The first computer I ever owned was made by a doll company! Remember Cabbage Patch dolls? They were made by Coleco. Coleco also made 'Colecovision' gaming system for home entertainment, the fore-runner of today's GameCubes, PS2's and XBOX 360. In the early 1980's, Coleco came out with a home computer, the "Coleco Adam".
It came with a whopping 80K ram and you could expand it to 144k! It had a tape drive for storage. No disks or hard drive, just a tape; it looked like a regular audio tape, but was super-charged to run back and forth at high speed. And best of all, the whole package cost me $499.00!! Less then half of what the IBM-PCjr was retailing for.
It was a good idea. However, Coleco had over-reached their technical capabilites. They dropped the whole platform about 3 months after I purchased my Adam, thereby creating a lot of "Little Orphaned Adams". The no longer created add-ons, distributed or repaired their computers. Not that they had ever repaired them. The first Adam I had never ran properly and when I called the Coleco support line, was told to take it to a Honeywell repair site!
I don't remember what happened to my Orphaned Adam. I suppose at some point I threw it in the trash. The next computer I owned was a 'portable computer': an Apple ][c! If you are interested you can read more about early 'home computers' at the Classic Computer Magazine Archive.
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