User:MagicFab

I am a long-time Color Computer fan from Colombia, interested in rescuing and restoring as many CoCos as I can and putting them in hands of new users. I offer free data recovery services for CoCo users (past and current), including decaying floppies. I am also interested in old Macintosh and Apple II series computers.

My current focus is in buying beat up CoCos and restoring and upgrading them for trading in Quebec province (Canada) and neighboring provinces and states (mostly Ontario, VT and NY). I also improve existing documentation and scan documents for archival. I am learning how to do basic repairs and build cables and other peripherals for re-distribution, mostly in Latin America. I am working on making Color Computer User Groups a thing again and started a Canadian group in April 2022.

My first computer was a 4K CoCo 1 which I later upgraded to 16K. It came with Bustout, Space Invaders, Personal Finance and Music Program paks. I later got a 64K CoCo 2 with DMP-150, floppy disks, CCR-82. I never owned a CoCo 3 but met friends that did and we would meet to trade software and geek out. Check out my childhood Color Computer user group reboot at https://cocobyte.co !

I live in Montreal (Quebec), Canada but will drive or fly to any dying CoCo :)

Contact

• MagicFab.ca - personal site, email contact form, Le Goût du Libre, my consulting work in Free open source software enterprise support and systems administration
• CoCoByte - my home country (Colombia) Color Computer user group
• RetroBytes, CoCo chat rooms in English, French and Spanish on the Matrix network, this is where I hang out

Books

I've started to put together a list of my CoCo books with Open Library :

• https://openlibrary.org/people/magicfab/lists/OL206510L/MagicFab%27s_TRS-80_Color_Computer_Books

Hardware

My first computer was an original Color Computer with 4K RAM. I then upgraded to CoCo 2. I still own both systems.

I also own a CoCo 3 as a my daily driver and several CoCo 2 and 3 systems rotate in my home lab while awaiting new owners.

Rescued CoCos

• CoCo 2 64K - rescued from movie props business basement. DOA, re-set chips, worked.
• 2021-01 : CoCo 3 128K - bought from eBay, pending CPU replacement
• CoCo 3 128K - bought from estate liquidation, re-set chips, worked (daily driver)
• CoCo 2 64K - bought from eBay, shipped to Miami, sent to Colombia for repair, keyboard succesfully replaced
• CoCo 2 16K - bought from FB marketplace
• March 2022 - 2 x CoCo 1 (one dead) and 1 x CoCo 3 from Kijiji.ca including a ton of books and accessories
• April 2022
  • 1 CoCo 3 with Multipak, FD-502, CM-8 and CoComax interface (Texas, USA). Picked up by a friend, waiting to be shipped
  • 2 x CoCo 2 (one dead keyboard) and 1 CoCo 3 (Montreal, CA)

ToDo

• https://www.nf6x.net/2016/09/wanted-radio-shack-color-tvs-for-trs-80-color-computer/ - get picture and add info to Hardware page
• Cleanup software page, ROMpaks list
• Free floppy / tape software transfer service through SDC