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Last update November 11,2005

So what IS PROJECT GREEN THUMB? What Does it have to do with the CoCo?

In 1977, a year after starting talks with Motorola about the possibility of designing a low-cost home computer that could be hooked up to a regular TV set, Tandy is invited to participate in an agricultural experiment. Project "Green Thumb", as it was called, would employ information retrieval to give farmers data, updated hourly by computer. Terminals used in this project are developed by Radio Shack in conjunction with Motorola. By late 1977, Motorola's MC6847 Video Display Generator chip is developed. Although it's unclear if the VDG came about because of project "Green Thumb" or Tandy's search for the "low-cost" home computer,

The original project was limited 250 units (it is unknown if any exist today). The Project was to be administered by the University of Kentucky, and 100 units went to Shelby County, Shelbyville Kentucky and another 100 units went to Todd County , Elkton, Kentucky with the remainder to be used at the university of Kentucky The original project was made sometime after the TRS-80 Model 1 was released, and the model 1's outer shell was used originally to house the unit, as RS had these available. Interesting enough there is no "Keyboard" just a number pad. Possibly, because this unit only received information The project was worked on by Jerry Heep. He is the man that created the SAM chip, that was eventually used in both the Video-Tex and the CoCo.

Interesting, the only "known" Photo to exist is from the MC 6809 Cook book, but it has a CoCo keyboard, which leads me to believe that this photo is an early prototype of the Video-Tex.

PGT proposal Cover (photocopy provided by Jerry)

Layout Exploded VIEW Click for a bigger photo

Obviously "PGT" was a great success, otherwise the Video-Tex and possibly the Color computer would not be born (and some say the internet itself).

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