ADAM Computer sold in Uruguay
posted by AtariAge member soviet


Hi. In my country, Uruguay, the Coleco ADAM was sold until 1998. Someone imported a huge load of Coleco overstock after the crash, fixed them and even built a computer store here. The computers were sold for a very long time and most people's first computer was a Coleco ADAM.
 
They also run out of spare parts at some time and started to build their own. There's a lot of variations of the ADAM Computer since they built custom boxes, art banners, cases, monitors, cabling and PSU to complete the machines and sell them as "new", how I got mine. It is the most common computer you can find in street markets being sold used.
 
A company called Iron Byte created ZX Spectrum games like "Narco Police" and others for Dinamic. I was lucky that one of the game devolopers is a co-worker of mine and his company not only developed games, they also built ZX Spectrum module using a Coleco Digital Data Drive and broke off the plastic pieces that hold the Coleco DDP so it can use normal music tapes. A special Interface with Shadow ROM was built to use it in the zx spectrum and he told me that the controller used a Shadow ROM and works perfect using standard audio tapes. A lot of people in Uruguay and Argentina purchased it, btw. It was a cheap way to have fast loading software on the ZX Spectrum. The developer told me that he disassembled the ADAM's EOS Rom and found that the software that controls the ADAM Data Drive was very badly developed and his sofware for the ZX Spectrum was much faster as well as reliable. I find it amusing that the modified drives this company sold work OK even today and most ADAMs cannot load any software because they screw the tape after certain number of uses, even my friend managed to tune the firmware to load fine from 90 minute tapes. 
