Whatever Happened to… the TRS80 Pocket Computer

By Friday November 13, 2009


The late, great science fiction author, Issac Asimov, hawking a miracle of modern technology.



30 Comments
  1. 1894 says:
    11/13/2009 at 5:33 am

    Ahhhh the days when computers were actually FAST! No bloatware and programmers developed applications that did exactly what you wanted.

    Reply
  2. Eric says:
    11/13/2009 at 5:48 am

    I (actually dad) had a PC-4 in high school. I remember trying to program math formulas in Basic. Worked great in trig but not so much in algebra. I have collected a PC 1, 2 and still have dad’s PC-4. Once in a while I’ll get them out and put a few batteries in to remember the experience. Ugh! I’ll take my N810 (soon to be N900) over these things any day.

    Reply
  3. thecommodore says:
    11/13/2009 at 5:52 am

    You could say the TRS80 Pocket Computer was the “Foundation” of portable digital computing… snort snort guffaw.

    Well, SOMEBODY was bound to say it….

    Reply
  4. interglacialman says:
    11/13/2009 at 5:55 am

    The bigger question is ‘Whatever happened to mutton-chops and the comb-over?’

    Reply
  5. derekaw says:
    11/13/2009 at 6:05 am

    Wow, look at those side burns!

    Reply
  6. dickmnixon says:
    11/13/2009 at 6:28 am

    #4 – The mutton-chops are now the star-chops – (see TV show Community)
    and as for the comb over, the completely shaved head is the new comb-over.

    Reply
  7. James Messick says:
    11/13/2009 at 6:32 am

    “1894″ raises a good point. I remember when all personal computers has less, or much much less, than 1 Megabyte of RAM, and yet they did so much. Sure, you were limited to running one program at a time, but seems like a lot of the work was on a similar scale to what we do on todays computers which are thousands of times faster and have thousands of times more RAM and disk space.

    Sure, the displays are prettier, but isn’t a lot of that built into the PC/OS? Why should programs take up tens of millions of bytes or disk space OR RAM?

    Guess it’s the law of diminishing returns, again.

    Reply
  8. Faxon says:
    11/13/2009 at 6:57 am

    Many kids here now don’t even remember dial telephones. I had one of these. This computer did exactly what it was supposed to do, and it never “froze” or “crashed”. It took Windows until XP to approach that level of reliability.
    It was mostly a sophisticated programmable calculator, and as such, was far ahead of the other calculators around at the time.
    Too bad Radio Shack could not sustain the computer competition. This was a great little device, and everyone who owned one enjoyed it quite a bit. It was far better than the Sinclair.

    Reply
  9. Buzz says:
    11/13/2009 at 7:22 am

    New rule: anybody who has been post-life for more than a decade doesn’t have to be referred to as “the late…”

    Reply
  10. Pop says:
    11/13/2009 at 7:24 am

    This ad was part of a pcworld slide show called “The Funniest Vintage Tech Ads”.

    Reply
  11. stuart001uk says:
    11/13/2009 at 7:55 am

    I brought one in my first year at University. It was the greatest fun until a few years later I got myself an Apple 2C. Those were the days…

    Reply
  12. Don Reese says:
    11/13/2009 at 8:19 am

    These things were used extensively by insurance agents for years under the Radio Shack and original Sharp labels.

    Reply
  13. Benjamin says:
    11/13/2009 at 8:36 am

    Does it have a text editor? If so, how do you get your document off of it. How many words can you write on the text document and not fill up the device. Seems perfect if you just want to write a document and not have to deal with being tweeted at or reading e-mail or even playing solitaire instead of writing.

    Oh, can I get one on ebay?

    Reply
  14. Dave T says:
    11/13/2009 at 10:20 am

    I actually had that exact same model in the picture. I used to write programs for answers to tests in classes. All of my teachers thought it was a complex calculator so I would store text answers in it and pass all of my tests.

    Reply
  15. sargasso says:
    11/13/2009 at 10:32 am

    Tandy Radio Shack (TRS) pocket. Dubbed, “The Handy Tandy”. Asimov, I’m a big fan. His non-fiction books were an astonishing insight into the man’s energy and intellect. If you find a copy of “Eyes on the Universe”, keep it.

    Reply
  16. Matt B says:
    11/13/2009 at 10:52 am

    This is so coincidental. I was just in my cellar yesterday and found mine. I was just going on-line to find a couple CR2032′s since it didn’t turn on when I flipped the switch. I used to love programming this little bugger.

    Reply
  17. Andrew McDonald says:
    11/13/2009 at 11:10 am

    Benjamin: You wouldn’t want to use this for text entry even if you weren’t limited to 1.4K of RAM. Yes, 1424 bytes.

    It’s not designed for text entry as anything you enter will be interpreted as BASIC code. Plus the keyboard is tiny. If you are serious about a simple device for text entry look for a Tandy Model 100, 102 or 200.

    Reply
  18. Andrew McDonald says:
    11/13/2009 at 11:10 am

    Benjamin: You wouldn’t want to use this for text entry even if you weren’t limited to 1.4K of RAM. Yes, 1424 bytes.

    It’s not designed for text entry as anything you enter will be interpreted as BASIC code. Plus the keyboard is tiny. If you are serious about a simple device for text entry look for a Tandy Model 100, 102 or 200.

    Reply
  19. Andrew McDonald says:
    11/13/2009 at 11:13 am

    Matt B: It uses Type 675 button cell batteries. There are 4 in all. If I remember one holds the memory while changing the other three.

    Here’s an Amazon search: http://tinyurl.com/y9zghye

    Reply
  20. amodedoma says:
    11/13/2009 at 12:13 pm

    I don’t know about that pocket computer, but I still have my trash 80 model 100. It’s almost 30 years old and it still works great. At the time I thought it would be a good idea to get the technical manual with schematics and such. It was never needed, but now I’m one of the few people that have the docs. Once a year or so I’ll take it out, pop in the batteries, write a couple of dozen lines in BASIC, hook it up with a null modem cable to the PC’s serial port to play around with the terminal. It was my first computer, and still is. It really is a shame they don’t make ‘em like that any more.

    Reply

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