Comments on: Did You Know You Can Buy A Computer For — Believe It Or Not — Your Home? The TRS-80

By: Glenn E.

Glenn E. — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 07:04:08 +0000

#40 Sorry to disappoint you, but I never owned an Apple Mac. I went from Apple IIc, to Commodore Amiga (A1000 & A3000). And they suited my use for ten years. Until accessing the Internet with a text only account, was no longer possible. It was HTML or nothing, and the Amiga’s processor speed just wasn’t up to the demands of changing graphics. Though it could handle some video graphics files. So I suspect it was a matter of poorly written TCP/IP stack and browser ware, for it. If it had been written in machine code, it would have been Ok. It just proved far easier to find a used PC (with XP), than to get a stack working on the Amiga 3k.

I never liked those early Macs, because of their small B&W screens, lack of sound and motion video, and a closed programing policy that locked out a lot of useful (often free) programs, written by freelance authors Apple would never have approved. True, this kept out a lot of the junk software. But this didn’t seem to hurt PC’s sales, for having buggy wares. No, not a Mac fan. Then or even now.

By: pedro

pedro — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:59:55 +0000

#23 macs have always been toys.

#29 Because Xerox couldn’t had cared less for what PARC did.

#37 Core macfan, aren’t we?

By: Glenn E.

Glenn E. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:13:13 +0000

#36 – I got my “Basic Games” and “More Basic Games” books autographed by Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton. So I guess that ups their value a bit, eh?

The North Star basic in those weren’t exactly 100% compatible with either TRS-80’s or Apple’s Basic. Especially as all the game outputs were geared to a printer, not a video screen. So “print” commands had to be modified to work for each computer’s video generating output.

By: Glenn E.

Glenn E. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:02:55 +0000

That 3rd video is a crock! The Apple II only reads the disk drive in the first 20 seconds it’s switched on. So any disk put in late, wouldn’t be read, without hitting the reset button. Plus the guy got a bookcase full of crappy software, that only works for a TRS80. So why are there other machines in the room? And there was no “standardization” because every computer maker was trying not to be compatible, in order to gouge us for their proprietary hardware. Printers were the first devices to break this pattern. Even the floppy drives (both 5.25″ and 3″) were unique to each maker’s encoding scheme. Though they used the exact same medium. To adopt another’s as a standard, was to get sued! And Microsoft had the worse disk encoding scheme for years.

By: Glenn E.

Glenn E. — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 06:40:22 +0000

I had one of the Model 1s, before I dumped it for an Apple II, with floating point Basic. I had my TRS-80 apart, to improve its function (lower case generation). The Monitor you had to buy with it, was formally a Canadian B&W 12″ Tv with it tuner removed. And small circuit board added to interface the puter’s output, with the Tv (in place of its tuner’s output). I don’t recall if it had a volume control or not. The Ram you got for the base price, was only 4K. And they charged you another $200 to replace it with eight 16K chips. And kept the 4K chips, probably to install in another TRS-80. At the time, R.S. strickly controlled the sale of 16K ram chips, so one couldn’t Do It Yourself! The rear edge connector port was another proprietary deal. A non-standard 36pin plug connected the keyboard unit to the expansion unit. Which can empty of any ram, for another $200. Just a power supply and internal UART chip interface for floppy drives. Which were extra. What the hell good is a near empty circuit board for $200? The Model 1 was definitely designed to gouge the customer. It only seemed to be cheaper than the Apple II’s price point. But the Apple came with everything it needed, built in, to be expand it. And its graphics were COLOR, and of better resolution.

The only thing I remember the TRS-80, having over the Apple, was the Z-80 cpu, and a better built in Basic editor. Which worked something like a Nodepad (per line of code). And checked if what you typed, made sense syntax wise. Whereas the Apple Basic editor, never checked anything before execution. Nor had any text search features, like the TRS-80 did. But since the graphic only amounted to 1024 little white blocks. What good was having a great Basic line editor?

Later, I put my own ram into my Apple II. And built my own game controllers. And made my own Ram/Language card and voice output card, from protoboards and kit parts. The TRS-80 (M1) was useless to expand or improve much. I never got their Color Computer. It seemed too little, too late. It was made to catch up with the TI-99 and Atari game console. Both which had the plugin modules.

By: Ken in Berkeley

Ken in Berkeley — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 02:45:10 +0000

#25, I still have “More Basic Games”, by David Ahl, on my bookshelf as well. I had an Atari 800 back in the day and did loads of programming with it. One of my favorite games in the book was a game called “Black Box”.

By: amodedoma

amodedoma — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 20:51:11 +0000

I bought a TRS-80 model 100 in 1980, I still got it, it still works. On occasion I still use it as a serial terminal. They SURE don’t make ‘em like they used to…

Z80 RULEZ!

By: ECD

ECD — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:27:07 +0000

The Tandy 1000 was basically a faster IBM PCjr. It’s ironic that Radio Shack could make a success out of one of IBM’s failures.

By: RuralRob

RuralRob — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 16:45:06 +0000

#27 – the Color Computer used a Motorola 6809E, not a Z80 like the other TRS-80s. The hardware design of the CoCo was in fact a Motorola reference design: the 6809E tightly coupled with its companion 6847 graphics chip. I breadboarded my own computer using schematics from a 6847 reference guide, and I was able to install and run CoCo’s ROM Basic on it.

By: JimD

JimD — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:06:07 +0000

Hey, lets not forget the REAL VOLKS-COMPUTER, the Sinclair/Timex ZX81 for $99 ! It ran BASIC and used a B&W TV, and the despised cassette storage …

It taught BASIC to lot’s of kids who are now Internet Mavens !

Nostalgia …

By: J

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:18:51 +0000

Good times! Good times.

By: Rick Cain

Rick Cain — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 10:44:02 +0000

I cut my programming teeth on a TRS-80 Color Computer. An Apple II at the time was $2500 and $359 seemed a lot more rational a purchase since my family wasn’t very well off at the time.

That darn chiclet keyboard, how could I forget. Worked great the first month or so, then began sticking. The later keyboards were better.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 09:05:23 +0000

I have lots of fond memories about the TRS “CoCo”. But did you know that the “CoCo 3″ ran a little known OS called OS-9 Level II which has since morphed into something called OSK? It’s a very capable and handy OS which even the Linux aficionados probably owe a lot of their culture to. But does anyone remember? (Hey! Lonnie Falk are you still out there?) I have to wonder how many people even know that OS-9 is STILL used on NASA’s space shuttles?!

OS-9 was quite a competitor in it’s day. And for those of you who DO remember the 80’s, Apple even sued both Microsoft and Tandy over what Apple saw was an infringement over “their” Graphical Operating System (GUI)!

Funny how Xerox (the true GUI developers) still sit back and watches all this happen…

By: Hugh Ripper

Hugh Ripper — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:44:50 +0000

#28 I’m so ashamed. I had a TRS-80 clone back in the day.

By: Uncle Dave

Uncle Dave — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 04:20:53 +0000

#26: Wrong. Z80. Hence the 80 part of the name.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80