SmartBASIC II emulator for PC?

[The Man Who Knew Not Too Much]

I accidentally came across this forum, and I think it's wonderful that there is still a community for the Adam.

 

My first computer was an Adam, specifically the Expansion Module #3, and it was love at first sight. At that time, in early 1984, it was value for money one of the best home computers you could get.

 

For $430, you received great value for your money:

 

• Z80A computer with 64 Kb.
• Digital Data Drive
• Printer
• 2 joysticks
• 2 games
• Word processor
• SmartBasic

 

No other manufacturer offered anything close.

 

In my country, the competition primarily consisted of the Commodore VIC20 and 64, the ZX Spectrum, the ATARI XLs, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and a little later, the MSX and Amstrad models.

 

A Commodore 64 cost $285 at the time, but for that price, you only got a computer with Basic in ROM. You had to purchase the cassette player separately for about $50. If you wanted a printer, it would cost more than the entire Adam set.

I never had any serious problems with my machine and have only good memories.

 

The Adam was not perfect and had its downsides.

 

The printer was slow and noisy, like all daisy wheel printers, but the text had a typewriter quality. The power supply for the entire system was in the printer, but no one considered this a real problem. Many manufacturers did similar things; for example, Amstrad had the power supply in the monitor. I also didn't hear anyone complain that Apple combined its Macintosh screen, computer, and disk drive into one unit.

 

The Digital Data Drive was slower than a disk drive but much faster than a traditional cassette recorder and very user-friendly. Loading a game on the Commodore 64 could take 10 to 15 minutes, while on the Adam, it took only a few minutes. Disk drives were still very expensive at that time. The one for the Adam cost around $500. That's why most people in Europe didn't have a disk drive; in the USA, 90% of home computer users had one, while in Europe, it was less than 20%.

 

I learned to program with SmartBASIC (and later SmartBASIC II) and wrote tons of software, including games and various applications like an invoicing program and different types of databases.

 

Yet the Adam failed. Perhaps the computer world would have looked very different if they had indeed released the Adam in August 1983, as promised. They could have built sales and momentum for the crucial Christmas sales period.

 

Coleco had a good vision, ahead of its time; the Adam was the first computer aimed at all family members, but the bundle was both a blessing and a curse. The Adam was affordable at $430 in my country, but a Commodore 64, including a cassette recorder, cost only $335. You might not have had a printer, but not everyone needed one. A ZX Spectrum was even cheaper, and with that computer, you could use any standard cassette recorder that most people had lying around at home.

 

In hindsight, you are always right but perhaps it would have been better if the Expansion Module #3 had been nothing more than a keyboard with a connection for a standard cassette recorder, a parallel port, and an RS-232 port. There might have been plans for that; I vaguely remember a drawing of a keyboard that could slide into the Colecovision console. They could have offered it very cheaply to the owners of a Colecovision console, likely well below the price of all home computers of that time.

 

Unfortunately, it didn't happen.

 

Sorry for the long story, but here's my question: is there a good SmartBASIC II emulator for PC? I actually feel like creating some things for my first great love again.

Edited October 21 by The Man Who Knew Not Too Much

[jblenkle]

There are several weapons of choice, but I use the Virtual ADAM emulator which is a front end for ADAMem. You can find it on my web page at: https://www.colecoadam.net/downloads/index.html.

 

You can also find disk and ddp images here, including SmartBASIC II: https://www.colecoadam.net/00_csl.html

 

 

[The Man Who Knew Not Too Much]

TY jblenkle,

 

I'll visit your links.