#: 14046 S1/General Interest
    23-Jan-92  00:21:31
Sb: #14018-#Death of a CoCo3 II
Fm: Ian Hodgson 72177,1762
To: Erich Schulman 75140,3175 (X)

Erich,

     I have followed your messages about the poor CoCo 3 for the past few weeks
and I wonder if you are not giving up too easily. When I saw that you were
planning to try to persuade MSDOS to look a bit like OS9 I figured I had to say
something before it was too late!

     I make a good part of my living troubleshooting data communications
equipment (on the phone, not the bench, mostly) and I must say that the easiest
problems to fix are the "It used to work OK" type, rather than the "It never
worked" ones. I don't recall all the things you mentioned but if it were my
CoCo 3 I would check first the power supply voltages (which will probably be
OK), then look at the chips. This can be done systematically if you have the
service manual and an oscilloscope. Indeed, the service manual has an entire
section on step by step troubleshooting which should let you identify the bad
chip (by far the most likely problem) in short order. If you don't have the
service manual you may still be able to get one from Tandy (part no. 26-3334).
If there was no inconvenient border in between us (I presume you are in the
U.S.) I would say to send me the thing and I would take a look at it.

     But for heaven's sake don't give up on it. At the worst you should be able
to get another one; they show up here from time to time and there must be
thousands of them gathering dust in various places. And no matter how much you
want to pretend, you will never make MSDOS work like OS9.

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