For a brief, buzzing moment in 1983, the Coleco Adam looked like it might out-64 the Commodore 64. Announced with lots of ambition, this 8-bit marvel promised a complete computing package: a keyboard, digital storage, printer, and all for under $600. An important fact was that it could morph your ColecoVision into a full-fledged CP/M-compatible computer. So far this sounds like a hacker’s dream: modular, upgradeable, and… misunderstood.
The reality was glorious chaos. The Adam used a daisy-wheel printer as a power supply (yes, really), cassettes that demagnetized themselves, and a launch delayed into oblivion. Yet beneath the comedy of errors lurked something quite tempting: a Z80-based system with MSX-like architecture and just enough off-the-shelf parts to make clone fantasies plausible. Developers could have ported MSX software in weeks. Had Coleco shipped stable units on time, the Adam might well have eaten the C64’s lunch – while inspiring a new class of hybrid machines.
Instead, it became a collector’s oddball. But for the rest of us, it is a retro relic that invites us to ponder – or even start building: what if modular computing had gone mainstream in 1983?
Neat machine! I miss those days, when everything personal computing was new and innovation – even the stuff that never quite worked – was everywhere.
Glorious chaos, indeed.
Fully agree. It was a wonderful time of discovery and learning!
As a C64 owner I always looked with envy at those two cassette drives. Although one is just an empty bay allowing for the upgrade of adding a second cassette drive. The concept of the computer fully controlling the tape seems like so much fun to use.
It wasn’t until a few years ago until I saw some YouTube videos of these tape drives (and their problems), somehow they weren’t as magical as I imagined. But still, the concept of fully automated tapes is soooooo cool.
I remember one of my neighbors had one of these and I thought it was really cool how the tape could support random-access reads, for about 10 seconds until I realized how really slow it was to perform a seek operation.
I remember my father hacking Coleco Adam power supplies to run our C64s in the ’80s. The power supplies were available cheap and a lot more reliable than the Commodore design.
Atari 8bit was superior hardware wise to the c64
And better software (os rom, etc), basically the first USB serial port, and later the pbi bus for hard drives, ram, or another CPU
Z80 or 6809 run whatever you want
The graphics system was a true Dma system, way back in 1979
Although the display list wasn’t fully turning complete
Can’t do memory operations
My Atari clone display can modify its own display list
Even modern upgrades allow the Atari to be more comparable to later IBM PC
With a 65816 instead of 6502C (no not 65c02 different chip,6502c has built-in tristate control and halt, not a 3mhz variant, just an Atari custom chip)
“Atari 8bit was superior hardware wise to the c64”
Weren’t both made by same designer?
No the Amiga and Atari 8bit were
Atari st ironically was designed by c64 engineers
Ah, I see. Thanks.
Actually, it was the IBM PC whose lunch an on-time Adam might have eaten. You underestimate the power of that shitty printer. Yes, it was shitty, but it was letter quality in a day when many professional outlets and editors were starting to refuse to read dot-matrix manuscripts, and the entire Adam was cheaper than the cheapest low-quality standalone daisy wheel printer you could find. Laser printers were the stuff of Popular Electronics world of the future articles. With the printer, not very good but good enough for personal use, the entire ColecoVision library of games, and enough RAM to easily run a spreadsheet had one ever been ported, Adam could have been a quick and cheap route to a real home office with lots more fun stuff available if that didn’t work out. Oh, and you could run the detachable keyboard through ordinary RJ-12 6-pin phone cable and use your TV as a display while sitting on the couch.
When I was very little we had a ColecoVision. I remember my dad saw an add for the expansion to turn it into a computer. He asked my mom and I if we would like to turn the game system in to a computer.
Now at that time if you asked me if I would like to have had a computer it would have been a definite yes. But the way he worded the question.. I thought it meant we would no longer have a game console! So I said “no way”. Mom probably understood but was happy not to spend the money. And getting a computer was put out of mind for several more years until we finally got a Tandy 1000.
In August of 1984, Charles Winterble, formerly of Commodore’s MOS Technology, joined Coleco as VP of Computer Products to lead the ADAM team! I’m sure Bil Herd has some stories to share.
I bought one off of EBay like 6 years ago, just out of nostalgia because my folks wouldn’t get me one when it came out. It remains in the basement, in its original box to this day, unopened (by me). Maybe I should open er up…
Ah, good memories. This was my first computer. I still have my tattered copy of the ADAM SmartBasic Programmers Manual on my bookshelf.
Same here. I think I only really used it for word processing and BASIC programming to make my own CYOA stories. Spent hundreds of hours on it. The printer used to shake my desk right across the room!
I had one of these as a kid. The cassettes were terribly slow, but it had some fun games. We eventually got a 5.25″ external floppy drive for it as well, but I only used it to save text files from the word processor. I don’t know if there was any software that came on floppies for it. The system came with a copy of SmartBasic and I would type in the code from Family Computing magazine for biorhythms or ascii skiing. It also came with LOGO and I would play around with drawing shapes and patterns. One of the coolest things was an expansion you could get that would let you play Atari 2600 games. It connected to the side of the main chassis and would have a second cartridge slot. Our actual Atari 2600 had died, so we used the ADAM. The Coleco controllers were crazy too. One set had a joystick, a keypad and a scroll wheel on top and 4 buttons on a pistol-grip style handle. We eventually gave it to my uncle once we got a 386.
I wanted to love the ADAM so badly. We bought one, returned it due to issues with the DAT. The replacement unit suffered the same fate. From there, we went with the 64. I had my eyes on Atari – in or around that time – but the price point was out of reach for a single-income, blue collar family of five.
What a wild ride though.
My mom bought me one of these as a kid. I started coding in basic and got all the way to make my own version of a Tron Light Cycle game (basically a two player Snake). Not long after, someone broke into our house and stole it, among other things. Had that not happened, I’m convinced I would have been an indie game developer. Loved that machine!
I loved my Adam! Playing colecoVision games through the cartridge slot, dual tape drives, upgraded ram, and AdamBasic. Yes, Adam had a version of basic. We had a filing cabinet full of games on tape, some were multi-tape games. We had a 13 inch black and white tv attached to it, but I dreamt in color. I so want one, just to bring back that little 8 year old kid who had the world at his finger tips.
I learned to code on a hand-me-down Coleco ADAM. Ironically, I went on to marry someone who is also a fan. It’s a niche market, but he makes modern mods for Coleco ADAM and ColecoVision: https://lundyelectronics.com. Old school!
The Atari 520 ST was another contender. Motorola 60000 16/32:bit processor. GEM graphical user interface in ROM, for instant bootup. VT 52 terminal emulator in ROM. PC compatibility through software or hardware box. Mac compatibility through hardware box (Magic Sack). Built in SCSI and MIDI. 640 X 400 monochrome graphics (pointy W’s, as a friend commented), 320 X 240 color graphics. All for a lot less than an IBM PC. But Atari under Tramiel was clueless. Amazing they did as well as they did…
I still have mine up and running and feature it online @ http://www.colecovisionadam.com
I still have mine in the original box along with an external 5-1/4″ floppy drive and a 300 baud modem that I installed. Also for the ones above, I also still have my original first PC which was an 8088 but I believe that’s a clone of the original 8086 that IBM used.