I worked at Coleco in the late 70's. Management were all screamers. Inventory control was a nightmare. Worst job I ever had. It was a total freak show. Go figure.
I had one of these back in the day! Back around 1986 i had just got out of high school and was working at a Sears. One day i was put on a special project, go clean all the junk out of this old storage room in the electronics department. I open the door and there they were. Probably around 5 or so Coleco Adams. . I knew what they were as back during high school i had the Colecovision system. It had quit working years earlier, thus i was left with all these cartridges and nothing to play them on. I asked my supervisor about them and he said they were returns that were suppose to be sent back to the manufacturer after they quit selling them but for some reason never were. I asked could i have one. He said he wasn't allowed to just give stuff away but to make it legal he could sell them to me. He told me to piece together a complete system, everything i wanted or needed and i could have it all for some ridiculously low price like $25 if i remember right. So i did just that. I got all the games and programs, it all worked great. I ended up boxing it up probably around 1990 when i got the Super Nintendo. As far as i know it probably is still boxed up in my parents house, now i feel like digging it out and tinkering with it.
I purchased one in the Mid 80's while in the US Military. After learning BASIC wrote a program to speed up the process of aligning microwave antennas and used it operationally. I wish I had a picture of a bunch of Airmen standing around a small TV punching in azimuth information. The printer was a big pain, as you said, it was the power supply, and you had to have it with you. I had no use for it. Eventually the printer died and that was it. I also wish I kept it. I'm getting ready to retire from a pretty successful IT career that all started with a BASIC program that speed-up the process of pointing an antenna. Awesome Video Thanks.
It only needed +5V, +12V, and -5V, so with access to military electronics supplies and a pinout of that DE-9 printer/power port you probably could have gotten it back online without the printer. I guess Coleco probably wasn't great for technical documentation, though, given what was said about the BASIC manual.
The Adam was my first computer, received it Christmas 1984, when I was 12. It sucked that it was discontinued that following January, and it did need way more software. But I didn't have funds to get anything else, so I used it... A LOT. Mine had no problems with reliability, it still works to this day AFAIK. The daisy wheel printer served me well, typing out every report I wrote through high school, and even a bit into college. Fortunately I was able to stock up on the ink ribbons, as another manufancturer made compatible ones for their own typewriter. The daisy wheel printer was NOT blurry as the video states, it was as crisp as any typewriter. At that time, dot matrix printers were the standard, and those were quite blurry, and not accepted by some teachers. I never had that problem with my prints. The printer was slow and loud, yes, but it got the job done. I also never experienced any of the problems you netioned with the word processor. I learned to program BASIC on it, and all using that manual you've said was no good... I llearned it just fine actually. And that BASIC was nearly identical to the one Apple used... that gave me a headstart for my high school computer classes. I wrote text and simple graphical games, and art and utility programs. I was *this* close to creating a compression algorithm to save space on my precious data pak cassettes for items drawn in a simple art program I created... might have been jpeg before jpeg if I'd been smart enough. Fortunately a supplier had a large cache of these proprietary data paks that I was able to order, many of which were surplus copies of Adam BASIC that could be overwritten I also went online with it a lot via the 300 BAUD modem, visiting and chatting on many a BBS, and also Compuserve. It really opened my eyes to the future. And small side benefit, playing the Colecovision games was also great, though I sure was ready for a NES by around 1987 Bottom line, Adam could do quite a lot even without the support of the company, and I made much use of it for about 6 good years... it was all about the effort you put into it
" _I was this close to creating a compression algorithm to save space on my precious data pak cassettes for items drawn in a simple art program I created... might have been jpeg before jpeg if I'd been smart enough._ " I remember writing a rudimentary drawing program "DumpShop" that could print it's single-color images to the daisywheel printer. Initially I wrote a saving routine that converted the lit/unlit pixels into zeroes and ones, saving the result to a text file. Those were pretty big. WIth the aid of a book " _The Hacker's Guide to ADAM_ " I eventually re-wrote that routine to read off the state of the screen eight pixels at a time and converted that to a decimal number, making the resulting file eight times smaller :D. As I recall, I also added a routine that changed the pixels from green to white as the save routine went through them, so you could watch the progress of your file save in real-time. " _Fortunately a supplier had a large cache of these proprietary data paks that I was able to order, many of which were surplus copies of Adam BASIC that could be overwritten_ " Was that American Design Components in NJ, by any chance? I got that deal too with the data packs. Still have them in a trio of plastic cases. Didn't have to use many of them as I later acquired an accessory that turned a twin tape-drive setup into a format-dubbing device--once you drilled the necessary holes into the cassete case, it allowed you to format C-60 cassettes so they could be read/written to. Before that I had mixed results using a dual cassette deck with adjustable record levels (you had to make the audio level fairly high for the computer to detect the format)
We received a Coleco Adam from Toys R US during spring of 1986. The computer’s tape drives destroyed game cassettes faster than you could replace them!
I agree with everything you said. Not sure why he thought the printouts were blurry. My teachers, especially the first year of University had no idea this didn’t come off a typewriter. And you’re right, the word processor was the best you could get for a home computer in 1984 as a teenager. I wish I had kept mine. I sold it for $100 when I got my PC.
I had stacks of these ADAM's from second hand thrift stores. I'd buy them for 5 bucks and go through the unit cleaning and fixing whatever was wrong with it. Everyone of them, I made my own independent power supply, so the computer wouldn't be dependent on the printer PS. The cassette issue I solved by removing the drive from the case and elongating the connecting electrical cable, this allowed me to have the cassette in its own separate case. Played the heck out of these, had great fun.
This was my very first computer! I was eleven years old when my parents bought it for my family. It was my first exposure to computers and taught me a lot, sending me on my path to get into the computer and software industry. Eventually got an engineering degree and have been working in tech since 1996. I would probably say the Adam was my main inspiration for my career path. To this day, I deeply regret that we sold our Adam at a garage sale in the 90s. Wish I still had it around just for nostalgia. :-)
Go grab a simulator. ColEm is one. Do you REALLY want to have an old pile of junk around? Get a simulator instead. You'll have a few hours of nostalgia and then get bored with it. If you really want the hardware, they are sold all the time on eBay but I recommend against it. They are basically space heaters now.
@@richardwicks4190 that's a good idea. Free is good. Just wanted to say, part of the nostalgia is the item itself not just the games. Like the sound it makes when it runs, I have an ancient Zenith Data Systems laptop I pulled out of the closet. Once I powered it on the smell brought me back more than anything. Things you forget about until you re-live them again. Always something better about the actual physical system. For instance I have a Sega Genesis emulator with hundreds of games, but Its hard for me to focus, always switching between games.. but then I picked up an actual system and now I'm way more into it. Nothing wrong with emulation, but physicality is important for many too.
@@Lightblue2222 Perhaps I'm different than you, working with the actual physical hardware is just frustration for me. To me, the experience entirely is the result of what the system produces. I have ZERO interest in having old hardware. The only experience I'm interested in, is what the old machines produced. Never had an NES, but I can beat Super Mario Bros no problem. All an old machine would do would collect dust for me. I would never power it up.
This monster of a machine actually got me through Jr. and Senior year of High School. My folks got it on close out for like $100 from a soon-to-be-out-of-business Bradley's back in the day. I used it as a word processor. I never had any colecovision games, but the things I got done on it... wow. I did "upgrade" to a Commie 64 a couple of years later with college, but that's another story for another video. :)
I remember playing Buck Rogers on a store display Adam at Canadian Tire, and having experienced the very boring tape drives of Commodore, I was enthralled at the way the Adam's cassette drive jumped around, fast forwarding and reversing and running, presumably to retrieve random access data, but I drew a direct line to the old computers in movies with the giant reel-to-reels doing the same thing. I ended up getting a C64 eventually, but when it came out, the Adam looked sexy af.
We had the ADAM computer and it was awesome. I’m surprised with all the issues you mentioned. Ours worked fine. The tape drive was slow, but we upgraded to the external floppy. We even had the modem too…. All in all, I was happy to have had the Adam as our first home computer…
This thing could have revolutionized home computing if they had just released it fully functional, without the plethora of bugs. Honestly, it was such an easy to use system with super compatibility to an already popular game console and relatively decent graphics. If it had been even marginally successful at the time, it could have really helped to put computers into households before the Amiga, and updates for it could have given it even better graphics or more powerful processing. It's a real shame they screwed it up so bad.
@@ClassicTVMan1981X Yes, I was just a kid when this machine was first introduced, but I still remember the advertisements for it on television. I remember going to a store and seeing the boxes for it and wishing I could get it because it just looked so cool. To my young mind at the time, it almost felt like having this machine would be like controlling a spaceship or something.
I got one when it first came out and experienced the printer issue first hand. I had to return it and get a replacement, which did work. For me, the biggest problems which prevented this system from succeeding are the following: 1. Bad printer. This should have been a dot-matrix printer without an integrated power supply 2. Cassette drive. They should have shipped with a floppy drive and room to expand with a hard drive for the future. Those alone could have made the system viable given some time to iron out licensing issues and so forth. I bought an Adam off ebay some years back and have used it occasionally. Mine doesn't have a printer, but a regular power supply that was built by someone on the internet.
I have at least one of these sitting in the basement or the attic. I may have two. One day I will create a space to display all of my vintage equipment. But that day is not today. I'm thinking that when the wife starts going back into the office instead of working from home I will repurpose her office to display the systems.
I had one of these as a kid in high school. I would type up assignments and turn them in. I'd also play video games and practice with making basic programs. It was a long time ago, but I don't recall having the major problems listed in this video. My number one gripe was.... not having a serial port to connect my speech processor. Second gripe, the printer was very loud.
Me too, only I thought the tape drive was pretty decent. It quickly fast forwarded or re-wound to where it needed to go, it was my understanding that most other personal computers with tape drives did not operate that way. The problem with the Adam was that I could use my electric typewriter to quickly type out a paper for HS classes, the Adam would take at least 1/2 hour for something I could type out in 5 minutes.
@@paulprobusjr.7597 : Yep, the average personal computer that used tapes used a tape _player_ rather than a tape _drive,_ so at most it would have a motor on/motor off control.
@@paulprobusjr.7597 When I was evaluating multiple computers as a kid to decide which to get, I recall these Adam tape drives being a major issue. I was seriously considering the Adam for a number of reasons, but in the end, the tape drives, which I figured would always be the primary storage device for this computer, were what ruled this computer out. I knew they were faster and more automated than typical computer tape drives, but they still weren't floppy drives, looked overly proprietary to me, and the warning that leaving the tapes ("digital data packs") in the computer while turning it on could erase the content of the tapes pretty much clinched it for me. I ended up with a C64, a floppy drive, an Epyx _Fast Load_ cartridge to greatly speed up the latter, and a dot matrix printer so that I could print out graphics (and a bit later, proportionally-spaced text in multiple fonts) in addition to text. In hindsight, I have no regrets because the Adam turned out to be so unreliable and the C64 was even more capable than I had imagined, but there was one point when I seriously considered the Adam, and its tape drive was what knocked it out of contention.
@@absalomdraconis That's right, even Commodore's later custom Datasette drive and the Atari 1010 were really just ordinary tape recorders (with minor modifications for partial motor control), and in fact we literally had to press Play or Play & Record, as instructed, to make them work. Most other computers simply made use of whatever old style tape recorder you had.
It's worth mentioning that the tape drive was not a standard cassette drive that most computers were using. Most tapes you had to know where the program started and stopped, the Adam's tape had a directory. It is basically halfway between tape and disk. It's biggest downfall was that it could only reference data in 1 dimension where disks could move in two, affording them a much faster seek time. The tapes had larger storage than most disks of the time though.
Remember that while it was compatible with Apple Basic, the resolution of the display was different for graphics and text modes but in a worse way so that most code would need modification to work anyway.
There was a 40-column mode in the video chip, but it couldn't co-exist with graphics (like in SmartLOGO), and SmartBASIC for some reason, never implemented it. I tried it out by way of a hack, and I believe the aftermarket GO-BASIC used it by default.
I sold computers at a store in California when the Adam was announced. I saw several of our competitors sink a lot of money in pre-orders for the system. My boss asked me if I thought we should stock them. I told her that nobody had actually seen the computer in action yet and that we should wait to see if Coleco could deliver a system would be all that it promised. Imagine our relief when it was delayed then turned out to be a dud once it was. A friend who worked at a competitor said that people who'd ordered them for Christmas were furious when they couldn't deliver. That store went out of business by the following July because they had to refund tens of thousands of dollars to angry customers and the whole thing tarnished the store's reputation.
MSX was released in Japan a couple of months before the Coleco Adam came out. It would have had to have been an MSX 2 with much improved graphics. They came out in 1985. Replace the tape drive with 3.5" disks. Would still have been quite easily Colecovision compatible
Even the ColecoVision console was a bit rushed, because they managed to release it in August 1982, one month before the FCC could give it its green light, which led to Coleco paying the FCC some cool money over it and having some of those consoles be brought back to be modified to meet FCC compliance.
I have such fond memories of my ADAM. I first heard about it at the Canadian National Exhibition in summer, 1892 and was first on the list to get one at Eastons downtown. It was priced at $999.99 in Canadian funds. I can’t believe I was just 14 when I carried it home on the bus that snowy winter day. Of course, I had to have it replaced twice, but I also was given the updated printer and it worked great. Once I had all the parts working there wasn’t a better computer for the money you could get. I also bought a better daisy wheel for the printer, from Brother, than came with it and my printouts were great. Yes it was slow and loud but I would just closed the door and let it go. I eventually got the floppy disk drive, and modem and learned Basic,(became a bit of a hacker), and used early message boards. I used the word processor for everything and even made spreadsheets. I kept it until I got my first IBM PC years later. But I wrote an entire “unpublished” novel on the word processor as a teenager, and printed the entire thing on the printer. Plus that was one of the best keyboards I have ever used. At the time nothing compared. I’d love to have one again, just for nostalgia to display in my home office. Thanks for this video. Made my day and brought back fond memories of my first computer.
Yesterday we finally managed to get one reasonably working in the museum. We have the expansion unit-model, which attaches to the front of a Colecovision, giving it a desk-filling slab of computer. The PSU is under powered to run the system as a whole which we solved by adding a modern PSU which has a -5 and +5v line. The connection between the 2 devices is flaky at best, despite us cleaning it and improving contact. If you turn it on (the only power button is halfway the slab, on the ColecoVision) it will start the Adam first. If you have a game cartridge in, you need to reset the ColecoVision using that resetbutton. If you reset it using the Adam's button, it will go to the writer software. Not sure if the 'full' Adam does that, but every keypress on the keyboard gives you a sound (think of getting a coin with mario, that kind of sound), a slightly higher sound when using SHIFT. Backspace is quiet, until you reach the beginning and it sounds like you won some a power up in a videogame. Pressing enter gives a sound like you bump into a wall, the entire WORDPROCESSOR sounds like a videogame.. very odd thing. Unfortunately, we only have one tape for the Adam and the direct drive cassettereader is very tired. We may give it another try to fix that in the future, for now it is working .. it's one of the oddest computers we have here.
Everything ELSE you said was fair criticism, BUT; unfair criticism of the price!!!! There was NOTHING you could touch with a drive and anything but 9 pin dot matrix printer for that $ !! I still credit my Adam for half a letter grade on every college paper I wrote!!! Why? Because in those days, people saw a computer printed term paper and erroneously thought your computer “helped” you write it!! Seriously! Thank the marketing gurus! The irregular placement of the (solid characters of the) Adam printer made things look like a ransom note, but people just saw it as a really crappy, portable manual typewriter! By printing out and editing 3+ drafts of every paper, I could get grammar and spelling perfect, and professors were TOTALLY AMAZED!!!
No system is worth collecting. But it was an interesting machine - I remember wanting one as a kid, but having a C=64 made it redundant. I don't think it measured up quite to the C=64 but if the execution wasn't so poor, I think it would have been a huge hit. It's a pity that the Acorn Archimedes never made it to the states as well, that was a great machine, but it lives on as a raspberry pi. The ARM was an excellent architecture. RISC-V may replace it, but I have little expectation it will.
Gotta give props to Coleco for releasing such an ambitious home computer in that time frame, doubly so as a console compatible add-on and adjunct. FOr those not familiar or too young, it was common wisdom pre-1985 that video game consoles should have a home computer upgrade. The 2600, INTV, and CV and probably others announced computer keyboard upgrades, but only Coleco really came through with a full fledged solution. Mattel was sued for promising one for the original INTV, and reluctantly released a crippled, laughable home computer add on for the INTV-II Other than prototypes, I don't think anything was released to the public for the 2600 Of course the Odyssey II tried to cash in by having a built in keyboard on the base console, though the unit was less functional than either a TImex SInclair or Vic20
In retrospect, however, this great-sounding idea turned out to be a terrible one for console manufacturers, including Coleco, although they came the closest to actually making a viable personal/home computer out of a console. In fact, attempting to do so invariably killed off the console, and in the case of Coleco, it killed off the whole company! Atari sort of bypassed this process with the 400, which was originally intended as a game console with a membrane keyboard that could also serve as a computer, but they ended up selling it as a computer with an awful keyboard that was priced too high for a console, and the Atari 5200 console just confused everything. With the benefit of hindsight, what Atari needed to do was be more aggressive with pricing in general, earlier than they did, and not charge an enormous premium for the 800 just because it had a regular keyboard (wasn't much different from the 400 besides this). Atari's hesitance and their initial refusal to release technical specs on their 8-bit computers squandered their huge technological lead, and allowed Commodore to steal their thunder. The VIC-20 was inferior, but it was priced like a console and had a regular keyboard, which along with it being marketed as a replacement for mere game consoles, was very compelling for the public. It opened the door for the Commodore 64 (great console, solid 8-bit computer, and has a regular keyboard for a low price) to dominate the 8-bit computer market and outsell every console, as well, except for the even less expensive 2600. The 800 or 800XL could have been the computer to do that instead, but timing and some very questionable decisions made by Atari handed the market to their main competitor. Atari still did better than anyone who tried to turn a game console into a computer, though. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult, but going from these examples, apparently it is very difficult unless you really, earnestly start out with a computer in mind like Atari did or already had experience making computers first like Commodore did.
For the 2600, Atari officially released the "BASIC Programming" cartridge. The "keyboard" were two standard 2600 keypad controller, giving you a total of 24 keys, plus a custom cardboard overlay (so it worked more like a ZX81/Timex Sinclair or ZX Spectrum keyboard). Yes, that thing was real...well, as real as it can get on a 2600. It allowed for nine lines of program code. It supported positive integers in the range from 0 to 99. You could actually implement Euclid's algorithm to compute the GCD of two numbers! You could actually *NOT* implement "Hello World!" The rumor is that Atari had to develop this cartridge to avoid a legal battle, as apparently some early box art for the 2600 (before it was even named 2600) implied that it could used as a computer. Well, let's just say your statement that "nothing" was released for the 2600 is pretty accurate.
I heard that the tape cassettes for the Adam differed slightly from the default Compact Cassette standard developed by Philips and that made normal cassette tapes incompatible with the Adam - does anyone know if this was true?
I had one of these back in 1984 and let me tell you, that cassette drive was a nightmare! While saving my Oceanography 101 final paper the damn cassette BROKE leaving me and my entire final grade flipping round and round with that darn broken tape. Tried to fix it with scotch tape, but it was hopeless. Were it today, the most that might have been asked would be, "Why didn't you tandem save it to a cloud?" But in '84, personal computer tech was still in it's infancy so it took quite a bit of explaining as to how my entire paper was on a broken cassette tape, and why a gaming company was making a personal computer. My first computer in high school was a Vic-20 made by Commodore, so when I decided to get something more reliable I moved onto a Commodore 64 and then a Commodore 128 (which was against the advice of all my friends, because back in '84 no one could imagine needing more than 64K to run your computer. Oh ya, those were the days! LOL ^_^
This was the first computer I ever used, and I was hooked. However, it had *the loudest* daisy-wheel printer I have ever heard, still to this day. I remember being outside playing football one day and my mom was printing labels (she used to work from home typing labels for mailers) and I could hear the printer going from outside, downstairs, on the opposite side of the house.
This was my family first computer. Never had any issues. Had it for years even after we moved on to different computers. Remember when my mom went back to school. I typed all her university paper on this thing. Got me through high school and her through college. And many hours of gaming. Great little first computer
Same here. I guess from what the video says, we were the few lucky ones that had no issues. We’re there better options, of course but the price and way it was perfect for school and university made it a perfect home PCs for me. I loved it overall but hated the loud printer since I could never print at night for fear of waking the household.
My favourite 8bit system! ...and that's despite my being English and not even knowing of it's existence BITD. (Ok, I'd see adds for all sorts of computers in Scientific American - in the days when it was a well written popular science magazine rather than the utter garage it became, but that's another story) I imported one from the USA largely as a bit of a joke but it rapidly grew on me - it's actually an awesome machine, so what's the issue? I think I can sum it up with the following imaginary story: Coleco Management: "This Colecovision thing is pretty darn successful, I hear home computers will be the next big thing..." Coileco Engineers: "Funny you should say that, we have some ideas." Management: "Awesome, let's see it next week." Engineers: "WTF..?" ...a few weeks later... Engineers: "So here's our first engineering prototype. There's a lot left to be done and of course we need to discuss the final..." Management: "You're late! Let's have it on store shelves next week, right?" Engineers: "WTF..?" ...a few minutes later... Software Developers: "WTF..?" ...a week later once marketing finally picked up the phone... Marketing: "What? It has to be released tomorrow? Well, we don't usually do anything useful anyway, tomorrow it is. What could possibly go wrong?" ...and so the ADAM as we know it is missing about 6-18 months R&D, software development - marketing types always have and always will be worse than useless.
WOW!!! I'm glad I never read those reviews. That thing got me through high school!! I did all my english reports on it. I made a desk for it in woodshop. I taught myself BASIC over the summer of '84 and made a text game. I even used BASIC to learn trigonometry and do my algebra and trig homework. Doing that gave me my highest grades in math since elementary. I loved it. (had a house fire back in'94 and the Coleco ADAM was lost.)
I had a Coleco Adam, actually 2 of them. Neither one worked and were broken right out of the box. 12 year old me was devastated. I wound up with an Amstrad instead. :(
I had a coleco vision with toNs of games and accessories. My parents sold it all at a yard sale for super cheap with all my nintendo stuff. I can't talk about with them because I get so angry.
Thank you for this. So on my own, I decided to list my Atari 2600, at the time, in our local newspaper want ads. I sold it to buy ColecoVision and the Atari adapter. I have no regrets of that because this was such an amazing system. And I eventually re-bought most of my favorite Atari games. And most of them are still in my attic as of September 2023. I really wanted an Atom add-on but quickly the routing was on the wall that it wasn't perfect and my folks didn't want to spend the money on it. But I still like to get one for nostalgia sake.
I remember being surprised that Christmas with an Adam. I think my whole family went in on it. It was sufficient for my word processing needs. It included a manual with lessons on Basic programming. I did learn a bit of it. In the end, the worst part of it was the printer which needed expensive new ink cartridges every month. I really don't understand a lot of this critique. That's why context and experience are important. He has neither. In the 1980's, this was a very popular computer among my friends. We had nothing to compare it to. For gaming, we had consoles.
My one friend had a perfectly working Adam in the early 2000's. I don't know what she did with it. In the winter of 1984 I was working at Coleco in Mayfield NY. Most days I spent grinding up the computer cases, just so they could make new ones. Yes, the injection machines that made the computer case were running on 100% regrind. And the employees even knew the Adam would run Coleco in the ground. Why I went in the Air Force.
My sister and I had the ADAM when I was very young. My dad kept it in the scary basement so playing Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle was always extra creepy in the cave part! My favorite game was Dragon's Lair which my sister was great at. It fascinated me so much especially how the game randomized itself. Montezuma's Revenge was another memerable game. My dad gave it to some guys after they fixed a leak in our roof and didn't even ask us if we cared. I miss that thing. Every time I hear the word "videogame", I instantly think of the ADAM, the controller button over-lays and of course, Dragon's Lair.
Just like the Atari 1400XL, I do believe the Adam could have sold better if Coleco didn't try too hard and rush-release it. I mean, even the ColecoVision console the Adam was derived from seemed a bit rushed, since it was out before the FCC even approved it, which led to Coleco paying the FCC some fines and getting those early examples fixed to meet FCC compliance.
This was the first computer I ever had, and I am surprised to hear how disastrous the problems were, because the one my parents bought for me never seemed to have these problems. Yeah, dedicated software was minimal, but I least I learned something about simple programming and word processing. Which, for the time, was fine. Yes, the printer was VERY loud, but for me it DID work. I knew the ADAM was a real loser for the company, but I don't remember suffering these problems as the consumer. One thing that definitely worked out for me was the $500 scholarship thing that Coleco offered (another mistake by the company, I'm sure LOL). All I had to do was prove that I attended and graduated a 4-year college, and I basically got most of the purchase price for the ADAM back from Coleco over the four years. They gave you four vouchers worth $125 each, and you would redeem one of them every undergraduate year you proved you completed, and Coleco sent you a check. Doesn't sound like much, but after that I basically felt like I got the computer for almost nothing.
That's crazy, I never heard of that scholarship deal. The company was mismanaged. They looked at Cabbage Patch doll sales and drew the best fit line on their exponential sales graph and figured they would have unlimited money. Unfortunately, nobody there ever heard of a logistic curve. Doll sales tanked, video game sales tailed off (not talking about the '83 wave but just the eventual competition from Nintendo and others). Coleco also attempted other toy lines, all of which tanked. I don't exactly remember when the wheels came off, but it ended pretty abruptly in the early '90s with first the Amsterdam, NY location closing and later the main office in Connecticut shuttering as well. Sad times for all those dedicated workers.
@@bb5242 Not sure how much the scholarship thing was a loss for them, because I have no idea how many students actually took advantage of it. I just know I did, and I only knew about it because they pimped the scholarship thing RIGHT ON THE BOX, if I remember correctly. You'd kind of be dumb not to take advantage of it. I mean, you buy the ADAM for $525, and then they give you $500 back if you just go to college and finish? Sign me up.
The idea of an all in one package gaming console and computer combo was truly ahead of that time and hell to this day no one has managed nor even seriously attempted to fuse the 2 together. But now with the beer virus who knows.
Nice coverage. You hit all the low/high points - we had one of these in a household and used it a ton. The power spike with the cassette drive was the WORST. And the digital cassette as a random-access device was a really bad engineering design. Some of the games you could play were absolutely amazing. We eventually got a floppy drive for the Adam, and it was a p.o.s. for sure. OMG, I totally remember the bugs in the word processor, especially the kickback to typewriter mode! So frustrating. The amount of times I had to redo work because of the bugs in this system was immense. The bad BASIC manual was not a problem - I figured it out without the manual. The hardware and overall design was clearly the issue. This COULD have been as loved as a C64, but these flubs sunk it. And I remember getting some software that would copy Colecovision cartridges, which was great if you had friends with the Colecovision.
Most people tried Buck Rogers on cassette and realized how bad playing games that way was so they ended up using the Colecovision cartridges going forward.
@@NewsmakersTech but the super game packs as they were called were better than the cartridges. Check out youtibe vids of donkey kong on ccolecovision cartridge compared to super game pack for adam. Extra levels and intros etc.
I remember buying this twice and returning it twice around 1983-84. The first time I returned it was due to the cassette drive not working and then the second time I got it, it worked, but I soon realized that it was just a glorified typewriter with a very noisy printer attached to it. I remember it selling for something like $900CAN and a few months after the second return they dropped the price to about $400 just to get rid of them. Adam was very much a sign of the hit-and-miss market of the 1980s personal computer industry.
I had one of these when they came out. Everything was good up until the tape drive quit working. It was very helpful for school. Then I moved on to a Commodore 128.
I can't help but be reminded of my high school days where the ADAM was among a number of brands to choose from! My friends, peers and I, that were in our early years of what we would now call computer/tech enthusiasts, got into other brands of computers which thankfully, our respective parents listened to us when it came down to actually buying them! We couldn't believe that the ADAM still used a tape drive and that you HAD TO buy the printer that came with it AND that was how you turned on the computer! 🤦♂ This video only FURTHER proved that we made the right choices BUT it also showed that Coleco's management fucked things up WORSE than I knew at the time and that it DIDN'T have to turn out the way it did!
I remember when these came out, I thought they were pretty interesting. I already had a c64 with floppy at that point, I think (might have still had a Vic 20 with tape).
I worked for an electronics contract manufacturing company in the early ‘80s that made thousands of the monitor port pc boards for this computer. We hoped it was going to be a massive hit and earn us millions. It did not. 😔
The Coleco Adam is technically the computer version of the ColecoVision, but with the printer as the power supply and combine that with a defective tape drive and low-budget build quality. (10:27)
Wasn't one of the problems also the "waffle" drive or memory? I remember the product being introduced at the summer CES and, knowing how flaky Coleco was, wondering if they had the ability to really make their new drive work. Many of us in the industry bought Coleco stock assuming that Adam sales would go through the roof. We were all prepared to sell the stock at the first sign of trouble. Most of us sold out in the first announced delay. We made some decent money on that stock deal!
A buddy of mine bought an ADAM (I had an Atari 400). One thing I remember about the Adam was that the Power Supply for the entire system was *in the printer*, so if it died, you're entire computer died. And you couldn't replace the printer. You also couldn't leave it in the closet if you didn't need it, taking up a ton of space. And Daisy Wheel printers are LOUD. :(
Apparently, the Coleco Adam had so many problems. But how would things have turned out if.... they did independent testing before rolling out the product... and used the new 3.25 floppy (that had JUST came out in 1983) with the Adam instead of the tape drive?
This was the very first "Home Computer" we ever owned. I remember seeing the movie War Games and then seeing the ADAM. Convincing my parents that I would get better grades if I had a computer, they bought this. It was incredibly (at the time). I remember bringing in typed homework and freaking out my teacher. I eventually got the ColecoVision War Games game, too.
Better grades through hacking the school's computer, like in the movie? ;) To get my first computer (a C64), I had to promise, as in seriously promise, to have a career in computer programming later, and I actually kept my promise, too, thanks to hacking into the school's computer (just kidding about that last part).
A number of years ago (25 I think), I purchased an ADAM as a caseless offering - everything there, but no case. Worked fine, and I also has a programmable data cartridge for making your own games. Also had a 'Wargames' cartridge. Only issue, was lack of any documentation as to how to run the built in programs and accessories. Good exercise for the 'little grey cells' to figure things out.
I had one way back. I already had a radio shack coco, and this was crap in comparison. I remember doing a dump of the Adam's OS memory area, and found the OS was written by a company called Laser Micro systems Inc. Fun fact of the day :)
All of us with other machines were so thankful when my friend got his Atomic Adam. We were thankful that we didn't get the wrong machine! My friend would always want us to play the space cassette game. Just getting that to load could waste 45 minutes, because it was so unreliable. The portable Tandy with tiny lcd screen was even better than that clunker
I purchased a Coleco Adam and had it less than a week before returning it for the reason of poor quality and erratic system failures. The price I paid motivated the return given the experience I received from the Adam. It was this purchase and return that caused me to be more skeptical and do more research about all purchases of computer systems and electronics going forward.
My Uncle actually worked for Coleco at the time, basically the Adam was major disaster from the start. Originally Coleco was going to create a new game system. But late in the game they decided computers were the future and pivoted to compete with the likes of the Commodore. Which may have been ok if the powers that be didn't decide to hedge their bets and insist the Adam be both a game system and a computer. According to my uncle the Adam was what you get when you have a computer designed by a committee of executives that knew nothing about computers. They were also aware of the all the technical problems with the systems, every single one of their pre-production test units had major issues, yet instead of fixing them, Coleco management ordered a full production run anyway in order to meet the Christmas deadline (which they ended up missing anyway). Needless to say, it ended up being a disaster that pretty much destroyed Coleco.
Thanks for this video, which i found to be fair and accurate. I absolutely loved my ColecoVision but was essentially devastated by two defective units in a row and went the Commodore 64 and Amiga route afterwards. Happily, I’m enjoying a ColecoVision renaissance with the excellent Phoenix hardware.
Part of the reason why the Adam computer failed was that it came out at a time when the 6502 microprocessor ruled -- Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64. All three systems still enjoy a strong following nearly 40 years later. Also not helping matters -- besides the bad reviews -- was that during this time, just about every electronics company had its own line of computers (and all proprietary), so Adam was already entering a very crowded field as it was.
This video is excellent, but a few points need clarification or revision. Most of the Adam’s problems could be boiled down to the cassette drives. Efforts to straighten out the problems with the cassette drives caused the crippling release delay. Out of desperation, Coleco ended up releasing the computer before the bugs were worked out. The computer’s reputation cratered. About four months after the disastrous launch, Coleco was finally manufacturing Adams that more or less worked like they were supposed to. But by then it was too late. The long list of flaws mentioned in this video did not affect every Adam, and when Coleco finally got the thing working, the flaws affected few Adams. Also: Coleco stock in 1983 shot from around a couple bucks to 50, owing to excitement over the Adam. Coleco knew the cassette drives weren’t working right, and they knew well in advance that consequently they were going to miss the Christmas season. They HID this information from investors and the public. For that, Coleco suffered a class action lawsuit; I don’t recall the outcome. Between mid November ‘83 and March of ‘84, I returned at least 5 Adams to Coleco; time after time they didn’t work (usually the cassette drives). Finally I told Coleco to either send me a working Adam, or to refund my money. They sent me an Adam that worked! Had WORKING Adams been released in the fall of ‘83, I believe the early history of computers would have been very different. I think the Adam would have caught on as a good starter computer for high school kids and college undergrads.
I worked at the time for a passive component company that sold product to Coleco. Their marketing outstripped their technology and there is the rub. The fact that technology was moving so fast didn't help - they were chasing their collective tails on design and quality control issues.
My brother & I had a ColecoVision, both expansion modules, about 10 CV games & 30 Atari games. We wanted a Adam so bad. Never did get one. Guess we lucked out.
In late 80s , someone in computer shopper mag sold Adam expansion minus printer (included PS though) for around $40. I bought one, still have mine, and same thing happened to my keyboard as yours. ;-)
Thanks for this! My parents picked up a Colecovision Adam at a discount store in either 1985 or 86? We had really good luck with it other than the digital tape drive shredding a couple of game cassettes(My Donkey Kong Jr Cassette...waaaaahhh 🤣). That was the first home console game for me that had games that sort of looked like the arcade. I guess this was my first online experience using the modem to connect to the city library system. I played the heck out of the Gateway Aphshai cartridge! Good times!
'using the modem to connect to the city library system' ..😳 ..had I gone to my neighbourhood library in the 80s(even late 80s) & asked them for their modem connection, the little lady would have gone like whaaaaa😱....what extreme profanity thy speak young boy !
9:08 not true, the Apple II from 1978 used floppies, and it was the Apple II that many schools and libraries were buying a full 4 years before Coleco began making the ColecoVision.
I had this as a kid, and the tape drive crapped out pretty fast. I would put in the Buck Rogers tape, and it would just spontaneously rewind and fast forward without actually loading the game. It was one of those all-in-one systems. The cartridge games were way cool, and I remember using the word processing for a few homework assignments for school. It eventually got boxed up and stored away somewhere once I got an IBM PC around 1988 or so. I still have all the cartridges and tapes today, but the system itself is long gone. Lord knows where it wound up. I'd love to get my hands on a working Adam system again, for a reasonable price of course.
I'm not sure I ever even played Buck Rogers on it because it would never load up. The Dam Busters game worked and while the graphics sucked, the cool part was that before the mission started, the printer would type out your orders like it was WWII teletype machine. It added a sense of authenticity to an otherwise lousy game.
The problem with this computer, that killed it for almost everybody, was the cassette tape. It was infamous for wearing out the tapes early and there was no disk system. I mean, hey, even the Tandy CoCo had a disk/hard drive system. And the CoCo had the forethought to make a lot of their business apps cartridge based so it would guarantee to load. The Adam was just "never" going to make it. My nephew had one and i saw it sitting in a pile of unused stuff. After trying it, i was "over" the Adam in 20 mins. It just wasn't worth it.
I got one for the Christmas of 1983 and learned BASIC on it, as well as play a LOT of Buck Rogers. Was a fun little system that played Coleco games, and I had quite a large collection of them at the time. Used to play Wing War on it a lot too. Good memories!!!
Residing in Germany, this computer is completely new for me; no idea if this was even sold here (or some other place in Europe). Very nice review though!
@@bb5242 It certainly was, but if I wanted to get an 800XL, Disk drive and printer (an I did) it was $1000. So, $725 (if it all worked) would have been a great deal.
I had an Adam. I think this review is a little harsh. It was better than the other home computers at the time, had 80k, and mine functioned well. A year later, when Coleco killed the Adam, me and some other people formed an Adam club and began copying and swapping software. I ended up with a hundred titles, great games all running on cassette tapes you could buy cheap. These games had more depth and detail than any of the other affordable home computers. What killed the Adam? As said above late shipping of the product, the jacking up of the price, and NOT mentioned here was that *Coleco changed tack and tried to keep all the software development for the Adam in-house,* making it incredibly difficult for outside manufacturers to write product for it. Instead they prioritized writing for other platforms including IBM's PC. Compounding the problem was the CEO of Coleco who didn't understand the computer market and called them 'glorified typewriters'. Three years after I bought the Adam, I bought a 286 IBM based computer. All the other computers were junk in comparison. IBM was the future and thousands of kids who first learned on Adam, Atari, etc. began writing games for IBM in their basements, released them on Shareware and those games are still the blueprint for almost all the games we see today.
I had one but only briefly. The daisy-wheel printer was VERY noisy (daisy wheel printers normally are noisy so that was no surprise). The tape drive was "interesting" in that Coleco didn't use it like a typical audio-tape (e.g. someone with an Apple ][ or C-64 with a tape drive could use any ordinary cassette tape drive an audio in/out cable and it would encode the data into audio tones and save it to tape). Instead, Coleco used the cassette more like a digital tape (more like the mini & mainframe computers I used to support) where it would rapidly spin forward and backward to pick up blocks of data. It was better than a traditional audio tape drive ... but not nearly as fast as a cassette. My system did work though... nothing broken. In the end, I kept it only briefly and returned it within the return window. The store selling it to me promised a low-price guarantee. When I found it elsewhere for less, they wouldn't honor the guarantee ... so I returned it instead. But the brief experience with it didn't make it like it enough to buy it elsewhere.
I remember back in the day, my future brother-in-law's family had me set one of these systems up for his younger stepsister. They had picked up the whole system on clearance from Zayre's for $99. I tried to get the system from him a couple of years later but he said they had thrown it away because she was not using it after a few months....arrrggghhh.
My friend owned an Adam, which I called a Cabbage Patch Computer. It seemed to spend a lot of time searching its tape drive. And the printer made an awful racket. I wound up buying an Atari 800XL, then a 1200XL, then a clone. Then came the days when I coveted a 386. Now you can't give them away.
This was my second computer after a TI 99/4A, I enjoyed a lot of the games, and it was the first time I ever had a printer. I don't recall the Word Processor being so awful, but it was also the first one I ever used! There was a "printshop" program that let you print signs and banners, they didn't look near as nice as the dot matrix ones from my friend's Apple II as it tried to do some fancy ASCII art. On the whole I don't think I was very sad when I got a Laser 128 to upgrade it.
There isn't really a homebrew community for the Adam itself, but there are tons of modern Colecovision games being made which you can play on your Adam
It wasn't so much the system wouldn't work if "the printer didn't work." It was that if the power supply went out (in the printer), the entire system turned into a doorstop. I didn't get an Adam. I read about it, and after doing so, I was glad I didn't. The design with the power supply in the printer just struck me as weird. The design flaw that flabbergasted me was the electrical pulse. I knew of no other system, no matter how cheap it was, that had this problem. As I remember, it had to do with the fact that the Adam had minimal shielding. The one thing that impressed me about the Adam, from its description, was that its tape drives were nearly as fast as the performance you could get from a disk drive. I watched a video of someone using a real Adam, where they showed this off, and sure enough, the performance was that good. It's just too bad that the damn power supply would erase your tapes if you accidentally had them too close when you turned the computer on! Oy!
I bought a Coleco Adam around 20 years ago at a garage sale, for twenty dollars. Around a month later, I sold it on ebay to some German for around six hundred dollars. Still the best profit I've ever made from a garage sale vintage game find.
I still have a small collection of Daisy wheels, along with all of my cassettes. Did hoursssss of creative writing with my Adam, not to mention minutes for clubs, school reports.
You forgot to put "[sic]" where Jules complains about the quality of the manual. Ironically, he writes "it's" for "its", something I would have thought that any copyeditor/lineeditor from the magazine would have caught. (I've been published in BYTE, BTW)
I wanted one as my first computer but the delays and price raises I ended up buying a Atari computer and loved it. Kept using it as a primary home computer for ten years.
14+ minutes and never opened it up to show the inside. I've never seen whats inside one of these. I remember some surplus outfit having the tape drives for sale cheap for several years. Oh, you didn't mention they're not ordinary Compact Cassette drives. They run at a higher speed and require special tapes.
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I worked at Coleco in the late 70's. Management were all screamers. Inventory control was a nightmare. Worst job I ever had. It was a total freak show. Go figure.
that would have been the #1 reason for the fails in this video, and then the video # 1 reason ( being # 2)
screamers?
Apparently RUclips never signed the "don't say anything bad about Coleco" agreement 😆
I worked there in 81 and 82
@@robertmiles9942 😂
I had one of these back in the day! Back around 1986 i had just got out of high school and was working at a Sears. One day i was put on a special project, go clean all the junk out of this old storage room in the electronics department. I open the door and there they were. Probably around 5 or so Coleco Adams. . I knew what they were as back during high school i had the Colecovision system. It had quit working years earlier, thus i was left with all these cartridges and nothing to play them on. I asked my supervisor about them and he said they were returns that were suppose to be sent back to the manufacturer after they quit selling them but for some reason never were. I asked could i have one. He said he wasn't allowed to just give stuff away but to make it legal he could sell them to me. He told me to piece together a complete system, everything i wanted or needed and i could have it all for some ridiculously low price like $25 if i remember right. So i did just that. I got all the games and programs, it all worked great. I ended up boxing it up probably around 1990 when i got the Super Nintendo. As far as i know it probably is still boxed up in my parents house, now i feel like digging it out and tinkering with it.
That's pretty sweet! It would be very cool to see if it still works
My Atari 800 still works. It was so well built.
did u ever dig it out at your parents place
If your parents are anything like mine, it's in a landfill. Frown emoji
@@doodoobrn same
I purchased one in the Mid 80's while in the US Military. After learning BASIC wrote a program to speed up the process of aligning microwave antennas and used it operationally. I wish I had a picture of a bunch of Airmen standing around a small TV punching in azimuth information. The printer was a big pain, as you said, it was the power supply, and you had to have it with you. I had no use for it. Eventually the printer died and that was it. I also wish I kept it. I'm getting ready to retire from a pretty successful IT career that all started with a BASIC program that speed-up the process of pointing an antenna. Awesome Video Thanks.
It only needed +5V, +12V, and -5V, so with access to military electronics supplies and a pinout of that DE-9 printer/power port you probably could have gotten it back online without the printer. I guess Coleco probably wasn't great for technical documentation, though, given what was said about the BASIC manual.
The Adam was my first computer, received it Christmas 1984, when I was 12. It sucked that it was discontinued that following January, and it did need way more software. But I didn't have funds to get anything else, so I used it... A LOT. Mine had no problems with reliability, it still works to this day AFAIK.
The daisy wheel printer served me well, typing out every report I wrote through high school, and even a bit into college. Fortunately I was able to stock up on the ink ribbons, as another manufancturer made compatible ones for their own typewriter. The daisy wheel printer was NOT blurry as the video states, it was as crisp as any typewriter. At that time, dot matrix printers were the standard, and those were quite blurry, and not accepted by some teachers. I never had that problem with my prints. The printer was slow and loud, yes, but it got the job done. I also never experienced any of the problems you netioned with the word processor.
I learned to program BASIC on it, and all using that manual you've said was no good... I llearned it just fine actually. And that BASIC was nearly identical to the one Apple used... that gave me a headstart for my high school computer classes. I wrote text and simple graphical games, and art and utility programs. I was *this* close to creating a compression algorithm to save space on my precious data pak cassettes for items drawn in a simple art program I created... might have been jpeg before jpeg if I'd been smart enough. Fortunately a supplier had a large cache of these proprietary data paks that I was able to order, many of which were surplus copies of Adam BASIC that could be overwritten
I also went online with it a lot via the 300 BAUD modem, visiting and chatting on many a BBS, and also Compuserve. It really opened my eyes to the future.
And small side benefit, playing the Colecovision games was also great, though I sure was ready for a NES by around 1987
Bottom line, Adam could do quite a lot even without the support of the company, and I made much use of it for about 6 good years... it was all about the effort you put into it
" _I was this close to creating a compression algorithm to save space on my precious data pak cassettes for items drawn in a simple art program I created... might have been jpeg before jpeg if I'd been smart enough._ "
I remember writing a rudimentary drawing program "DumpShop" that could print it's single-color images to the daisywheel printer. Initially I wrote a saving routine that converted the lit/unlit pixels into zeroes and ones, saving the result to a text file. Those were pretty big. WIth the aid of a book " _The Hacker's Guide to ADAM_ " I eventually re-wrote that routine to read off the state of the screen eight pixels at a time and converted that to a decimal number, making the resulting file eight times smaller :D. As I recall, I also added a routine that changed the pixels from green to white as the save routine went through them, so you could watch the progress of your file save in real-time.
" _Fortunately a supplier had a large cache of these proprietary data paks that I was able to order, many of which were surplus copies of Adam BASIC that could be overwritten_ "
Was that American Design Components in NJ, by any chance? I got that deal too with the data packs. Still have them in a trio of plastic cases. Didn't have to use many of them as I later acquired an accessory that turned a twin tape-drive setup into a format-dubbing device--once you drilled the necessary holes into the cassete case, it allowed you to format C-60 cassettes so they could be read/written to. Before that I had mixed results using a dual cassette deck with adjustable record levels (you had to make the audio level fairly high for the computer to detect the format)
We received a Coleco Adam from Toys R US during spring of 1986. The computer’s tape drives destroyed game cassettes faster than you could replace them!
I agree with everything you said. Not sure why he thought the printouts were blurry. My teachers, especially the first year of University had no idea this didn’t come off a typewriter. And you’re right, the word processor was the best you could get for a home computer in 1984 as a teenager. I wish I had kept mine. I sold it for $100 when I got my PC.
I had stacks of these ADAM's from second hand thrift stores. I'd buy them for 5 bucks and go through the unit cleaning and fixing whatever was wrong with it. Everyone of them, I made my own independent power supply, so the computer wouldn't be dependent on the printer PS. The cassette issue I solved by removing the drive from the case and elongating the connecting electrical cable, this allowed me to have the cassette in its own separate case. Played the heck out of these, had great fun.
do you have an adam still
@@thisisrob8750 Sadly, no. I keep my eyes open at thrift shops, yard sales and flea markets. A fire destroyed all my possessions about 20 years ago.
@@gregryan7761 That's horrible. I'm definitely going to make my house fireproof. I couldn't deal with losing my collections.
@@gregryan7761I have a full set I just found with all the expansions and probably 40 games but don’t know if it works yet
I had one as a kid and it changed my life, I loved it and spent hours making my own games, It holds a special place in my heart.
That was me and my Atari 800. I wouldn't be who I am today without it.
This was my very first computer! I was eleven years old when my parents bought it for my family. It was my first exposure to computers and taught me a lot, sending me on my path to get into the computer and software industry. Eventually got an engineering degree and have been working in tech since 1996. I would probably say the Adam was my main inspiration for my career path. To this day, I deeply regret that we sold our Adam at a garage sale in the 90s. Wish I still had it around just for nostalgia. :-)
I'm glad it worked out for ya! With all these negatives in this video it's nice to hear the machine did actually work. Hehe.
Go grab a simulator. ColEm is one. Do you REALLY want to have an old pile of junk around? Get a simulator instead. You'll have a few hours of nostalgia and then get bored with it. If you really want the hardware, they are sold all the time on eBay but I recommend against it. They are basically space heaters now.
@@richardwicks4190 that's a good idea. Free is good. Just wanted to say, part of the nostalgia is the item itself not just the games. Like the sound it makes when it runs, I have an ancient Zenith Data Systems laptop I pulled out of the closet. Once I powered it on the smell brought me back more than anything. Things you forget about until you re-live them again.
Always something better about the actual physical system.
For instance I have a Sega Genesis emulator with hundreds of games, but Its hard for me to focus, always switching between games.. but then I picked up an actual system and now I'm way more into it.
Nothing wrong with emulation, but physicality is important for many too.
@@Lightblue2222 Perhaps I'm different than you, working with the actual physical hardware is just frustration for me.
To me, the experience entirely is the result of what the system produces. I have ZERO interest in having old hardware. The only experience I'm interested in, is what the old machines produced.
Never had an NES, but I can beat Super Mario Bros no problem.
All an old machine would do would collect dust for me. I would never power it up.
Your story is the same as mine. Except I had a c64. But I remember how much I wanted the Adam.
This monster of a machine actually got me through Jr. and Senior year of High School. My folks got it on close out for like $100 from a soon-to-be-out-of-business Bradley's back in the day. I used it as a word processor. I never had any colecovision games, but the things I got done on it... wow. I did "upgrade" to a Commie 64 a couple of years later with college, but that's another story for another video. :)
My friend had an Adam. I remember playing Dragon’s Lair on it. I thought it was weird that you had to turn on the printer to turn it on
I had the same same game on my ADAM! My problem was sound card faliure.
Wow I didn't know dragons liar was available for it ! I wasted so many quarters on that arcade & I absolutely sucked @ it lol
I remember playing Buck Rogers on a store display Adam at Canadian Tire, and having experienced the very boring tape drives of Commodore, I was enthralled at the way the Adam's cassette drive jumped around, fast forwarding and reversing and running, presumably to retrieve random access data, but I drew a direct line to the old computers in movies with the giant reel-to-reels doing the same thing. I ended up getting a C64 eventually, but when it came out, the Adam looked sexy af.
We had the ADAM computer and it was awesome. I’m surprised with all the issues you mentioned. Ours worked fine. The tape drive was slow, but we upgraded to the external floppy. We even had the modem too…. All in all, I was happy to have had the Adam as our first home computer…
Exactly! I got 1 and ly neighbor too. Both machines witked intensively several years without a problem.
This thing could have revolutionized home computing if they had just released it fully functional, without the plethora of bugs. Honestly, it was such an easy to use system with super compatibility to an already popular game console and relatively decent graphics. If it had been even marginally successful at the time, it could have really helped to put computers into households before the Amiga, and updates for it could have given it even better graphics or more powerful processing. It's a real shame they screwed it up so bad.
The later models did have the bugs fixed, but the damage was already done.
@@ClassicTVMan1981X Yes, I was just a kid when this machine was first introduced, but I still remember the advertisements for it on television. I remember going to a store and seeing the boxes for it and wishing I could get it because it just looked so cool. To my young mind at the time, it almost felt like having this machine would be like controlling a spaceship or something.
This was no Amiga competitor, but it would have been an amazing system at the time. It's a pity it was so bug ridden
I got one when it first came out and experienced the printer issue first hand. I had to return it and get a replacement, which did work. For me, the biggest problems which prevented this system from succeeding are the following:
1. Bad printer. This should have been a dot-matrix printer without an integrated power supply
2. Cassette drive. They should have shipped with a floppy drive and room to expand with a hard drive for the future.
Those alone could have made the system viable given some time to iron out licensing issues and so forth. I bought an Adam off ebay some years back and have used it occasionally. Mine doesn't have a printer, but a regular power supply that was built by someone on the internet.
I have at least one of these sitting in the basement or the attic. I may have two.
One day I will create a space to display all of my vintage equipment. But that day is not today. I'm thinking that when the wife starts going back into the office instead of working from home I will repurpose her office to display the systems.
I had one of these as a kid in high school. I would type up assignments and turn them in. I'd also play video games and practice with making basic programs. It was a long time ago, but I don't recall having the major problems listed in this video. My number one gripe was.... not having a serial port to connect my speech processor. Second gripe, the printer was very loud.
This was the first computer I owned! I remember hating the tape drive!
Me too, only I thought the tape drive was pretty decent. It quickly fast forwarded or re-wound to where it needed to go, it was my understanding that most other personal computers with tape drives did not operate that way. The problem with the Adam was that I could use my electric typewriter to quickly type out a paper for HS classes, the Adam would take at least 1/2 hour for something I could type out in 5 minutes.
@@paulprobusjr.7597 : Yep, the average personal computer that used tapes used a tape _player_ rather than a tape _drive,_ so at most it would have a motor on/motor off control.
@@paulprobusjr.7597 When I was evaluating multiple computers as a kid to decide which to get, I recall these Adam tape drives being a major issue. I was seriously considering the Adam for a number of reasons, but in the end, the tape drives, which I figured would always be the primary storage device for this computer, were what ruled this computer out. I knew they were faster and more automated than typical computer tape drives, but they still weren't floppy drives, looked overly proprietary to me, and the warning that leaving the tapes ("digital data packs") in the computer while turning it on could erase the content of the tapes pretty much clinched it for me. I ended up with a C64, a floppy drive, an Epyx _Fast Load_ cartridge to greatly speed up the latter, and a dot matrix printer so that I could print out graphics (and a bit later, proportionally-spaced text in multiple fonts) in addition to text.
In hindsight, I have no regrets because the Adam turned out to be so unreliable and the C64 was even more capable than I had imagined, but there was one point when I seriously considered the Adam, and its tape drive was what knocked it out of contention.
@@absalomdraconis That's right, even Commodore's later custom Datasette drive and the Atari 1010 were really just ordinary tape recorders (with minor modifications for partial motor control), and in fact we literally had to press Play or Play & Record, as instructed, to make them work. Most other computers simply made use of whatever old style tape recorder you had.
Tape drives were the devil. We had a VIC-20, and the programs on tape were always getting corrupted.
It's worth mentioning that the tape drive was not a standard cassette drive that most computers were using. Most tapes you had to know where the program started and stopped, the Adam's tape had a directory. It is basically halfway between tape and disk.
It's biggest downfall was that it could only reference data in 1 dimension where disks could move in two, affording them a much faster seek time. The tapes had larger storage than most disks of the time though.
The printer was only 1 problem. The dang tape drives destroyed game cassettes faster than you could replace them.
Remember that while it was compatible with Apple Basic, the resolution of the display was different for graphics and text modes but in a worse way so that most code would need modification to work anyway.
There was a 40-column mode in the video chip, but it couldn't co-exist with graphics (like in SmartLOGO), and SmartBASIC for some reason, never implemented it. I tried it out by way of a hack, and I believe the aftermarket GO-BASIC used it by default.
I sold computers at a store in California when the Adam was announced. I saw several of our competitors sink a lot of money in pre-orders for the system. My boss asked me if I thought we should stock them. I told her that nobody had actually seen the computer in action yet and that we should wait to see if Coleco could deliver a system would be all that it promised.
Imagine our relief when it was delayed then turned out to be a dud once it was. A friend who worked at a competitor said that people who'd ordered them for Christmas were furious when they couldn't deliver. That store went out of business by the following July because they had to refund tens of thousands of dollars to angry customers and the whole thing tarnished the store's reputation.
Sometimes I wonder how different this would've been had Coleco just waited a couple years and released an MSX-compliant computer?
MSX was released in Japan a couple of months before the Coleco Adam came out. It would have had to have been an MSX 2 with much improved graphics. They came out in 1985. Replace the tape drive with 3.5" disks. Would still have been quite easily Colecovision compatible
Even the ColecoVision console was a bit rushed, because they managed to release it in August 1982, one month before the FCC could give it its green light, which led to Coleco paying the FCC some cool money over it and having some of those consoles be brought back to be modified to meet FCC compliance.
@@ClassicTVMan1981X Damn!
I have such fond memories of my ADAM. I first heard about it at the Canadian National Exhibition in summer, 1892 and was first on the list to get one at Eastons downtown. It was priced at $999.99 in Canadian funds. I can’t believe I was just 14 when I carried it home on the bus that snowy winter day. Of course, I had to have it replaced twice, but I also was given the updated printer and it worked great. Once I had all the parts working there wasn’t a better computer for the money you could get. I also bought a better daisy wheel for the printer, from Brother, than came with it and my printouts were great. Yes it was slow and loud but I would just closed the door and let it go. I eventually got the floppy disk drive, and modem and learned Basic,(became a bit of a hacker), and used early message boards. I used the word processor for everything and even made spreadsheets. I kept it until I got my first IBM PC years later. But I wrote an entire “unpublished” novel on the word processor as a teenager, and printed the entire thing on the printer. Plus that was one of the best keyboards I have ever used. At the time nothing compared. I’d love to have one again, just for nostalgia to display in my home office. Thanks for this video. Made my day and brought back fond memories of my first computer.
Yesterday we finally managed to get one reasonably working in the museum. We have the expansion unit-model, which attaches to the front of a Colecovision, giving it a desk-filling slab of computer. The PSU is under powered to run the system as a whole which we solved by adding a modern PSU which has a -5 and +5v line. The connection between the 2 devices is flaky at best, despite us cleaning it and improving contact. If you turn it on (the only power button is halfway the slab, on the ColecoVision) it will start the Adam first. If you have a game cartridge in, you need to reset the ColecoVision using that resetbutton. If you reset it using the Adam's button, it will go to the writer software. Not sure if the 'full' Adam does that, but every keypress on the keyboard gives you a sound (think of getting a coin with mario, that kind of sound), a slightly higher sound when using SHIFT. Backspace is quiet, until you reach the beginning and it sounds like you won some a power up in a videogame. Pressing enter gives a sound like you bump into a wall, the entire WORDPROCESSOR sounds like a videogame.. very odd thing. Unfortunately, we only have one tape for the Adam and the direct drive cassettereader is very tired. We may give it another try to fix that in the future, for now it is working .. it's one of the oddest computers we have here.
I wrote my first-ever computer program on one of these. And I also transcribed and printed college papers for people for $1 a page.
I respect that hustle.
Everything ELSE you said was fair criticism, BUT; unfair criticism of the price!!!! There was NOTHING you could touch with a drive and anything but 9 pin dot matrix printer for that $ !! I still credit my Adam for half a letter grade on every college paper I wrote!!! Why? Because in those days, people saw a computer printed term paper and erroneously thought your computer “helped” you write it!! Seriously! Thank the marketing gurus! The irregular placement of the (solid characters of the) Adam printer made things look like a ransom note, but people just saw it as a really crappy, portable manual typewriter! By printing out and editing 3+ drafts of every paper, I could get grammar and spelling perfect, and professors were TOTALLY AMAZED!!!
The Coleco Adam was quite the mixed bag. Do you feel it's a system worth collecting for due to it's interesting story?
It was a great stab at the market. If it worked as it was supposed to
No system is worth collecting. But it was an interesting machine - I remember wanting one as a kid, but having a C=64 made it redundant. I don't think it measured up quite to the C=64 but if the execution wasn't so poor, I think it would have been a huge hit.
It's a pity that the Acorn Archimedes never made it to the states as well, that was a great machine, but it lives on as a raspberry pi. The ARM was an excellent architecture. RISC-V may replace it, but I have little expectation it will.
Gotta give props to Coleco for releasing such an ambitious home computer in that time frame, doubly so as a console compatible add-on and adjunct.
FOr those not familiar or too young, it was common wisdom pre-1985 that video game consoles should have a home computer upgrade. The 2600, INTV, and CV and probably others announced computer keyboard upgrades, but only Coleco really came through with a full fledged solution.
Mattel was sued for promising one for the original INTV, and reluctantly released a crippled, laughable home computer add on for the INTV-II
Other than prototypes, I don't think anything was released to the public for the 2600
Of course the Odyssey II tried to cash in by having a built in keyboard on the base console, though the unit was less functional than either a TImex SInclair or Vic20
In retrospect, however, this great-sounding idea turned out to be a terrible one for console manufacturers, including Coleco, although they came the closest to actually making a viable personal/home computer out of a console. In fact, attempting to do so invariably killed off the console, and in the case of Coleco, it killed off the whole company!
Atari sort of bypassed this process with the 400, which was originally intended as a game console with a membrane keyboard that could also serve as a computer, but they ended up selling it as a computer with an awful keyboard that was priced too high for a console, and the Atari 5200 console just confused everything. With the benefit of hindsight, what Atari needed to do was be more aggressive with pricing in general, earlier than they did, and not charge an enormous premium for the 800 just because it had a regular keyboard (wasn't much different from the 400 besides this). Atari's hesitance and their initial refusal to release technical specs on their 8-bit computers squandered their huge technological lead, and allowed Commodore to steal their thunder. The VIC-20 was inferior, but it was priced like a console and had a regular keyboard, which along with it being marketed as a replacement for mere game consoles, was very compelling for the public. It opened the door for the Commodore 64 (great console, solid 8-bit computer, and has a regular keyboard for a low price) to dominate the 8-bit computer market and outsell every console, as well, except for the even less expensive 2600. The 800 or 800XL could have been the computer to do that instead, but timing and some very questionable decisions made by Atari handed the market to their main competitor.
Atari still did better than anyone who tried to turn a game console into a computer, though. It doesn't seem like it would be that difficult, but going from these examples, apparently it is very difficult unless you really, earnestly start out with a computer in mind like Atari did or already had experience making computers first like Commodore did.
For the 2600, Atari officially released the "BASIC Programming" cartridge. The "keyboard" were two standard 2600 keypad controller, giving you a total of 24 keys, plus a custom cardboard overlay (so it worked more like a ZX81/Timex Sinclair or ZX Spectrum keyboard). Yes, that thing was real...well, as real as it can get on a 2600.
It allowed for nine lines of program code. It supported positive integers in the range from 0 to 99. You could actually implement Euclid's algorithm to compute the GCD of two numbers! You could actually *NOT* implement "Hello World!"
The rumor is that Atari had to develop this cartridge to avoid a legal battle, as apparently some early box art for the 2600 (before it was even named 2600) implied that it could used as a computer.
Well, let's just say your statement that "nothing" was released for the 2600 is pretty accurate.
I heard that the tape cassettes for the Adam differed slightly from the default Compact Cassette standard developed by Philips and that made normal cassette tapes incompatible with the Adam - does anyone know if this was true?
I had one of these back in 1984 and let me tell you, that cassette drive was a nightmare! While saving my Oceanography 101 final paper the damn cassette BROKE leaving me and my entire final grade flipping round and round with that darn broken tape. Tried to fix it with scotch tape, but it was hopeless. Were it today, the most that might have been asked would be, "Why didn't you tandem save it to a cloud?" But in '84, personal computer tech was still in it's infancy so it took quite a bit of explaining as to how my entire paper was on a broken cassette tape, and why a gaming company was making a personal computer.
My first computer in high school was a Vic-20 made by Commodore, so when I decided to get something more reliable I moved onto a Commodore 64 and then a Commodore 128 (which was against the advice of all my friends, because back in '84 no one could imagine needing more than 64K to run your computer.
Oh ya, those were the days! LOL ^_^
This was the first computer I ever used, and I was hooked. However, it had *the loudest* daisy-wheel printer I have ever heard, still to this day. I remember being outside playing football one day and my mom was printing labels (she used to work from home typing labels for mailers) and I could hear the printer going from outside, downstairs, on the opposite side of the house.
lol it was like gunshots going off
Oh yeah. That sucker was loud. But without any other printer to compare, I just thought all daisy wheel printers were that loud.
This was my family first computer. Never had any issues. Had it for years even after we moved on to different computers. Remember when my mom went back to school. I typed all her university paper on this thing. Got me through high school and her through college. And many hours of gaming. Great little first computer
Same here. I guess from what the video says, we were the few lucky ones that had no issues. We’re there better options, of course but the price and way it was perfect for school and university made it a perfect home PCs for me. I loved it overall but hated the loud printer since I could never print at night for fear of waking the household.
My favourite 8bit system!
...and that's despite my being English and not even knowing of it's existence BITD. (Ok, I'd see adds for all sorts of computers in Scientific American - in the days when it was a well written popular science magazine rather than the utter garage it became, but that's another story) I imported one from the USA largely as a bit of a joke but it rapidly grew on me - it's actually an awesome machine, so what's the issue? I think I can sum it up with the following imaginary story:
Coleco Management: "This Colecovision thing is pretty darn successful, I hear home computers will be the next big thing..."
Coileco Engineers: "Funny you should say that, we have some ideas."
Management: "Awesome, let's see it next week."
Engineers: "WTF..?"
...a few weeks later...
Engineers: "So here's our first engineering prototype. There's a lot left to be done and of course we need to discuss the final..."
Management: "You're late! Let's have it on store shelves next week, right?"
Engineers: "WTF..?"
...a few minutes later...
Software Developers: "WTF..?"
...a week later once marketing finally picked up the phone...
Marketing: "What? It has to be released tomorrow? Well, we don't usually do anything useful anyway, tomorrow it is. What could possibly go wrong?"
...and so the ADAM as we know it is missing about 6-18 months R&D, software development - marketing types always have and always will be worse than useless.
WOW!!! I'm glad I never read those reviews. That thing got me through high school!! I did all my english reports on it. I made a desk for it in woodshop. I taught myself BASIC over the summer of '84 and made a text game. I even used BASIC to learn trigonometry and do my algebra and trig homework. Doing that gave me my highest grades in math since elementary. I loved it. (had a house fire back in'94 and the Coleco ADAM was lost.)
Great story and tragic sorry house fire I can’t imagine
Yours worked a hell of a lot better than mine. I typed in a few BASIC programs from Byte magazine, a few worked. My tapes all got corrupted, though.
I had a Coleco Adam, actually 2 of them. Neither one worked and were broken right out of the box. 12 year old me was devastated.
I wound up with an Amstrad instead. :(
I had a coleco vision with toNs of games and accessories. My parents sold it all at a yard sale for super cheap with all my nintendo stuff. I can't talk about with them because I get so angry.
Get over it. Video games are a distraction any way.
Thank you for this. So on my own, I decided to list my Atari 2600, at the time, in our local newspaper want ads. I sold it to buy ColecoVision and the Atari adapter. I have no regrets of that because this was such an amazing system. And I eventually re-bought most of my favorite Atari games. And most of them are still in my attic as of September 2023. I really wanted an Atom add-on but quickly the routing was on the wall that it wasn't perfect and my folks didn't want to spend the money on it. But I still like to get one for nostalgia sake.
I remember being surprised that Christmas with an Adam. I think my whole family went in on it. It was sufficient for my word processing needs. It included a manual with lessons on Basic programming. I did learn a bit of it. In the end, the worst part of it was the printer which needed expensive new ink cartridges every month.
I really don't understand a lot of this critique. That's why context and experience are important. He has neither. In the 1980's, this was a very popular computer among my friends. We had nothing to compare it to. For gaming, we had consoles.
My one friend had a perfectly working Adam in the early 2000's. I don't know what she did with it. In the winter of 1984 I was working at Coleco in Mayfield NY. Most days I spent grinding up the computer cases, just so they could make new ones. Yes, the injection machines that made the computer case were running on 100% regrind. And the employees even knew the Adam would run Coleco in the ground. Why I went in the Air Force.
My sister and I had the ADAM when I was very young. My dad kept it in the scary basement so playing Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle was always extra creepy in the cave part! My favorite game was Dragon's Lair which my sister was great at. It fascinated me so much especially how the game randomized itself. Montezuma's Revenge was another memerable game.
My dad gave it to some guys after they fixed a leak in our roof and didn't even ask us if we cared. I miss that thing. Every time I hear the word "videogame", I instantly think of the ADAM, the controller button over-lays and of course, Dragon's Lair.
I just found one with all the expansions and like 40 games or so but I don’t know if it works yet
Just like the Atari 1400XL, I do believe the Adam could have sold better if Coleco didn't try too hard and rush-release it. I mean, even the ColecoVision console the Adam was derived from seemed a bit rushed, since it was out before the FCC even approved it, which led to Coleco paying the FCC some fines and getting those early examples fixed to meet FCC compliance.
I actually do like those huge black roman numeral 'function' like keys on the keyboard. These days it's hard to read which one to press.
This was the first computer I ever had, and I am surprised to hear how disastrous the problems were, because the one my parents bought for me never seemed to have these problems. Yeah, dedicated software was minimal, but I least I learned something about simple programming and word processing. Which, for the time, was fine. Yes, the printer was VERY loud, but for me it DID work. I knew the ADAM was a real loser for the company, but I don't remember suffering these problems as the consumer.
One thing that definitely worked out for me was the $500 scholarship thing that Coleco offered (another mistake by the company, I'm sure LOL). All I had to do was prove that I attended and graduated a 4-year college, and I basically got most of the purchase price for the ADAM back from Coleco over the four years. They gave you four vouchers worth $125 each, and you would redeem one of them every undergraduate year you proved you completed, and Coleco sent you a check. Doesn't sound like much, but after that I basically felt like I got the computer for almost nothing.
That's crazy, I never heard of that scholarship deal. The company was mismanaged. They looked at Cabbage Patch doll sales and drew the best fit line on their exponential sales graph and figured they would have unlimited money. Unfortunately, nobody there ever heard of a logistic curve. Doll sales tanked, video game sales tailed off (not talking about the '83 wave but just the eventual competition from Nintendo and others). Coleco also attempted other toy lines, all of which tanked. I don't exactly remember when the wheels came off, but it ended pretty abruptly in the early '90s with first the Amsterdam, NY location closing and later the main office in Connecticut shuttering as well. Sad times for all those dedicated workers.
@@bb5242 Not sure how much the scholarship thing was a loss for them, because I have no idea how many students actually took advantage of it. I just know I did, and I only knew about it because they pimped the scholarship thing RIGHT ON THE BOX, if I remember correctly. You'd kind of be dumb not to take advantage of it. I mean, you buy the ADAM for $525, and then they give you $500 back if you just go to college and finish? Sign me up.
This thing was never going to "dominate the computer market" coming out a year after the Commodore 64, the best selling computer model of all time.
The idea of an all in one package gaming console and computer combo was truly ahead of that time and hell to this day no one has managed nor even seriously attempted to fuse the 2 together. But now with the beer virus who knows.
Nice coverage. You hit all the low/high points - we had one of these in a household and used it a ton. The power spike with the cassette drive was the WORST. And the digital cassette as a random-access device was a really bad engineering design. Some of the games you could play were absolutely amazing.
We eventually got a floppy drive for the Adam, and it was a p.o.s. for sure.
OMG, I totally remember the bugs in the word processor, especially the kickback to typewriter mode! So frustrating. The amount of times I had to redo work because of the bugs in this system was immense.
The bad BASIC manual was not a problem - I figured it out without the manual. The hardware and overall design was clearly the issue. This COULD have been as loved as a C64, but these flubs sunk it.
And I remember getting some software that would copy Colecovision cartridges, which was great if you had friends with the Colecovision.
Most people tried Buck Rogers on cassette and realized how bad playing games that way was so they ended up using the Colecovision cartridges going forward.
@@NewsmakersTech but the super game packs as they were called were better than the cartridges. Check out youtibe vids of donkey kong on ccolecovision cartridge compared to super game pack for adam. Extra levels and intros etc.
@@NewsmakersTech i dont remember it that way. Buck rogers was great and donkey kong Jr. Played them both a lot.
I remember buying this twice and returning it twice around 1983-84. The first time I returned it was due to the cassette drive not working and then the second time I got it, it worked, but I soon realized that it was just a glorified typewriter with a very noisy printer attached to it. I remember it selling for something like $900CAN and a few months after the second return they dropped the price to about $400 just to get rid of them. Adam was very much a sign of the hit-and-miss market of the 1980s personal computer industry.
In 1982 I worked all a summer and bought an Atari 800. Great computer. Still have it and it still works
I had one of these when they came out. Everything was good up until the tape drive quit working. It was very helpful for school. Then I moved on to a Commodore 128.
I can't help but be reminded of my high school days where the ADAM was among a number of brands to choose from! My friends, peers and I, that were in our early years of what we would now call computer/tech enthusiasts, got into other brands of computers which thankfully, our respective parents listened to us when it came down to actually buying them! We couldn't believe that the ADAM still used a tape drive and that you HAD TO buy the printer that came with it AND that was how you turned on the computer! 🤦♂ This video only FURTHER proved that we made the right choices BUT it also showed that Coleco's management fucked things up WORSE than I knew at the time and that it DIDN'T have to turn out the way it did!
I remember when these came out, I thought they were pretty interesting. I already had a c64 with floppy at that point, I think (might have still had a Vic 20 with tape).
I worked for an electronics contract manufacturing company in the early ‘80s that made thousands of the monitor port pc boards for this computer. We hoped it was going to be a massive hit and earn us millions. It did not. 😔
The Coleco Adam is technically the computer version of the ColecoVision, but with the printer as the power supply and combine that with a defective tape drive and low-budget build quality. (10:27)
I remember playing Buck Rogers and being WOWED by the fact you could write your initials at the end... just like an arcade.
Yea buck Rodgers was my favorite , barely remember details tho 😂
I must have been lucky. I had no issues with my ADAM what so ever!
Great channel. Glad I wasn't missing out back in the day.
Wasn't one of the problems also the "waffle" drive or memory? I remember the product being introduced at the summer CES and, knowing how flaky Coleco was, wondering if they had the ability to really make their new drive work. Many of us in the industry bought Coleco stock assuming that Adam sales would go through the roof. We were all prepared to sell the stock at the first sign of trouble. Most of us sold out in the first announced delay. We made some decent money on that stock deal!
A buddy of mine bought an ADAM (I had an Atari 400). One thing I remember about the Adam was that the Power Supply for the entire system was *in the printer*, so if it died, you're entire computer died. And you couldn't replace the printer. You also couldn't leave it in the closet if you didn't need it, taking up a ton of space. And Daisy Wheel printers are LOUD. :(
Apparently, the Coleco Adam had so many problems. But how would things have turned out if....
they did independent testing before rolling out the product... and
used the new 3.25 floppy (that had JUST came out in 1983) with the Adam instead of the tape drive?
This was the very first "Home Computer" we ever owned. I remember seeing the movie War Games and then seeing the ADAM. Convincing my parents that I would get better grades if I had a computer, they bought this. It was incredibly (at the time). I remember bringing in typed homework and freaking out my teacher. I eventually got the ColecoVision War Games game, too.
That’s Awesome The old it will help my grades trick but for you it sounds like it really did
Better grades through hacking the school's computer, like in the movie? ;)
To get my first computer (a C64), I had to promise, as in seriously promise, to have a career in computer programming later, and I actually kept my promise, too, thanks to hacking into the school's computer (just kidding about that last part).
'Convincing my parents that I would get better grades' 🤣 ......& the schmucks fell for it too (with all due respects)
Ferris Bueller, you're my hero.
Sry no edit, that was @rbrtck for the movie reference.
A number of years ago (25 I think), I purchased an ADAM as a caseless offering - everything there, but no case. Worked fine, and I also has a programmable data cartridge for making your own games. Also had a 'Wargames' cartridge. Only issue, was lack of any documentation as to how to run the built in programs and accessories. Good exercise for the 'little grey cells' to figure things out.
I had one way back. I already had a radio shack coco, and this was crap in comparison. I remember doing a dump of the Adam's OS memory area, and found the OS was written by a company called Laser Micro systems Inc. Fun fact of the day :)
All of us with other machines were so thankful when my friend got his Atomic Adam. We were thankful that we didn't get the wrong machine! My friend would always want us to play the space cassette game. Just getting that to load could waste 45 minutes, because it was so unreliable. The portable Tandy with tiny lcd screen was even better than that clunker
I purchased a Coleco Adam and had it less than a week before returning it for the reason of poor quality and erratic system failures. The price I paid motivated the return given the experience I received from the Adam. It was this purchase and return that caused me to be more skeptical and do more research about all purchases of computer systems and electronics going forward.
Out of curiosity, in what way(s) do you think the Adam's memory map was so much better than the C64's?
My Uncle actually worked for Coleco at the time, basically the Adam was major disaster from the start. Originally Coleco was going to create a new game system. But late in the game they decided computers were the future and pivoted to compete with the likes of the Commodore. Which may have been ok if the powers that be didn't decide to hedge their bets and insist the Adam be both a game system and a computer. According to my uncle the Adam was what you get when you have a computer designed by a committee of executives that knew nothing about computers. They were also aware of the all the technical problems with the systems, every single one of their pre-production test units had major issues, yet instead of fixing them, Coleco management ordered a full production run anyway in order to meet the Christmas deadline (which they ended up missing anyway). Needless to say, it ended up being a disaster that pretty much destroyed Coleco.
Thanks for this video, which i found to be fair and accurate. I absolutely loved my ColecoVision but was essentially devastated by two defective units in a row and went the Commodore 64 and Amiga route afterwards. Happily, I’m enjoying a ColecoVision renaissance with the excellent Phoenix hardware.
Commodore 64 was the best computer in the 80s. I mainly used it for games
You continue to do outstanding work! This was a well researched and presented piece. I like the new rating system also.
Thank you for your feedback!
Part of the reason why the Adam computer failed was that it came out at a time when the 6502 microprocessor ruled -- Apple II, Atari 800, Commodore 64. All three systems still enjoy a strong following nearly 40 years later.
Also not helping matters -- besides the bad reviews -- was that during this time, just about every electronics company had its own line of computers (and all proprietary), so Adam was already entering a very crowded field as it was.
This video is excellent, but a few points need clarification or revision. Most of the Adam’s problems could be boiled down to the cassette drives. Efforts to straighten out the problems with the cassette drives caused the crippling release delay. Out of desperation, Coleco ended up releasing the computer before the bugs were worked out. The computer’s reputation cratered. About four months after the disastrous launch, Coleco was finally manufacturing Adams that more or less worked like they were supposed to. But by then it was too late. The long list of flaws mentioned in this video did not affect every Adam, and when Coleco finally got the thing working, the flaws affected few Adams. Also: Coleco stock in 1983 shot from around a couple bucks to 50, owing to excitement over the Adam. Coleco knew the cassette drives weren’t working right, and they knew well in advance that consequently they were going to miss the Christmas season. They HID this information from investors and the public. For that, Coleco suffered a class action lawsuit; I don’t recall the outcome. Between mid November ‘83 and March of ‘84, I returned at least 5 Adams to Coleco; time after time they didn’t work (usually the cassette drives). Finally I told Coleco to either send me a working Adam, or to refund my money. They sent me an Adam that worked! Had WORKING Adams been released in the fall of ‘83, I believe the early history of computers would have been very different. I think the Adam would have caught on as a good starter computer for high school kids and college undergrads.
I worked at the time for a passive component company that sold product to Coleco. Their marketing outstripped their technology and there is the rub. The fact that technology was moving so fast didn't help - they were chasing their collective tails on design and quality control issues.
1:56 *1984, the market was still strong in 1983, and 1984 the market dropped to less than half 1983's level, a true crash.
My brother & I had a ColecoVision, both expansion modules, about 10 CV games & 30 Atari games. We wanted a Adam so bad. Never did get one. Guess we lucked out.
In late 80s , someone in computer shopper mag sold Adam expansion minus printer (included PS though) for around $40. I bought one, still have mine, and same thing happened to my keyboard as yours. ;-)
Thanks for this! My parents picked up a Colecovision Adam at a discount store in either 1985 or 86? We had really good luck with it other than the digital tape drive shredding a couple of game cassettes(My Donkey Kong Jr Cassette...waaaaahhh 🤣). That was the first home console game for me that had games that sort of looked like the arcade. I guess this was my first online experience using the modem to connect to the city library system. I played the heck out of the Gateway Aphshai cartridge! Good times!
'using the modem to connect to the city library system' ..😳 ..had I gone to my neighbourhood library in the 80s(even late 80s) & asked them for their modem connection, the little lady would have gone like whaaaaa😱....what extreme profanity thy speak young boy !
9:08 not true, the Apple II from 1978 used floppies, and it was the Apple II that many schools and libraries were buying a full 4 years before Coleco began making the ColecoVision.
I had this as a kid, and the tape drive crapped out pretty fast. I would put in the Buck Rogers tape, and it would just spontaneously rewind and fast forward without actually loading the game. It was one of those all-in-one systems. The cartridge games were way cool, and I remember using the word processing for a few homework assignments for school. It eventually got boxed up and stored away somewhere once I got an IBM PC around 1988 or so. I still have all the cartridges and tapes today, but the system itself is long gone. Lord knows where it wound up. I'd love to get my hands on a working Adam system again, for a reasonable price of course.
Going from an Adam to an IBM PC is life changing!
please find them and sell them to me.
I'm not sure I ever even played Buck Rogers on it because it would never load up. The Dam Busters game worked and while the graphics sucked, the cool part was that before the mission started, the printer would type out your orders like it was WWII teletype machine. It added a sense of authenticity to an otherwise lousy game.
The problem with this computer, that killed it for almost everybody, was the cassette tape. It was infamous for wearing out the tapes early and there was no disk system. I mean, hey, even the Tandy CoCo had a disk/hard drive system. And the CoCo had the forethought to make a lot of their business apps cartridge based so it would guarantee to load.
The Adam was just "never" going to make it.
My nephew had one and i saw it sitting in a pile of unused stuff. After trying it, i was "over" the Adam in 20 mins. It just wasn't worth it.
I got one for the Christmas of 1983 and learned BASIC on it, as well as play a LOT of Buck Rogers. Was a fun little system that played Coleco games, and I had quite a large collection of them at the time. Used to play Wing War on it a lot too. Good memories!!!
Residing in Germany, this computer is completely new for me; no idea if this was even sold here (or some other place in Europe).
Very nice review though!
I almost had my parents buy this for me,... changed my mind at last second to Commodore 64.... best decision i ever made
Still, at $725 it would have been a good deal if theren't so many problems.
In the 1980s $725 was a decent amount of cash. My first used car cost $3500 around 1990.
@@bb5242 It certainly was, but if I wanted to get an 800XL, Disk drive and printer (an I did) it was $1000. So, $725 (if it all worked) would have been a great deal.
I had an Adam. I think this review is a little harsh. It was better than the other home computers at the time, had 80k, and mine functioned well. A year later, when Coleco killed the Adam, me and some other people formed an Adam club and began copying and swapping software. I ended up with a hundred titles, great games all running on cassette tapes you could buy cheap. These games had more depth and detail than any of the other affordable home computers. What killed the Adam? As said above late shipping of the product, the jacking up of the price, and NOT mentioned here was that *Coleco changed tack and tried to keep all the software development for the Adam in-house,* making it incredibly difficult for outside manufacturers to write product for it. Instead they prioritized writing for other platforms including IBM's PC. Compounding the problem was the CEO of Coleco who didn't understand the computer market and called them 'glorified typewriters'.
Three years after I bought the Adam, I bought a 286 IBM based computer. All the other computers were junk in comparison. IBM was the future and thousands of kids who first learned on Adam, Atari, etc. began writing games for IBM in their basements, released them on Shareware and those games are still the blueprint for almost all the games we see today.
I had one but only briefly. The daisy-wheel printer was VERY noisy (daisy wheel printers normally are noisy so that was no surprise). The tape drive was "interesting" in that Coleco didn't use it like a typical audio-tape (e.g. someone with an Apple ][ or C-64 with a tape drive could use any ordinary cassette tape drive an audio in/out cable and it would encode the data into audio tones and save it to tape). Instead, Coleco used the cassette more like a digital tape (more like the mini & mainframe computers I used to support) where it would rapidly spin forward and backward to pick up blocks of data. It was better than a traditional audio tape drive ... but not nearly as fast as a cassette. My system did work though... nothing broken. In the end, I kept it only briefly and returned it within the return window. The store selling it to me promised a low-price guarantee. When I found it elsewhere for less, they wouldn't honor the guarantee ... so I returned it instead. But the brief experience with it didn't make it like it enough to buy it elsewhere.
Friend had one. Wanted to play with BASIC. Think the tape may have loaded about 3 or 4 times before it wouldn't read anymore.
What a fun retro computer channel - subbed! The ADAM story is wild, wow, I really didn't know much about it.
I remember back in the day, my future brother-in-law's family had me set one of these systems up for his younger stepsister. They had picked up the whole system on clearance from Zayre's for $99. I tried to get the system from him a couple of years later but he said they had thrown it away because she was not using it after a few months....arrrggghhh.
My friend owned an Adam, which I called a Cabbage Patch Computer. It seemed to spend a lot of time searching its tape drive. And the printer made an awful racket. I wound up buying an Atari 800XL, then a 1200XL, then a clone. Then came the days when I coveted a 386. Now you can't give them away.
The Adam tape drive was so slow and the printer was very loud. I ended up just using mine as a Coleco Vision after a while.
This was my second computer after a TI 99/4A, I enjoyed a lot of the games, and it was the first time I ever had a printer. I don't recall the Word Processor being so awful, but it was also the first one I ever used! There was a "printshop" program that let you print signs and banners, they didn't look near as nice as the dot matrix ones from my friend's Apple II as it tried to do some fancy ASCII art. On the whole I don't think I was very sad when I got a Laser 128 to upgrade it.
We are currently working on a script for a TI99/4A video so stay tuned for that.
TI 99/4A, and ADAM had the same video chip.
Does anyone still write new software for the Adam?
There isn't really a homebrew community for the Adam itself, but there are tons of modern Colecovision games being made which you can play on your Adam
It wasn't so much the system wouldn't work if "the printer didn't work." It was that if the power supply went out (in the printer), the entire system turned into a doorstop.
I didn't get an Adam. I read about it, and after doing so, I was glad I didn't. The design with the power supply in the printer just struck me as weird. The design flaw that flabbergasted me was the electrical pulse. I knew of no other system, no matter how cheap it was, that had this problem. As I remember, it had to do with the fact that the Adam had minimal shielding.
The one thing that impressed me about the Adam, from its description, was that its tape drives were nearly as fast as the performance you could get from a disk drive. I watched a video of someone using a real Adam, where they showed this off, and sure enough, the performance was that good. It's just too bad that the damn power supply would erase your tapes if you accidentally had them too close when you turned the computer on! Oy!
2:02 and both companies discontinued their products in 1984, the year it truly crashed.
$299? How much did you pay for shipping based on weight?
My Adam worked fine.
I bought a Coleco Adam around 20 years ago at a garage sale, for twenty dollars. Around a month later, I sold it on ebay to some German for around six hundred dollars. Still the best profit I've ever made from a garage sale vintage game find.
Could never find Print Ribbons for the Adam.
I still have a small collection of Daisy wheels, along with all of my cassettes. Did hoursssss of creative writing with my Adam, not to mention minutes for clubs, school reports.
still got mine!! controller side triggers are always working/not working... but it still works! lol so many memories from that machine
You forgot to put "[sic]" where Jules complains about the quality of the manual. Ironically, he writes "it's" for "its", something I would have thought that any copyeditor/lineeditor from the magazine would have caught.
(I've been published in BYTE, BTW)
I wanted one as my first computer but the delays and price raises I ended up buying a Atari computer and loved it. Kept using it as a primary home computer for ten years.
14+ minutes and never opened it up to show the inside. I've never seen whats inside one of these. I remember some surplus outfit having the tape drives for sale cheap for several years. Oh, you didn't mention they're not ordinary Compact Cassette drives. They run at a higher speed and require special tapes.