How good was the Coleco Adam compared to other computers of the time?

[TigerSuperman]

For most of the eighties I only used computers to play games or for camp programming tutorials. I didn't really use computers for printing, spreadsheets, or general server-side stuff until later. So when it came to the corporate or small business side of things I was always out the loop.

 

How good was the Adam compared to other computer manufacturers of the time? Was it just a basic computer that had minimum functions, which would explain the peripheral for CV, or was it actually competitive?

 

I know there are some Adam owners on this site who could fill me in on its features and technical merits. I appreciate your input.

Edited October 1, 2018 by TigerSuperman

[youxia]

https://www.gamespot.com/profile/TigerSuperman/blog/3do-history-recap-for-collectors/26032710/

 

If there is one game I am sure everyone at least HEARD of or played the 3D sequel on PSX, it's Gex. The best version of Gex. Tight controls, great audio, and hilarious random commentary. 2D platformer fans will enjoy this game!

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/283283-lets-talk-about-gex-the-gecko-the-underrated-platforming-franchise/

[TigerSuperman]

https://www.gamespot.com/profile/TigerSuperman/blog/3do-history-recap-for-collectors/26032710/

 

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/283283-lets-talk-about-gex-the-gecko-the-underrated-platforming-franchise/

Usually I avoid the more radical posts on Atari Age, but Is there a reason why you took Gex out of a 5 game list of 3DO recommendations in a vacuum by itself with a deceptive quote and then omitted Battle Sport, Samurai Showdown, PGA tour 1996, and Primal Rage all of which where also listed in that very GameSpot link from 2013, 5 years ago?

 

Let's keep this thread on topic please.

[Pixelboy]

This is my opinion only, but I think the Adam came out at exactly the wrong time, during the first half of the 80s. And I actually had an Adam at the time.

 

1) The Adam's graphic chip was exactly the same as the ColecoVision's, so it was limited to 16 colors with weird screen display modes that were okay for games, but very limiting for just about every other type of computer application. Computers like the C64 could do better at the time.

 

2) Coleco went with a daisy wheel printer, just when that kind of printer was about to be widely replaced with dot matrix models barely a year later. Putting the power supply module inside the printer only compounded the problem.

 

3) Coleco decided to use proprietary high-speed cassette tapes as their main storage medium, instead of regular cassettes (like the Vic 20 did) in order to speed up reading and writing, and also to reduce software piracy, but floppy disks were just around the corner. Coleco did release their own floppy disk drive, but it was notoriously unreliable.

 

4) The footprint of the Adam was a big problem, when it was compared to most of the other computers on the market. The keyboard was superior to the competition's, however.

 

Add to that Coleco's outdated software development model, where technical documentation was mostly reserved to in-house developers and third-party developers had to reverse-engineer the hardware in order to develop their own software (tech docs for the C64 were far more widely available, which allowed bedroom coders to tinker around and get more out of the machine) and you had a perfect recipe for commercial failure.

 

So no, the Adam wasn't really competitive for business applications. AdamCalc was okay, SmartWriter (the built-in word processor) was kinda fun to use but was seriously limited due to the daisy wheel printer, SmartBASIC was seriously under-documented and had limited appeal for serious programmers, and the rest (like Recipe Filer, SmartLOGO, etc.) was mostly family fodder that few people bothered to buy. Most bought Super Games like Dragon's Lair, Zaxxon Super Game, DK Super Game, etc..

 

In order to get more out of your Adam, you had to have the right connections, namely people who had BBS services running that Adam users could connect to with a modem. The whole third-party Adam scene was very underground, and there was a lot of interesting stuff going on, but the kid that I was had no idea such an underground community existed, so I mostly played games on my Adam, wrote a lot of documents with SmartWriter, and did a little bit of (rather underwhelming) programming with SmartBASIC. It's only when I got rid of my ADAM and got myself a 386 PC that I really got into serious programming and saw what computers could really do beyond gaming.

[TigerSuperman]

This is my opinion only, but I think the Adam came out at exactly the wrong time, during the first half of the 80s. And I actually had an Adam at the time.

 

1) The Adam's graphic chip was exactly the same as the ColecoVision's, so it was limited to 16 colors with weird screen display modes that were okay for games, but very limiting for just about every other type of computer application. Computers like the C64 could do better at the time.

 

2) Coleco went with a daisy wheel printer, just when that kind of printer was about to be widely replaced with dot matrix models barely a year later. Putting the power supply module inside the printer only compounded the problem.

 

3) Coleco decided to use proprietary high-speed cassette tapes as their main storage medium, instead of regular cassettes (like the Vic 20 did) in order to speed up reading and writing, and also to reduce software piracy, but floppy disks were just around the corner. Coleco did release their own floppy disk drive, but it was notoriously unreliable.

 

4) The footprint of the Adam was a big problem, when it was compared to most of the other computers on the market. The keyboard was superior to the competition's, however.

 

Add to that Coleco's outdated software development model, where technical documentation was mostly reserved to in-house developers and third-party developers had to reverse-engineer the hardware in order to develop their own software (tech docs for the C64 were far more widely available, which allowed bedroom coders to tinker around and get more out of the machine) and you had a perfect recipe for commercial failure.

 

So no, the Adam wasn't really competitive for business applications. AdamCalc was okay, SmartWriter (the built-in word processor) was kinda fun to use but was seriously limited due to the daisy wheel printer, SmartBASIC was seriously under-documented and had limited appeal for serious programmers, and the rest (like Recipe Filer, SmartLOGO, etc.) was mostly family fodder that few people bothered to buy. Most bought Super Games like Dragon's Lair, Zaxxon Super Game, DK Super Game, etc..

 

In order to get more out of your Adam, you had to have the right connections, namely people who had BBS services running that Adam users could connect to with a modem. The whole third-party Adam scene was very underground, and there was a lot of interesting stuff going on, but the kid that I was had no idea such an underground community existed, so I mostly played games on my Adam, wrote a lot of documents with SmartWriter, and did a little bit of (rather underwhelming) programming with SmartBASIC. It's only when I got rid of my ADAM and got myself a 386 PC that I really got into serious programming and saw what computers could really do beyond gaming.

Very informative stuff here! What made you like the keyboard over the competition?

 

I'm also assuming the stand alone Adam didn't have any real advantages to the CV peripheral?

Edited October 1, 2018 by TigerSuperman

[youxia]

Is there a reason why you took Gex out of a 5 game list of 3DO recommendations in a vacuum by itself with a deceptive quote and then omitted Battle Sport, Samurai Showdown, PGA tour 1996, and Primal Rage all of which where also listed in that very GameSpot link from 2013, 5 years ago?

 

 

Why did I single out Gex? Because I found it funny. Why did I link to your Gamespot profile at all? Because of course it's not only about Gex - some people might find the similarities with general style, hair splitting, systems "winning", holy grail of sales figures, etc, etc - as compared to other recent sock puppets quite amusing as well.

 

Of course all this could be a cosmic coincidence. Stranger things happened, eh. But I'm sure that once you're ready to reveal your Mega Man/Out Run work all these doubs will be put to rest.

[Pixelboy]

Very informative stuff here! What made you like the keyboard over the competition?

It was sturdy, yet had a softer, less "clicky" key-press. And I always loved how the arrow keys were placed away from other keys.

 

 

I'm also assuming the stand alone Adam didn't have any real advantages to the CV peripheral?

Aside from a smaller footprint, there was basically no advantage at all, aside from the added "monitor out" connector, which is rather useful today, but was mostly unused BITD. Everybody plugged their Adam on regular TV sets, very few used actual computer monitors.

[mbd30]

Didn't the ADAM have severe reliability issues involving the power supply or something?

 

The TI99/4A had almost the same graphics capabilities as the Colecovision and was probably much better overall so you would have been better off with that.

[TigerSuperman]

 

Why did I single out Gex? Because I found it funny. Why did I link to your Gamespot profile at all? Because of course it's not only about Gex

Or you were trying to be deceptive, why would you not post the entire list of a blog entry talking about 3DO recommendations? Please refrain from disrupting my threads thank you. Edited October 1, 2018 by TigerSuperman

[TigerSuperman]

It was sturdy, yet had a softer, less "clicky" key-press. And I always loved how the arrow keys were placed away from other keys.

 

 

 

Aside from a smaller footprint, there was basically no advantage at all, aside from the added "monitor out" connector, which is rather useful today, but was mostly unused BITD. Everybody plugged their Adam on regular TV sets, very few used actual computer monitors.

That's unfortunate really, you'd think the stand alone device would be better than the CV peripheral or at the very least more reliable.

 

Didn't the ADAM have severe reliability issues involving the power supply or something?

 

The TI99/4A had almost the same graphics capabilities as the Colecovision and was probably much better overall so you would have been better off with that.

I have heard tell that Adam power supplies were prone to failure.

[spacecadet]

Others have more experience and know the technical details better than me, so take whatever I say for whatever you think it's worth. But a friend of mine who lived across the street from me got an Adam the day of its release and in the first month or so of it being out there, I used her machine basically every day.

 

I would call it competitive with other home machines of the time, although it didn't really excel in any area. If the competition was the Atari 8 bit line, VIC 20 and C64, it held its own, especially in the early days against the C64 because at first it had the advantage of that built-in library of ColecoVision games. Plus it could run CP/M, which most of its competitors couldn't do. Came with 80K of RAM, which was pretty standard at the time. Was theoretically more expandable than the C64 (though I'm not sure if its expansion slots were ever used for much).

 

The tape drive was an anachronism, though. We all thought that was a joke even at the time, and that was even before peoples' tapes started getting zapped. It would be like coming out with a laptop computer today with a CD-ROM drive built in. I think this hurt the system, because you couldn't buy it without that and it just made the system *seem* obsolete from day one at first glance. I think it would have done better if it either came with a floppy drive instead, or just sold for less with no built-in storage and let you choose the storage type. (Same for the printer, really.)

 

It's hard nowadays to look back and separate things year by year; we tend to lump everything together. It's easy now to look at that tape drive and say "well sure, computers back then used tape drives a lot." But no, they really didn't, not in 1983. Especially not new machines. The floppy drive had become standard on every other major machine, so I think this really hurt perception of the Adam more than anything else on initial release. But technically, it was a reasonably capable home computer otherwise.

[carlsson]

3) [..] floppy disks were just around the corner

Actually 5.25" floppy disks were already pretty much standard on the market, at least if you expected it to be a small business computer. The use of high speed tapes sounds just as backwards as Sinclair insisting to use Microdrives with their computers - both the ZX Spectrum and the QL in early 1984.

 

[..] in the early days against the C64 because at first it had the advantage of that built-in library of ColecoVision games.

Both the ColecoVision and the Commodore 64 were nominally released in August 1982, though it is unclear when the C64 started to receive some games. Surely it had a small library by Christmas 1982, and the majority of games and other software starting to arrive early 1983. The Coleco ADAM was released in October 1983, by which time both the ColecoVision and the C64 had been on the market for a year, so for purposes of obtaining games I doubt the ADAM had any advantage over the C64 here.

[Pixelboy]

Came with 80K of RAM, which was pretty standard at the time.

Actually, that "fact" was a marketing ploy. The system had 64K of RAM (it mapped the upper 32K to on-board RAM when a game cartridge was not plugged into the cart port) some of which was taken up by the BIOS. But in the general media ads, they said the Adam had 80K because they included the video RAM (64K + 16K). Technically, it is possible to use VRAM to store some software data, but that's not really what VRAM is for. So it was a little dishonest on Coleco's part.

 

 

Was theoretically more expandable than the C64 (though I'm not sure if its expansion slots were ever used for much).

There were 64K and 256K memory expanders, among other things, but there wasn't a ton of software that took advantage of that extra RAM.

[stlouisrod]

All I know is that I agonized for quite a while as a kid, wondering which computer I should ask for: Atari 800XL or Coleco Adam. Thank the gods in heaven I picked Atari! No offense to the toy maker, but the Atari 8bit line was an amazing system to program. I learned BASIC, 6500 machine language, how to crack games, was blown away by the first spreadsheet program (Visicalc), on and on. Did the keyboard absolutely suck all possible donkey balls? Yes! Was the video through the RF output horrible? OMG yes. Could I have found or created a composite video cable to plug into the 5 pin output for much cleaner video? Yes, but for some reason never did. Heck, I am STILL creating games on that system... though I refurbished a 130XE and absolutely LOVE it's keyboard! Wish those had been an option back in 1983 And yes, I now use the 5-pin to composite AV cable from Best Electronics on my 130XE for an absolutely stellar video signal <shameless plug>.

[CatPix]

Actually, that "fact" was a marketing ploy.

Although a common one. Maybe enough to trick US buyers, but in Europe it wans't uncommon at all.

That one is famous because it's written on the box and on the computer itself.

[carlsson]

It also makes me think of the Amstrad CPC472, exclusive to the Spanish market which had imposed a special tax on home computers with up to 64K RAM. The Amstrad was a CPC464 with an extra 8K RAM chip on board, unaccessible from the CPU but hey it was there and they circumvented the tax. I suppose the ADAM (and certain MSX computers like the one CatPix linked to) would have been useful to introduce in Spain at the time.

[TigerSuperman]

It also makes me think of the Amstrad CPC472, exclusive to the Spanish market which had imposed a special tax on home computers with up to 64K RAM. The Amstrad was a CPC464 with an extra 8K RAM chip on board, unaccessible from the CPU but hey it was there and they circumvented the tax. I suppose the ADAM (and certain MSX computers like the one CatPix linked to) would have been useful to introduce in Spain at the time.

Actually wasn't there some issue with American imports even beyond electronics back then that made them expensive in Spain? I heard IBM had a hard time there due to terrible import prices so I'd assume this would effect the Adam as well.

 

All I know is that I agonized for quite a while as a kid, wondering which computer I should ask for: Atari 800XL or Coleco Adam. Thank the gods in heaven I picked Atari! No offense to the toy maker, but the Atari 8bit line was an amazing system to program. I learned BASIC, 6500 machine language, how to crack games, was blown away by the first spreadsheet program (Visicalc), on and on. Did the keyboard absolutely suck all possible donkey balls? Yes! Was the video through the RF output horrible? OMG yes. Could I have found or created a composite video cable to plug into the 5 pin output for much cleaner video? Yes, but for some reason never did. Heck, I am STILL creating games on that system... though I refurbished a 130XE and absolutely LOVE it's keyboard! Wish those had been an option back in 1983 And yes, I now use the 5-pin to composite AV cable from Best Electronics on my 130XE for an absolutely stellar video signal <shameless plug>.

The 800 was definitely a more capable machine than the Adam and more reliable so this doesn't surprise me at all. Though the Adam was somewhat competitive according to Spacecadet. If the Adam was more reliable and Coleco fixed problems ASAP the Adam may have been more popular.

[carlsson]

Supposedly it were some Spanish computer manufacturers who lobbied for adding an extra tariff on imported computers. It is not known for sure, but some point towards Eurohard who bought the rights for the Dragon 32/64 at the end of 1984 and realized the only way they would be able to be competitive on the Spanish market during 1985 was if an extra tax was added to the products of their competitors.

 

The act for a tariff on imported computers of all memory sizes eventually was passed on July 17, 1985 and took effect from July 25. The tariff depended on sales price and would range between 90 Euros for the cheaper models like the CPC464, to up to 1800 Euros for the really big computers. It seems the tariff would make for up to 50% of the computer price!

 

The computer importers protested and lobbied this so much that the minister in charge had to give up his summer vacation to get a new law signed on August 28, in effect from September 3 where the tariff only affected computers with up to 64K RAM. That is why the CPC472 came to be, to avoid the tariff of 90 Euros.

 

Spain joined the EEC on January 1, 1986 and as part of that had to remove their custom tariffs so in practise the tariff was in action for 5 months of which 4 months only applying to computers with up to 64K RAM.

 

Now the Coleco ADAM was discontinued in January 1985, well ahead of the tariff in Spain so except for clearance sales its 80K RAM would not have made any difference over there.

[BassGuitari]

I wasn't around BITD, but my impressions of the ADAM are as follows:

 

1.) Poorly built, even by Coleco standards; surprisingly shoddy solder work. It's not hard to see why so many were returned as defective, or are nonworking today.

2.) Weird design--obviously routing power through the printer, but also just the layout; getting at the motherboard requires removing the tape drives, the Colecovision board (yeah, it's a separate board), and some other stuff, in a specific order. It's...a process.

3.) It might have been an okay computer for students, but even with CP/M it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense as a business system.

4.) ADAM versions of Donkey Kong, Zaxxon, and other games are much improved from the Colecovision versions.

5.) SmartBASIC is very closely related to Applesoft (yay!...), but PEEKs, POKEs, and CALLs are incompatible (boooo!). A highly savvy user could probably circumvent that fairly easily if they were so inclined, but the ADAM probably wasn't the system for that kind of user anyway.

6.) The whole thing generally seems like it was kludged together in a rush...which, as I understand it, isn't too far off from how the ADAM actually came about.

7.) This thing came out at basically the worst possible time. There's no way I would have bought one of these over a Commodore 64 (or Apple //e or //c, provided I could afford it).

8.) It's an interesting computer, but to get into the kinds of things that make it interesting, you really need some kind of disk device, ideally a disk emulator or SD/flash solution that you can just copy disk and tape images to. Without access to the disk and/or DDT library, the ADAM is essentially a huge, much more clunky, and much less reliable Colecovision game system.

[mr_me]

The Coleco Adam was never positioned as a business computer. It was positioned as a home productivity computer when the computer market was realistically just a hobby and video game market. Word processing was clearly the primary productivity application (it's built-in) and is why a letter quality printer was necessary. The 9-pin dot matrix printers of the day were expensive and poor quality and not an option. Other applications would have been data access via modem (e.g. banking, shopping, news), but that market never materialized in a significant way at the time. Going after the educational market (i.e. schools) might have worked better, like it did for Apple, but they didn't do that.

 

Floppy disk drives were very expensive in 1982 and even in 1983 would have added hundreds of dollars to the price of the computer. Any C64 or ZX Spectrum users out there that had a floppy drive in 1983; how much did you pay? The tape drive never turned out how coleco initially envisioned but I'm not sure what year exactly did floppy drives become practical for an entry level computer. Maybe they should have separated the tape drive from the main unit so they could more easily adapt.

 

Coleco like most other entry level computer manufacturers at the time were hurt by Commodore's price war on Texas Instruments. Coleco's Adam quality problems in 1983 were fixed by 1984 but they lost the 1983 Christmas season and by 1984 Commodore was not only dominating the computer market but the video game console market as well. To survive Coleco would have had to adapt quickly but their computer was based on standard technology that was already five years old upon release. Adam had a library of games from colecovision cartridges but people buying computers to play games at the time wanted other media (for pirating). Like others have said, for videogames, Adam is technically similar to colecovision. The C64 although having slightly lower resolution can put up more sprites per scanline with more colours and supports hardware scrolling. The Adam sound chip doesn't compare with the C64 either.

Edited October 2, 2018 by mr_me

[Nebulon]

It was unimpressive (the tape drive and the permanently-attached printer didn't help).

 

Unfortunate role-reversal since the ColecoVision console was at the top when that console was launched.

[BassGuitari]

I wasn't around BITD, but my impressions of the ADAM are as follows:

3.) It might have been an okay computer for students, but even with CP/M it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense as a business system.

 

Let me rephrase this: even with CP/M, the ADAM doesn't make a lot of sense as a "serious" computer. (IMO.)

[CatPix]

Actually wasn't there some issue with American imports even beyond electronics back then that made them expensive in Spain? I heard IBM had a hard time there due to terrible import prices so I'd assume this would effect the Adam as well.

Shipping from the US alone would make any computer terribly expensive. It's why Atari and Commodore computers were made/assembled in Europe.

IBM PC were expensive compared to local PC, and it was true from the very beginning.

 

An IBM XT in France in 1983 was sold for the whopping price of 57 000 FF (the minimum wage in France at the time was around 5 000FF).

To compare, in 1983, you could buy for 54 000 FF a Logabax Personna 1600 which had a 8086 CPU (instead of the XT's 8088), 128 Ko of RAM, a 10 Mo Hard drive. A not so great difference in price, but a great one hardware-wise.

 

It's also the year that Commodore started selling the C64 in France, for the price of 5 000FF.

Next year the CPC 464 would be released and be sold for 3 000FF with a monochrome monitor or 4 500FF with a color one.

The ZX Spectrum sold for under 1 000FF (and if you can't still understand why it got success, I can't help you).

 

IBM's prices were outrageous, but European PCs's price up to the mid-80's were still in the amazingly high bracket. It's only really by the end of the 80's that PC became affordable, mostly by selling 8086 and 286 computers at around 10 000FF.

 

From what I found, in 1983 in France, the Adam was sold for 8300FF.

Given the specs, the ADAM was a decent computer, but the European market already had a lot of computers that offered the same features for much less - and would see even more 8 bits coming in 1984.

I mean the Amstrad CPC have a better video and sound chip and cost half of that.

[masschamber]

really similar to the sord m5, msx, sega sc 3000, casio pv 2000, svi spectra whatever it's called and every one computer with a similar amount of ram, a z80, and texas instruments graphics chip. The only really difference is some used a general instruments sound chip and others used a texas instruments one

[spacecadet]

Floppy disk drives were very expensive in 1982 and even in 1983 would have added hundreds of dollars to the price of the computer. Any C64 or ZX Spectrum users out there that had a floppy drive in 1983; how much did you pay?

 

Every C64 user I ever knew had a floppy drive. A few *also* had a tape drive, but nobody I knew had a tape drive alone. The 1541 was kind of a standard accessory. By then, the Apple II also had the Disk II and the Atari 8 bit line was on its second generation of floppy drive. And these were not really considered optional by then - you bought a system with them. If you wanted something that only came on tape, you bought a tape drive later. But only if you needed it. Again, this is 1983 we're talking about, not 1977.

 

The IBM PC launched in 1981 and the original version includes a tape drive interface - and most people think that's a joke when they hear it. The PC was intended for a different market, but that was two years earlier and most people are still surprised it supported tape drives at all. (There never was an official PC tape drive, and nobody rushed to make a third party one.)

 

Wikipedia says that at the C64's release, a system plus floppy drive would have been about $900. The Adam was apparently introduced at $725, but I'm not clear on which version of the system that was (I would have thought the expansion version would be cheaper). So, take away the dual tape drive (which costs something in itself), put a floppy in its stead and they'd probably still have gotten it in under the cost of a C64.

 

Anyway, the C64 was vastly more successful than the Adam, so there's not a lot of evidence that consumers cared more about price than anything else. If that were the case, then the Timex Sinclair 1000 would have been the most successful computer in the US. Consumers seemed to care about the combination of price, technology, available software and the perceived future of a system, the last of which would definitely be affected by including an obsolete storage medium with the system. (And I was there, and I'm telling you it did. If I thought it was kind of backwards-looking, other people did too.)

Edited October 3, 2018 by spacecadet