# reading matter | Return of the rainbow. Compucolor ii

In 1978, computers began to look more and more like the devices we know today. They were still significantly inferior to modern digital babies in terms of power, but they were already slowly becoming not only fun, but also useful things in everyday life. At the end of 1977, the Compucolor II computer was introduced. He replaced the Compucolor 8001 , which became famous for its color display. Over the entire period of sales of this computer, we bought only 2 thousand units.

When Compucolor II entered the market there is no exact information. Historians of high technology believe that this happened in May 1978. Depending on the configuration, this computer cost from 1 thousand 495 US dollars to 2 thousand 395 US dollars.

Yes, Timex Sinclair 1500, which appeared five years later, was much cheaper. Progress, even in those years did not stand still. Compared to Sol-20, it had the advantage that it did not take a whole week to assemble and test it.

It was based on a 2 MHz processor from Intel or AMD. Its RAM (RAM, RAM) ranged from 8 to 32 kilobytes. The 13-inch Compucolor II monitor had a resolution of 128 x 128 pixels and support for two colors. In text mode, it displayed 64 lines and 32 columns of textual information.

The accumulator of information was a 53-kilobyte built-in floppy disk drive. The role of the operating system played FCS and Compucolor BASIC (a special version of the programming language BASIC for Compucolor).

On the back of the Compucolor II, there were only three ports:

1. Keyboard connector
2. RS232C serial port
3. 50-pin system bus connector

Compucolor II was an all-in-one computer. It was rare for the late 1970s. It already had everything you need to work: support for color graphics; built-in drive and programming language BASIC as a software platform. In June 1978, at the National Computer Conference in the California city of Anaheim, Compucolor model 3, the first model of the Compucolor II series, was introduced.

Compucolor II was developed by Intecolor , and its sales were made through Compucolor . These are the names of divisions of Intelligent Systems Corporation (ISC) . ISC was also engaged in the production of professional electron-beam (CRT) terminals for computer displays and communication needs.

If the first Compucolor 8001 computer was designed for industry, then Compucolor 8001 was intended for ordinary consumers. Historians do not exclude that Compucolor II was the first computer with support for color text, color graphics and a built-in floppy drive for storing programs and data. This is a combination of useful qualities. Separately, they could occur before.

In those days, Apple II was almost the only computer with color graphics. But the color text was not supported by them. The only thing in color in the product of the two great Steves was a stingy set of colored graphic elements: points and lines.

The creators of the computer took care of saving money and precious time, so the display (and, at the same time, the system unit) Compucolor II computer served as a standard color TV. A television set and an analog circuit were removed from the television set and a floppy disk drive and a computer motherboard were installed in their place. History has not conveyed to us information about the TV from which brand was used in the production of Compucolor II.

Buyers had access to three models of Compucolor II, which differed from each other in the amount of RAM:

• Model 3; 8 kilobytes; 1 thousand 495 dollars
• Model 4; 16 kilobytes; 1 thousand 795 dollars
• Model 5; 32 kilobytes; 2 thousand 395 dollars

Compucolor Corporation did well and, thanks to large production volumes, prices were lowered in February 1979:

• On Model 4 up to 1 thousand 695 dollars
• On Model 5 to 1 thousand 995 dollars

The computer could be equipped with three types of keyboard: standard, extended and deluxe (with color buttons). The expanded version was supplemented with a digital block and special function keys that facilitated the hard work of the programmer.

Keyboards of all kinds had a certain set of special keys:

• “AUTO” loaded a menu from the floppy disk in the built-in floppy disk drive, which was a list of available programs.
• "CPU RESET" rebooted the system in CRT mode
• "ATTN / BREAK" suspended the execution of the current BASIC program

Compucolor II could work in three modes:

• CRT mode or Terminal mode. Interaction with another computer via serial port RS232
• BASIC. Single-user mode, which involved the introduction and execution of programs in BASIC
• FCS (File Control System, file system mode). A disk operating system that allows you to manage files located on a floppy disk in the built-in floppy drive

By default, Compucolor II was loaded in BASIC mode, or, more precisely, the version of the DISK BASIC 8001 programming language. In the event of a failure, pressing the SHIFT CONTROL keypad, CPU RESET returned the computer to DISK BASIC 8001 mode.

A few words should be said about the programming language itself or, as they would say today, the development environment. DISK BASIC was very powerful in its times. He was able to perform operations with files, vector graphics and floating point. Able to work with Boolean algebra, trigonometric functions, as well as string functions.

With the help of this powerful BASIC, the programmer got access to the real-time clock of the computer. According to rumors, DISK BASIC 8001 was a modified and improved Microsoft BASIC. As you know, Microsoft's BASIC has for many years been the main programming language of many personal computers.

The disk operating system was called FCS (“File Control System”, “File Control System”). It was used to manage floppy disks, allowing the user to save programs, screen status, and arrays.

You could enter FCS by pressing the “ESC” “D” keyboard shortcut. Returning to BASIC was done by pressing the “ESC” “E” keys. The disk operating system has a set of commands:

• COPY - Copy
• DELETE - Delete
• DEVICE - Device
• DIRECTORY - Directory (Directory, today it is called Folder)
• DUPLICATE - Duplicate
• INITIALIZE - Initialize
• LOAD - Download
• READ - Read
• RENAME - Rename
• RUN - Run
• SAVE - Save
• WRITE - Write

Please note that formatting (FORMAT) is not in the list of these commands. And it is no coincidence. The user was forced to buy pre-formatted floppy disks from the dealer for $ 20 per pair. Over time, Formatter was officially released for Compucolor II. It would seem that formatting a floppy is such a simple task. But even she was accompanied by difficulties, like almost all of those years, which was associated with computer equipment.

Compucolor II did not support automatic booting from a diskette at power on. The instructions to the computer even had a warning:

“Do not leave a diskette in the drive when you turn on or turn off your Compucolor II”

The magnetic field of the cathode-ray tube of the display was only seven and a half centimeters from the floppy disk drive. This field could violate the integrity of the data on the diskette at the time the system was turned on or off.

Adapted from oldcomputers.net

The article is based on materials https://hi-news.ru/computers/chtivo-vozvrashhenie-radugi-compucolor-ii.html.