my above account are the memories of a 10 year old kid. Surely there could be errors.

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No worries Soviet. I take no offence; my father's line of business wasn't the Adam; unless my memory fails me I think that he was friend of the importer and the relationship was very casual since I remember going to that Adam's HQ somewhere along "rambla" in Montevideo many times which is where I would be given all sorts of freebies. I'm actually surprised to see in your pictures that the adaptations and after market accessories kept going when I thought everyone would have already migrated to PC, Amiga, etc. "Scarcity is the mother of innovation" or something like that.

 

I'm also surprised to know of your relationship with the Narco Police members. When I had the Adam most of my friends had either C-64 or Spectrum (until I got both) and Dinamic was at the time a famous Spanish game developer always on the cover of the Microhobby magazine. I understand they published this game and it was indeed one of their last hits before the company merged into something else.

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  • 1 month later...

Ok finally i was able to get my hands on the Digital Data Drive module and controller for the ZX spectrum.

Also the ZX spectrum modem that was build by the same team, they used the Coleco Adam modem and build a adapter board to make it work on the Speccy. The coleco adam modems where very cheap and can be purchased in some electronics store in bulk.

Got in contact to the guy "Carlos Galucci" that developed the digital data drive controller firmware and how he reverse engineered the drive he do done not even owning an Adam, was able to interview him.

Here is what i found some pictures and videos.

 

Hi recently i came across the HiLow tape interfaces, this units where build and sold on Uruguay by the same team that developed games like NarcoPolice.

After showing them to Carlos Galucci the developer of the OS contained in its rom, he told me probably they build less than 150 units.

This is what it think its the last working example and where able to document how works found quite amusing considering that use a Coleco Adam Digital Data Drive.

They break the plastic posts on the tape drive so it can take standard audio cassettes its amazing that the drive works much better than when run in a original Adam, also the operating system its transparent to the applications you have to type the commands inside the quotes when you are ask for the program name.

For example: save "@" its format tape load "*" get you a screen menu that let you choose the file to load. save "*programname" do a memory snapshot when the red button on the drive is pressed + symbol shift if you do a save ".program" it will store as a regular file using this metod any speccy software can write to the tape drive.

They develop the tape unit because the tape drives where very cheap and can be purchased for less than 10 usd in bulk when Coleco dumped a ton of failed computers consoles and parts here, after the failure off the Adam.

Also got a modem build by them the "HILOW TK MODEM" the modified standard coleco adam modems and produced a rom os that let you have rs232 functions + modem.

 

Disassembled and commented Digital Data Drive controller firmware by Hector de Armas plain text zipped:

http://www.filedropper.com/fuente

Here is a quick interview to Carlos Galucci the software developer of the drive and Hector de Armas he dumped an disassembled the rom from the hilow a long time ago. Warning spanish ahead:

 

pictures of the unit

Whats_App_Image_2016_11_23_at_12_49_48.j

Whats_App_Image_2016_11_23_at_12_50_21_1

14566418_10210725136705224_8788220878342

14590050_10210725135385191_7368316293353

14543778_10210725136265213_7883959771707

14556749_10210725135425192_3963697102303

14480583_10210725136505219_4109811227408

Whats_App_Image_2016_11_23_at_12_49_36.j

 

Carlos Galucci from Iron Byte Data Drive Firmware developer.

14462973_10210729128685021_1926789236669

Edited by soviet
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  • 3 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

People buy container loads of *useless crap* all the time at these company closure auctions. Probably for the cost of trucking it away. They are doing the sellers a favor. Not surprised that someone obtained all the stuff and exported (probably as scrap) to a country where the market was ideal for this stuff. Kudos to these guys for making a good business out of it.

 

I have a friend who bought a container of old acid processing machines and has made hundreds of thousands a year purifying acid, and I just landed a nice project replacing all the outdated PLC controllers...

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  • 9 months later...

OK after going to an old electronic store, that used to also sell scrap parts for projects that he got from the guys that imported the coleco junk.

This electronic store get all the part that seem to have no use for the "adam store" or the have just to much of them and unloaded them as "hobby electronic parts"

They where cleaning the basement and find a box that have more than 500 boards like this i just purchased some for fun, i'm not sure from what they are the edge connector is sure fits on the coleco expansion module slot connector tested this.

 

Here is a pic sorry for the quality but my cell phone broke and i'm using a old one:

IMG_20180106_150939.jpg

Edited by soviet
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  • 2 years later...
On 1/6/2018 at 12:20 PM, soviet said:

OK after going to an old electronic store, that used to also sell scrap parts for projects that he got from the guys that imported the coleco junk.

This electronic store get all the part that seem to have no use for the "adam store" or the have just to much of them and unloaded them as "hobby electronic parts"

They where cleaning the basement and find a box that have more than 500 boards like this i just purchased some for fun, i'm not sure from what they are the edge connector is sure fits on the coleco expansion module slot connector tested this.

 

Here is a pic sorry for the quality but my cell phone broke and i'm using a old one:

IMG_20180106_150939.jpg

Did you ever do any further research into what this Expansion Board is? If you can provide some clearer picks, I’m sure there are numerous people on here that could possibly figure it out if the chip markings are legible.

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  • 6 months later...
On 11/28/2020 at 11:53 AM, NIAD said:

Did you ever do any further research into what this Expansion Board is? If you can provide some clearer picks, I’m sure there are numerous people on here that could possibly figure it out if the chip markings are legible.

Not sure for what they where they say on the pcb (coleco 1984) so they must be from some oficial harware.

Here goes the pics.

87a698c3-2734-4796-8796-97dc81d0bb01.jpg
28930c52-a9d1-4bc1-a6f4-5bffc87cf9d8.jpg
be992b83-9016-4cb5-9a7e-cba72de307bb.jpg
d34faead-3d30-42aa-90bc-74f2dd42029b.jpg

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2 hours ago, soviet said:

Not sure for what they where they say on the pcb (coleco 1984) so they must be from some oficial harware.

Here goes the pics.

87a698c3-2734-4796-8796-97dc81d0bb01.jpg
28930c52-a9d1-4bc1-a6f4-5bffc87cf9d8.jpg
be992b83-9016-4cb5-9a7e-cba72de307bb.jpg
d34faead-3d30-42aa-90bc-74f2dd42029b.jpg

NICE pictures Soviet, and very legible for what the chips are; BUT I am not someone to even know what any of them do.  I can read Coleco on it but that is about all I know.  THANKS for the pics, someone will have an idea what it may do.

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It's a little hard to see some of the traces (glare on the back, capacitors in the way on the front), but we can probably take a pretty good guess without a full schematic. The four chips left to right:

 

74LS30 - 8 input NAND gate
SN74LS240N - 8 bit inverting tri-state buffer
SN74LS32N - quad 2-input OR
SN74LS74AN - dual JK Flip-flop

 

There's an unpopulated K1, which I want to say would be a relay. It almost looks like in the pictures that it was once present and then removed...

 

At any rate, there's no intelligence on this card, that is, no software. Nor is it providing any audio or video upgrades. The big posts labelled 'E' make me think it might be some kind of I/O card. With a little effort you could trace out a schematic and know for sure.
 

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I’ll throw in my guess. The 74LS30 tells us it’s probably being specifically addressed to do a function, but without a processor it looks to be a basic function. It looks like the original design was ultimately focused on doing something with with the two GRN E? and E3 connection points off the relay output while E1, E5, and E7 look to be just ground connections. With it modified in its current state it looks like it isn’t doing anything except for simply shorting the two GRN E? and E3 connection points together and utilizing no control from the ADAM side circuitry. I have no idea what they were trying to do with it in its current modified state and can only assume it is incomplete. The color designations at each E connector makes me think it was using RJ11 connections and the hard pull-down 100 ohm resistor off one relay output side makes me thing it is a simple signal to indicate when testing or some function was completed? Maybe a simple LED on an indicator panel when testing was completed or an error condition occurred? I originally thought it must do more than just this but I just don’t see anything there that makes me think that. It appears to be simply triggering a latch circuit for the relay and nothing more. They needed these in some sort of numbers to justify a PCB run and I can only guess these were used in some sort of test environment.

Edited by Tekman
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This board could have been used in conjunction with one of Coleco’s In-House CV or Adam test utility cartridges. As was explained by a Coleco Tech, the multiple Coleco locations (CT, NY and Canada) didn’t always collaborate with one another, so it’s always been a little difficult to get definitive answers on matters like these.

 

The only test carts that I know of that require additional hardware are:

 

- Go/No/Go by Nuvatec. Nanochess gave a detailed description of his findings of the program code and IIRC it looked at the controller port(s) for additional hardware.

 

- Adam Final Test (not the rom image in the Archive as that one needs to be renamed to Adam Menu Test) which requires the Adam Final Test Module (contained in an EM#1 case) and additional accessories. Just got a good dump of the cartridge and others that I am sorting through.

 

- System Hardware Test. Not much is known about this one but additional hardware seems to be needed.

 

Edited by NIAD
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