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.
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 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.
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 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. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 !
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!!!
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 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.
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.
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
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!
I got this computer for Christmas when they were getting blown out the door for $99. While I didn't have a computer of my own, my best friend at the time had an Apple ][e that we spent almost all of our free time on, and I also used computers at school, so I was already pretty savvy with them. I wanted an Apple ][e in the worst way, but I knew my father could never afford the $1k or more (in 1984 dollars) it would have cost for a complete system (yeah, Apples have ALWAYS been over-priced). So when he saw the Adam, and the words: "AppleSoft BASIC Compatible" on the box, he assumed that meant: "Apple Compatible" and thought he found a gold mine for $99. I'm sorry to say that my disappointment was palpable when I unwrapped it on Christmas morning. When I saw it under the tree, I was pretty sure it was a computer, and I was also pretty sure that it WASN'T going to be an Apple, but when I saw that Coleco logo, I was just blind-sided and completely unable to feign enthusiasm. I mean, I wasn't an ungrateful kid. I knew how hard my father worked, and I tried to act all hyped about it, but it just wasn't selling... 😄 Still, I gave the machine an honest chance... And one thing that it was really good for was.... eh... nothing. It was literally good for nothing... Maybe a boat anchor? It felt like a toy, the printer was obnoxious, the built-in word processor was a joke, and I never got to play the Buck Rogers game, because the EMP that machine put out made short work of that tape the first time I turned it on. After about a week of wondering where I was going to find software for this thing, I sheepishly asked my father if we could return it, and I'd pony up $100 of my Christmas money to get a C64. And then I wondered why I ever wanted an Apple.
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.
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.
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!!!
I got mine from Toys R Us in 1983 for $300.00. I used it up to 1989. I used the Adam for college printing up my homework. I had 2 tape drives with expanded memory, modom & a floppy drive. Did have an issue with the power supply, had to take it in, got fixed right away.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
I wanted one after seeing and reading the glossy advertising material in a shop. I think they had flyers and cardboard mockups, and the promise that the machine would appear Real Sonn Now™. Well, it didn't for quite some time, and when it appeared, the guy at the shop told me that they returned all units already because there were "issues" with that thing.
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!
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.
I wanted an ADAM in 1985 but my grades were bad before Christmas and my parents bucked on the purchase because "I didn't deserve a computer ". ADAM was like the cheap Apple II E.
Decent job on the video. It seems I am in the minority here as I didn't have any major problems with my ADAM. Think we got the ADAM in 1983 or 84. I have great memories of programming in BASIC and making short animations with SmartLOGO. Of course, I printed all my letters to Santa with that thing ;) I admit I find it odd that you and others in the comments have so much negativity for the disk drive; they always worked fine for me with no issues. If I recall correctly, the printer finally started acting up around 1989, but by then we were looking at something more modern and eventually got an IBM PS/1 in 1990. I write a blog about the Coleco ADAM but since my comment might get trashed for dropping a URL, just search for "Coleco ADAM blog" to find it.
Same here. We got our Adam in 1983 and we never had a problem with it. There was one recall regarding the printer unit, so we had that replaced. But our printer even prior to the recall never caused us a problem.
By disk drive, do you mean to "digital datapack" cassette system, or did yours actually have an external floppy hooked up? It sounds like the tapes wouldn't have been so bad (faster than a Commodore 1541 without turboloader for linear read/write, if not seek time) except for the magnetic-pulse flaw that could erase them so easily if you weren't very careful.
@@JustinSalvato I knew those existed, but had thought not many were ever shipped before Coleco threw in the towel. Makes sense that someone still interested in this system in 2021 would have one, though :) Did they offer an official AdamNet modem too, or were only third-party ones available?
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 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.
The Tape Drives should have been 3.5" disks, and the printer completely separate - why the ATOM was created dependent on the printer is clearly insane.
I have a good recollection of my Adam. Maybe I bought it at the end of its production at Walmart. Also, its packaging with a printer would have appealed to me. I do not feel I was scammed.
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.
sad end to a over promised -under deliver venture..., Mgt. was like the proverbial ostrich , head inside the sand while committing dates with gusto... and a good video presenation Sir !
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)
The problems with the Adam's design are so mind boggling, it's hard to believe that a breathing human actually did it. There was absolutely no need to pack a printer in with the computer, or a 2-bay tape drive. Most of the essentials to make a solid computer already existed in the Colecovision, so the keyboard add on, with a basic cartridge would have worked well and they could have priced it around $200, while avoiding all the problems their ridiculous design caused. Obviously Coleco saw the massive losses on this, and the massive profits making ugly stuffed dolls, and decided to the profitable path wasn't home electronics. It is a shame, as they could have made some smart decisions and been successful.
Back when I was ready to get my first computer in 1985 (I was 13), I had the choice between a Commodore 64 or the ADAM. Since I loved my Coleco Vision so much, I begged my parents for the ADAM. What a huge disappointment! That printer was a POS...loud and slow! A year later I got the Commodore 64 for Christmas and was so much happier.
One other footnote- home computer/PC geeks at the time (84-86) all laughed at the ADAM and its owners for choosing the ADAM, ie it was very uncool to have one, other than perhaps fellow CV fans. Prior to the Amga/Atari ST in late 85 into 1986, or building your own 8086/8088 machine, the better options were the C64 or Atari 8 bit YEs, the full ADAM was my first home computer. Did great word processing and games. Sold it in 1985 in preparation for the Atari ST I got by Fall 1985, which served me into the early 90s before building my own PC's forevermore
@@bogartoutlawclan9592 Haha, it's interesting we grew up with this junk and now recognize it as primitive. At the time, it was cutting edge. I'm an engineer in Silly Con Valley now, and all the interest and wonder of it, is gone. I see these machines for what they are now, primitive, limited by the VLSI capabilities, and honestly, bad board layout. Still amazing things are made, but they are Systems On a Chip. Rather amazed that a $35 raspberry pi is a complete replacement for the machine I used AT WORK, 20 years ago. I think our days of advancement are over. From 1980 to 1990 what a tremendous leap, but from 2010 to 2020? It's cheaper, a bit smaller, but no fundamental foundational changes. I think we are near our limit with silicon. The singularity is beyond us, or hidden from us.
I picked up one of these in 1990 for $50 at a garage sale, it had a number of tapes and cartridges with it. The one I got also had the add on second tape deck installed in it. I found that I could copy the original program tapes in my dual deck cassette recorder, that way I could have copies of the programs if something happened to the original. I used that thing for 9 years, mainly using the smartwriter program, never had any problems with it at all. I only stopped using it when I got a windows 95 system. I sold it to a co-worker for what I paid for it and he used it for another 4 years before the power supply died.
When listing the issues, it would've been nice to ... SEE THEM. Especially the manual and motherboard/case holes being in the wrong spot. This is a good video but video should include a combination of clips that align with the narration audio. This doesn't do that... it's just the same pans of the external front of the ADAM for something like 95% of the sign ... it repeats as much as the background music does.
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.
Execs: "we need to make a new computer, but it needs to be affordable. 80k should do" developer: "ok, can we add an external power supply?" Exec: "What are you nuts? put it in the printer" Developer: 0_0 Exec: "also, i got a cheap electrician on craigslist to do the wiring" (developer still in shock) "how much did you pay him?" Exec: "89 cents an hour" Developer: "Oh jesus" Exec: "Now, this new BASIC needs to be bare minimum, time is money" Developer (secretly adds Apple II compatibility, exec finds out, is furious) Exec: "and finally, what shall we price it at?" Developer: $99 complete Marketer: "$1000 Exec: "Ok, you bleeding heart's, we'll price it at $525" Developer: "How did you get your position? how did you get here?" Exec: "Harvard Grad" Developer: "Business?" Exec: "accounting, economics" (exec is promptly fired)
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.
A very entertaining video, but they never once explained why all these issues happen? There must be an incredible story about them dealing with the manufacturer (s) or some CEO messing everything up?
I got one of these for my birthday. It never worked. We returned it and I had the choice of a cash refund or wait 6-8 weeks for another Adam. I took the cash, got a C-64 and the rest was history.
@@danielrjones we had Buck Rogers on tape and played it quite a bit, Could never finish it though because the tape was stretched in one part. Once you hit the stretched bit the game would go wonky and fail.
It was very bad. The cassettes had to be a special, insanely expensive metal type and the power supply put out an EM pulse that ruined data on the tapes if they were anywhere nearby. It was so disheartening to write a whole school paper on that awful excuse for a word processor, save it, then come back to work on it and it not being readable anymore. The cassette drive was horribly slow. Just trash.
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.
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 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 UA-cam never signed the "don't say anything bad about Coleco" agreement 😆
I worked there in 81 and 82
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 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. :)
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 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.
In 1982 I worked all a summer and bought an Atari 800. Great computer. Still have it and it still works
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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!
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 !
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!!!
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 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 remember when Gil was trying to sell these on The Simpsons. He was talking about getting free undercoating with every computer because they rust....
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.
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
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!
I got this computer for Christmas when they were getting blown out the door for $99. While I didn't have a computer of my own, my best friend at the time had an Apple ][e that we spent almost all of our free time on, and I also used computers at school, so I was already pretty savvy with them. I wanted an Apple ][e in the worst way, but I knew my father could never afford the $1k or more (in 1984 dollars) it would have cost for a complete system (yeah, Apples have ALWAYS been over-priced). So when he saw the Adam, and the words: "AppleSoft BASIC Compatible" on the box, he assumed that meant: "Apple Compatible" and thought he found a gold mine for $99.
I'm sorry to say that my disappointment was palpable when I unwrapped it on Christmas morning. When I saw it under the tree, I was pretty sure it was a computer, and I was also pretty sure that it WASN'T going to be an Apple, but when I saw that Coleco logo, I was just blind-sided and completely unable to feign enthusiasm. I mean, I wasn't an ungrateful kid. I knew how hard my father worked, and I tried to act all hyped about it, but it just wasn't selling... 😄
Still, I gave the machine an honest chance... And one thing that it was really good for was.... eh... nothing. It was literally good for nothing... Maybe a boat anchor? It felt like a toy, the printer was obnoxious, the built-in word processor was a joke, and I never got to play the Buck Rogers game, because the EMP that machine put out made short work of that tape the first time I turned it on. After about a week of wondering where I was going to find software for this thing, I sheepishly asked my father if we could return it, and I'd pony up $100 of my Christmas money to get a C64.
And then I wondered why I ever wanted an Apple.
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.
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
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!!!
I must have been lucky. I had no issues with my ADAM what so ever!
These days this would be your everyday kickstarter campaign.
What a fun retro computer channel - subbed! The ADAM story is wild, wow, I really didn't know much about it.
I got mine from Toys R Us in 1983 for $300.00. I used it up to 1989. I used the Adam for college printing up my homework. I had 2 tape drives with expanded memory, modom & a floppy drive. Did have an issue with the power supply, had to take it in, got fixed right away.
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.
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?
Wrote lyrics and printed them while enjoying Buck Rogers.
1987 before NES hit my town. Awesome Epson 1 or 2.
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 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.
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.
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.
still got mine!! controller side triggers are always working/not working... but it still works! lol so many memories from that machine
I wanted one after seeing and reading the glossy advertising material in a shop. I think they had flyers and cardboard mockups, and the promise that the machine would appear Real Sonn Now™.
Well, it didn't for quite some time, and when it appeared, the guy at the shop told me that they returned all units already because there were "issues" with that thing.
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'd be too embarrassed to go on camera with my lazy eye. It gets worse the more drinks I have, and I'd have to have a few to work up the courage.
The printer was only 1 problem. The dang tape drives destroyed game cassettes faster than you could replace them.
My Adam worked fine.
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.
Mine was working in the 90s. Mostly used it for Colecovision games, good times.
I wanted an ADAM in 1985 but my grades were bad before Christmas and my parents bucked on the purchase because "I didn't deserve a computer ". ADAM was like the cheap Apple II E.
My parents bought me one for Christmas when it 1st came out. I know now they couldn't afford it but i was a happy boy!
I had one just before the 1st Macintosh’s Loved it really!!!
Could never find Print Ribbons for the Adam.
Decent job on the video. It seems I am in the minority here as I didn't have any major problems with my ADAM. Think we got the ADAM in 1983 or 84. I have great memories of programming in BASIC and making short animations with SmartLOGO. Of course, I printed all my letters to Santa with that thing ;) I admit I find it odd that you and others in the comments have so much negativity for the disk drive; they always worked fine for me with no issues. If I recall correctly, the printer finally started acting up around 1989, but by then we were looking at something more modern and eventually got an IBM PS/1 in 1990. I write a blog about the Coleco ADAM but since my comment might get trashed for dropping a URL, just search for "Coleco ADAM blog" to find it.
Same here. We got our Adam in 1983 and we never had a problem with it. There was one recall regarding the printer unit, so we had that replaced. But our printer even prior to the recall never caused us a problem.
H and R Block Canada was using them well into the 2000's for doing peoples taxes. I just think Coleco could have done a better job with this computer.
By disk drive, do you mean to "digital datapack" cassette system, or did yours actually have an external floppy hooked up? It sounds like the tapes wouldn't have been so bad (faster than a Commodore 1541 without turboloader for linear read/write, if not seek time) except for the magnetic-pulse flaw that could erase them so easily if you weren't very careful.
@@jordanhazen7761 a year or so after the ADAM came out, Coleco was selling external floppy disk drives.
@@JustinSalvato I knew those existed, but had thought not many were ever shipped before Coleco threw in the towel. Makes sense that someone still interested in this system in 2021 would have one, though :) Did they offer an official AdamNet modem too, or were only third-party ones available?
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 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.
I almost had my parents buy this for me,... changed my mind at last second to Commodore 64.... best decision i ever made
I'm glad the state of your printer dictating if your computer can even turn on didn't catch on, that'll be a nightmare with current printers...
The Tape Drives should have been 3.5" disks, and the printer completely separate - why the ATOM was created dependent on the printer is clearly insane.
I have a good recollection of my Adam. Maybe I bought it at the end of its production at Walmart. Also, its packaging with a printer would have appealed to me. I do not feel I was scammed.
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.
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.
sad end to a over promised -under deliver venture..., Mgt. was like the proverbial ostrich , head inside the sand while committing dates with gusto...
and a good video presenation Sir !
I wanted one back in the day. They disappeared so fast because it was so big and took so much space.
Back then I heard that they named the system after Adam Walsh.
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)
2:02 and both companies discontinued their products in 1984, the year it truly crashed.
Bittersweet memories. It sucked, but it was all we had.
The problems with the Adam's design are so mind boggling, it's hard to believe that a breathing human actually did it. There was absolutely no need to pack a printer in with the computer, or a 2-bay tape drive. Most of the essentials to make a solid computer already existed in the Colecovision, so the keyboard add on, with a basic cartridge would have worked well and they could have priced it around $200, while avoiding all the problems their ridiculous design caused. Obviously Coleco saw the massive losses on this, and the massive profits making ugly stuffed dolls, and decided to the profitable path wasn't home electronics. It is a shame, as they could have made some smart decisions and been successful.
Back when I was ready to get my first computer in 1985 (I was 13), I had the choice between a Commodore 64 or the ADAM. Since I loved my Coleco Vision so much, I begged my parents for the ADAM. What a huge disappointment! That printer was a POS...loud and slow! A year later I got the Commodore 64 for Christmas and was so much happier.
One other footnote- home computer/PC geeks at the time (84-86) all laughed at the ADAM and its owners for choosing the ADAM, ie it was very uncool to have one, other than perhaps fellow CV fans. Prior to the Amga/Atari ST in late 85 into 1986, or building your own 8086/8088 machine, the better options were the C64 or Atari 8 bit
YEs, the full ADAM was my first home computer. Did great word processing and games.
Sold it in 1985 in preparation for the Atari ST I got by Fall 1985, which served me into the early 90s before building my own PC's forevermore
I wanted one of theses so bad. Ended up getting a Timex/Sinclair.
Did the ram expansion memory keep falling out of your Sinclair? My physics teacher had one, and that was a constant problem with his.
@@richardwicks4190 Yes
@@bogartoutlawclan9592 Haha, it's interesting we grew up with this junk and now recognize it as primitive. At the time, it was cutting edge.
I'm an engineer in Silly Con Valley now, and all the interest and wonder of it, is gone. I see these machines for what they are now, primitive, limited by the VLSI capabilities, and honestly, bad board layout.
Still amazing things are made, but they are Systems On a Chip. Rather amazed that a $35 raspberry pi is a complete replacement for the machine I used AT WORK, 20 years ago.
I think our days of advancement are over. From 1980 to 1990 what a tremendous leap, but from 2010 to 2020? It's cheaper, a bit smaller, but no fundamental foundational changes.
I think we are near our limit with silicon. The singularity is beyond us, or hidden from us.
I picked up one of these in 1990 for $50 at a garage sale, it had a number of tapes and cartridges with it. The one I got also had the add on second tape deck installed in it. I found that I could copy the original program tapes in my dual deck cassette recorder, that way I could have copies of the programs if something happened to the original. I used that thing for 9 years, mainly using the smartwriter program, never had any problems with it at all. I only stopped using it when I got a windows 95 system. I sold it to a co-worker for what I paid for it and he used it for another 4 years before the power supply died.
When listing the issues, it would've been nice to ... SEE THEM. Especially the manual and motherboard/case holes being in the wrong spot. This is a good video but video should include a combination of clips that align with the narration audio. This doesn't do that... it's just the same pans of the external front of the ADAM for something like 95% of the sign ... it repeats as much as the background music does.
I worked on the assembly line building the Adam computers in 1981 and 82
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.
Buck Rodgers on cassette was kinda fun
Wow, $299 2 years ago! I got my complete ADAM bundle for $50 at a flea market!
Execs: "we need to make a new computer, but it needs to be affordable. 80k should do"
developer: "ok, can we add an external power supply?"
Exec: "What are you nuts? put it in the printer"
Developer: 0_0
Exec: "also, i got a cheap electrician on craigslist to do the wiring"
(developer still in shock)
"how much did you pay him?"
Exec: "89 cents an hour"
Developer: "Oh jesus"
Exec: "Now, this new BASIC needs to be bare minimum, time is money"
Developer (secretly adds Apple II compatibility, exec finds out, is furious)
Exec: "and finally, what shall we price it at?"
Developer: $99 complete
Marketer: "$1000
Exec: "Ok, you bleeding heart's, we'll price it at $525"
Developer: "How did you get your position? how did you get here?"
Exec: "Harvard Grad"
Developer: "Business?"
Exec: "accounting, economics"
(exec is promptly fired)
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.
A very entertaining video, but they never once explained why all these issues happen?
There must be an incredible story about them dealing with the manufacturer (s) or some CEO messing everything up?
I got one of these for my birthday. It never worked. We returned it and I had the choice of a cash refund or wait 6-8 weeks for another Adam. I took the cash, got a C-64 and the rest was history.
I must be one of the luck ones to get one of the working units. I STILL have it
My family computer growing up was a Coleco Adam, had tons of fun with that thing!
Did you use the tape drive or just stick to cartridges?
@@danielrjones we had Buck Rogers on tape and played it quite a bit, Could never finish it though because the tape was stretched in one part. Once you hit the stretched bit the game would go wonky and fail.
@@greg6500 I was not good at Buck Rogers, and hated waiting for the tape to load. I stuck with my Colicovision games mainly.
@@danielrjones oh yeah forgot about the load times. I think my favorite game was Omega race
The Coleco Adam wasn't a bad computer, but that printer sounded like gunfire. I wouldn't dare use it late at night.
It was very bad. The cassettes had to be a special, insanely expensive metal type and the power supply put out an EM pulse that ruined data on the tapes if they were anywhere nearby.
It was so disheartening to write a whole school paper on that awful excuse for a word processor, save it, then come back to work on it and it not being readable anymore. The cassette drive was horribly slow.
Just trash.