New CoCo...well, new to me

So got my new CoCo yesterday.  It's a 64k CoCo2 that I purchased on eBay for about $60, including shipping.  And I'm happy to report that after some testing, it seems to work completely.  The only thing I haven't tested yet is the cassette interface.  I also got 3 cartridges with it.  One of them, a personal information manager, works, but the other two do not.  The cartridges do not have labels, so I don't actually know what they are, but I didn't really care, so no big loss there.  I did confirm that both my Edtasm+ cartridge and, more importantly, CoCo SDC work.  And as far as I know, the CoCo1 and CoCo2 are pretty much interchangeable.  There's nothing that one can do that the other can't, so it really is a drop-in replacement.

So then why a new CoCo?  Well, first I got it pretty cheap, so there's that.  Also, this is known to be 64k.  My grey CoCo1 is either 32k or 64k, but because of the peculiarities of the CoCo platform, I'm not sure which.  I'm sure someone more knowledgeable about the Tandy Color Computer could figure it out pretty quickly, but there doesn't seem to be a real easy way to do so, at least not one that I'm aware of.  So at least with this CoCo I don't have to wonder.

The other reason is just the size.  Desktop space is at a premium for me, and the CoCo2 is substantially smaller than its predecessor.  When I'm not using it, it just slides back pretty easily and still leaves me with substantial desktop space to use.  This was much less the case with the grey CoCo.  The one downside?  The keyboard feels better on the CoCo2 but is much, much louder.  And I'm already a loud typist, even on the quietest keyboard.  I expect to get noise complaints from the neighbors with this one. ;-p