Welcome back to part 7 of my fourth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we took a closer look at the Coco's various floppy drives and floppy controller carts. In this post we'll have a look at the various printers and modems.
Starting with printers, early on, the Coco was initially advertised to be used with the Quick Printer II originally designed for the TRS-80 Model I. Much like the CT-80A, most of the other peripherals for the Coco at launch were originally designed for the TRS-80.
A listing for the The Quick Printer II for the Coco in the 1981 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
But Tandy did have dedicated peripherals on the drawing board even during the Coco launch, in fact even in the 1981 Radio Shack Catalog in the Coco 1's listing it notes: Future expansion is a snap! You can add more memory, or Extended-Color BASIC plus disk, printers, and telephone modem available soon.
The future peripheral note on the Coco listing in the 1981 Radio Shack Catalog
The first printers Radio Shack sold for the Coco were the Line Printer VII and Line Printer VIII (Catalog number 26-1168 and Catalog number 26-1167 respectively), both released in 1981, for $399.00 dollars and $799.00 dollars respectfully.
A listing for Line Printer VII and Line Printer VIII in the 1982 Radio Shack Catalog
Both are similar to the Line Printer I, but as you could probably tell from the prices, the Line Printer VII was aimed at the home market and Line Printer VIII was aimed at the more professional market. The Line Printer VII was more similar to the earlier Line Printers in that it was a 7 Pin Dot Matrix Printer that could only print text in either 40 columns or 80 columns at 30 lines per second. But the Line Printer VIII was a 9 Pin Dot Matrix Printer that could print in 80 columns at a rate of 23 lines per minute and was able to do graphics. That's right! The print head in the Line Printer VIII was designed to be addressable, allowing for the printer to output graphics, making it the first Radio Shack Dot Matrix Printer to do so.
The Line Printer VIII
A few years later, the Line Printer VII was replaced by the DMP-100 (Catalog number 26-1253), introduced in 1982, at A retail price of $399.00 dollars.
The DMP-100 was also a 7 Pin Dot Matrix Printer capable of printing text in either 40 columns or 80 columns, but it also had graphics output as well combining the lowprice of th eLine Printer VII, with the graphics output and some other features of the Line Printer VIII, giving users the best of both worlds.
But these could only print in black and white, What about color? After all, the biggest selling point about the Coco was the color. Well Radio Shack had that basis covered too, as they had made a color upgrade in their plotters with the TRS-80 MultiPen Plotter (Catalog number 26-1191), also introduced in 1981, For $1995 dollars.
A listing for the TRS-80 MultiPen Plotter in the 1983 Radio Shack Catalog
The MultiPen Plotter was an upgrade to the TRS-80 Printer Plotter which we've seen previously, but it took on a flat bed design, similar to high end professional plotters like the HP7225A, but had the advantage of being much cheaper.
The MultiPen Plotter used six colored pens (black, red, blue, green, violet, and orange) to print at 2.8 inches per second on a full 8.5" by 11" page. In addition to lines and curves, it could also print 93 different characters of upper- and lowercase text. The plotter could also be operated manually using the control panel on the front. Each pen nib sold for $3.95, but Radio Shack also sold felt tip pen nibs for $3.95 for creating transparency's to use in overhead projectors, which was useful for creating graphs for business presentations.
While it was probably more intended for use with the TRS-80 Model II and Model III due to price, it still used an RS232 serieal connection so it could be used on the Coco as well. Obviously the color prints wouldn't exactly be What You See Is What You Get and the plotter is not ideal for cetain text and small detail, it still gave Coco owners a way to get color printouts.
For those who couldn't afford the high price there was CGP-115 (Catalog number 26-1192), Introduced alongside the DMP-100 in 1982, for a retail price of $249.95.
The CGP-115 went backed to a desktop design, and used 4 pens: Black, Red, Blue and Green. The paper used was plain bond at 4.5 inches wide and 180 feet but that's not a common size. while finding paper in that length is difficult, 160 feet of plain bond does fit into the printer as well. Interestingly, the mechanism it used was the ALPS DPG-1302, which was used in several other plotters including the Atari 1020 for the Atari 8bit line, The Texas Instruments HX-1000 planned for the TI CC40, the Olivetti PL10 for the Olivetti M10, and even the Mattel Aquarius 4615 for the ill fatted Mattel Aquarius.
The CGP-115 went backed to a desktop design, and used 4 pens: Black, Red, Blue and Green. The paper used was plain bond at 4.5 inches wide and 180 feet but that's not a common size. while finding paper in that length is difficult, 160 feet of plain bond does fit into the printer as well. intersetingly, the mechanism it used was the ALPS DPG-1302, which was used in several other plotters including the Atari 1020 for the Atari 8bit line, The Texas Instruments HX-1000 planned for the TI CC40, the Olivetti PL10 for the Olivetti M10, and even the Mattel Aquarius 4615 for the ill fatted Mattel Aquarius.
The CGP-115 was followed up by the CGP-220 (Catalog number 26-1268), which was introduced in 1984, and retailed for $699 dollars
A listing for the CGP-220 in the 1984 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
Depite the CGP-115 being a plotter, the CGP-220 was a different printer using a different printing technology, and the printing technology was a type most of us today are very familiar with: Inkjet Printing! Yep, The CGP-220 has the distinction as being one of the very first commercially available Color Inkjet Printers on the consumer market. Now it wasn't the first commercially available Color Inkjet Printer, that honor would go to the HP ThinkJet, which was also released in 1984.
The HP ThinkJet (1984)
Now the CGP-220 was not an internally developed product, it was actally an OEM version of an Inkjet Printer designed by Canon: The Canon pj-1080a also introduced in 1984, And retailed for $799 dollars.
The Canon pj-1080a (1984)
The CGP-220 could print in either Monocrome at 560 It could print 2600 dots/second in graphics mode with a resolution of 560 dots/line in monochrome and 640 dots/line in color, and in Text mode it could print at 12 cpi at 37 characters (7 x 5) per second.
The big apeal of the CGP-220 was that it was silent and required less moving parts, however while Inkjet Printers were impressive at the time, they really didnt take off until the mid 1990's. The biggest problems were that they had reliability problems and the text quaility couldent compare to a Daisy Wheel, Laser printer, or even a dot matrix for that matter. In fact heres a screenshot from a 1986 issue of Antic Magazine showing text output from a CGP-220.
HP, Canon, and Epson continued to experiment with Inkjet Technology, but it wasn't untill the release of the HP DeskJet in 1988, that Inkjet started to become a major contender as a replacement for Dot Matrix, and by the mid 1990's Inkjet had filled in the role of Dot Matrix printers in consumer printing technology.
The HP DeskJet (1988)
Modems for the Coco also evolved in the same way with the first available being the Telephone Modem II, originally designed for the TRS-80 Model I.
A listing for the Telephone Modem II for the Coco in the 1981 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
But again it was quickly replaced by dedicated modems with styling to match and better features. The first was the Direct Connect Modem (Catalog number 26-1172), Introduced in 1981, and retailing for $149 Dollars.
A listing for the Direct Connect Modem in the 1981 Radio Shack Catalog
This modem did away with the Acoustic Coupler technique of the Telephone Modem II and instead (As the Name suggested) just included an RJ11 jack on the back to hook directly into a phoneline.
Interestingly, the Telecomunications package was a cartridge called VideoTex, And if you remember the history of the Coco, then that name should ring a bell as that was the name of the video terminal of which the Coco was based on. And Indeed the software on the cartridge is identical to the software of the VideoTex terminal. So Tandy effectivly put the internal communications software on a cartridge and let Coco users turn their computer back into a Videotex. If that isnt amusing, I dont know what is!
The Coco's VideoTex Cartridge
Anyway, With the VideoTex cartridges you could either access bullitin board services, A DOW Jones Information Service, or Compuserve, which was soon offered for the coco with Coco dedicated SIG's to match.
A listing for available online services in the 1982 Radio Shack Catalog
But if you still needed an Acoustic Coupler modem, There was the Acoustic Coupler AC-3 (catalog number 26-1174), Introduced in 1982, for $149.95.
The Acoustic Coupler AC-3 was nearly identical to the Telephone Interface II but was no longer targeted just at the Model I as it could work on the Model II, Model III, and of course the Coco. The Acoustic Coupler AC-3 still had a top speed of 300 baud which really was the main limit for acoustic couplers.
The Acoustic Coupler AC-3 was replaced by the $119.95 Acoustic Coupler AC-4 (catalog number 26-1179), which was released in 1985, and retailed for $119.95.
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It also had a top speed of 300 baud and was designed to work on the Model I, Model II, Model III and coco. It was the last Acoustic Coupler Modem Radio Shack sold, being discontinued around 1988.
Again, Modems marked the last of the official practical add ons for the Coco. But many more unique add ons that porvided all sorts of features from Joysticks and mice, to speech and sound modules, to even Home Automation systems. This concludes Part 7 of the fourth Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we take a closer look at the many miscellaneous add ons and peripherals for the Coco.
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