This mini forum is intended to provide a simple means of discussion about the Tandy Radio Shack  MC 10 computer. If you want to share your own experience or memories, or add relevant information about this system: post a message!

Carl, could you plese share details about the differences? Your link doesn''t work for me.

Dear all,
You can read everywhere that MC10 is the same Matra Alice 4K ... but there is a difference, the tape connector are not connecting In the same way...

more information :
http://forum.system-cfg.com/viewtopic.php?f$18$t$7700$p$126208$p126208

Kind regards
Carl

I have one of these that I recently acquired from Ebay. I just installed a composite video interface in it (replacing the RF output). There''s an expansion called the MCX-128 for this that adds 128K static RAM, updated ROM with greatly upgraded BASIC, and it ads the ability to use drive space on a host computer (Mac or Windows) over serial / USB. This stuff is all available from here:
https://sites.google.com/site/thezippsterzone/

This was a short-lived, uncommon machine. When I worked at a Radio Shack Computer Center in 1985 (admittedly, it was in a business district so home machines were not our focus) there was no MC-10s in our inventory whatsoever. We had some crazy number of the 16K RAM modules, maybe 30 of them... we kept them for a year or so until they were finally struck from the inventory. I think we threw them out.

After my T/S 1000 got boring, I gathered enough saving to buy one of these in the summer of 1983 along with a 16k RAM pack. This gave 20k of memory (~18k after OS overhead). I wrote tons of game software for this in Color BASIC and machine code (poke it into memory and then exec it. No assembler or even monitor here (though I did eventually write a monitor program in BASIC to save debugging and coding time). This machine was head and shoulders above the TS/1000 and had undocumented graphics modes that you could use by directly manipulating the video chip in machine language. Unfortunately BASIC didn''t have any native commands to use the higher res modes (Just the 64X48 mode).

Just to let people know, the web page where you can find all our software for the MC-10 has been moved to:
http://faculty.cbu.ca/jgerrie/Home/jgames.html

I''ve made lots of software for this computer in recent years. It was my first computer and I had lots of fun back in late ''83 fooling around with it. Come see what we have made and relive the early 8-bit years:
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/jimgerrie/jsoft.html

You couldn''t fully take advantage of the higher resolution graphics modes without internal modifications because some of the address lines on the 6847 weren''t attached and address decoding is a cheap design. As a result, the last 1/3 of the screen is a mirror of the first 1/3 in the highest resolution modes.

To make matters worse, the ROM interrupt vectors point to locations that are in the screen address range used by higher res modes.

You couldn''t fully take advantage of the higher resolution graphics modes without internal modifications because some of the address lines on the 6847 weren''t attached and address decoding is a cheap design. As a result, the last 1/3 of the screen is a mirror of the first 1/3 in the highest resolution modes.

To make matters worse, the ROM interrupt vectors point to locations that are in the screen address range used by higher res modes.

Jeff, you mentioned that you also have/had a floppy for the MC-10 ? Strange, because I never heard about a floppy based system for the MC-10. The only backup was a tape-recorder system.

Gary, I have both the MC-10 and a CoCo 2 with EDASM+. Do you mind sharing your information about the 6803 opcodes that need to be added and which advanced 6809 features need to be avoided?

Thanks,
Ed

I bought one of these on clearances along with the 16k memory upgrade and the thermal printer. I used it until I could afford the more usable Color Computer 2.
At one point, I got into writing assembly language programs for the MC-10. Since there was no support from Radio Shack, I had to analyse the Rom to find useful routines.
The 6803 processor was backward compatible to the 6800, but included added features which which made it closer to the 6809 processor used in the color computers 1 through 3. When I upgraded to a color computer 2, I found it possible to use the EDASM+ cartridge on the Coco 2 to develop machine language prograns for the MC-10, by defining 5 opcodes unique to the 6803 and avoiding the advanced features of the 6809.
The MC-10 used the same cassette tape format as the color computers, but the BASIC interpreter used different keyword tokens and the MC-10 was unable to load or save ascii format programs. It was also unable to use the serial port and the tape drive at the same time.

I have one of these still, along with floppy, and thermal printer. My first PC ever and loved it at the time.

Just recently aquired one of these babys for my collection. Didn''t come with any software, but I found a site that has every program released for the system plus a few homebrew games stored as WAV files. Shame the machine failed$ if Tandy had promoted it a bit better, it might have done well.

I had one of these briefly in the 80''s but didn''t have the addons as RS had already cleared them out. Did write a few basic programs on tape. Would like to find one working condition if I could just to have something to fiddle with. james.m.alexander@gmail.com

The MC-10 also had the ability to connect a modem to the printer port. The modem had 300 baud speed, and there was even a simple communication program for it to use. I do not know if the modem was originally from Tandy or from 3rd party vendors. The graphics chip from the MC-10 is the same as in the Tandy Color Computer, but Tandy did not solder all connections, so the chip was limited in grafix.

My dad bought me this magical machine when I was 12 and got me hooked. Did a bunch of BASIC programming and even bought a COCO3 later, which died and was replaced by another COCO3 with Boxes of programs and add-ons. Still have the MC-10 in the original box, but have not power it on in over a decade...

I bougth my MC-10 color computer in 1983 or 1984 and there wasn't much support by Tandy corp. But I developed loads of programs for this tiny little computer. Some features that were not mentioned in the manual are:
Several graphic modes up to 256x192 resolution with 2 colors and 128x 192 resolution in 4 color mode
Synthesizer functions for the sound chip
The ability to load data-files from tape to be used with programs like paint-programs, wordprocessors,etc.

You should try to ask webmasters of MC10 dedicated websites such as http://www.geocities.com/simonsouth/mc10/index.html. They surely will be able to help you.

I was clearing out old stuff in my parents house, and found my MC-10. I can't find the power supply, but I did find the ram expansion module. Does anyone know where I can find the power supply specs. Also, I am not a collector, and may be selling this soon, where can I find value info?

The sound for the MC-10 was generated through the TV. It could generate 255 tones, lasting 75 milliseconds to 19.125 seconds.

On the TV I use, anything above tone 224 is just noise - too high for the speakers.

The BASIC command for sound was SOUND tone, length where both values were 1 to 255.

There was only one problem. While it is generating a tone, everything else freezes.

Although there wasn't one specifically desiganted for it, I believe the MC-10 could be used with any of the serial modems for the rest of the coco series. I don't have any such modem, so I can't test that out. Also, I read somewhere that one could POKE the serial port all the way up to 9600, not sure about that either though.

Just purchased myself a slighty used MC-10. MY first system was an mc-10, but was lost long ago. Actually the systems & it's manual could probably stlle be used a a good into to programming concepts. (even with the GOTOs :-P )