Yeah, the Moto VDA was crappy! 256x192 with some odd color and semi-graphics was not exactly brilliant.

The CoCo 3 ended up being a pretty great machine, but too late.

I had a bit of a blast programming that one briefly in one byte per pixel mode! On NTSC models, one can set the 640 pixel, 4 color mode or 320 pixel, 16 color modes and use a composite display to get basically 256 artifact colors!

I had only a cassette and limited time. All I managed to do was some nice fractal plots, and the like in assembly language.

Today, we have a fair number of good productions on that machine, though surprisingly few make use of the excellent composite modes.

Yeah, the whole setup, if one had it, really was a great education.