Working on the Coleco ADAM production line

While visiting a website about vintage computers, I noticed a comment from a user named, “Raz” who said they worked at Coleco making the ADAM computer. Intrigued, I wanted to reach out and know about their time there. However, the comment was from several years ago and I was not feeling very confident that the email address would still be in use. I got a response. Check it out.

“Dear Justin,

Thank you for reaching out to me about my time at Coleco on the push line for the Adam computer. I don’t have any pictures from that time. Cameras were not allowed in. The factory was an old three story (with two subbasements) brick building in Amsterdam, NY. The only elevators were for freight and you took the stairs to get to your work assignment. I worked there from the Fall of 1983 into January of 1984. I remember that my first day there, I was given a box to sit on at a long wooden table with a track where the mother board would be slid along. Or I guess it was a mother board. My job was to put five wires in and push the board to the next person. The bosses gave us a wrist strap that had a wire attached to an alligator clip that was then clipped to a wire under the table. Supposedly it was to stop static electricity from shorting out the parts. If you thought a computer would be made in a sterile environment, it wasn’t. The building was dusty, had old wooden floors and though it wasn’t dirty, the building wasn’t that clean either.

The starting pay was 5 dollars an hour, so take home after taxes (I don’t remember if there were any health benefits) was around 150.00 for a weeks work.

The best part of working for Coleco at that time was that we could buy Cabbage Patch dollars for $25 dollars each. Granted we had to line up at the company store and wait hours to get in but for Christmas 1983, that was the gift of the season.

Thank you for this opportunity.

Raz

PS: My best friends printed out their wedding invitations on an Adam Computer”

I responded to Raz with the following:

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly Raz. Did you ever end up getting an ADAM or ColecoVision? As for the state of the factory, from the late 1990s up through the 2000s, I worked in several factories and warehouses. They were pretty much as you described. The only one that came close to being “clean” was a DVD packaging factory. The area where the discs were printed was pretty immaculate and the area where I worked, packing the DVDs by hand and by machine was clean, but not nearly as clean as that other area, but compared to other places and what you described, much, nicer.

On one of my posts, there are photos of an assembly line for the ColecoVision (be sure to zoom in) https://colecoadam.files.wordpress.com/2019/06/colecomohawkvalley.jpg. Does that look familiar to you? And do you remember which building in the photo you worked in?

“Just got your email. Oh dear heavens, those pictures take me back. There was no conveyor belt for the Adam computer line, just a wooden track you pushed the boards along on. The tables with the test machines were very familiar. I got to work them after a few weeks on the push line. You put in the mother board, hit a button and the test machine ran a diagnostic to see if it was workable. If it was, the board went to the soldering machine, the rejects went to an inspector to find the problem. The edges of the board were sharp and cut your fingers unless you either work gloves or taped up your fingers.

No I didn’t get an ADAM or ColecoVision. At the time I didn’t play video games and I couldn’t see the expense of a computer, when I had a typewriter. Didn’t own a computer until 1990 when the company I was working for had an employee discount of Dell computers. Which all things considered it was not much more than a typewriter with memory.

Looking at the picture, believe I was in the first building on the right. “

I really enjoy the details about how the workstation was set up, the location of the factory floor, etc.. I hope you do too and maybe there are more former employees out there who will tell a story or two about their time at Coleco. If you know someone, send them my way.