Radio Shack TRS-80's
 

I am so freakin' impressed with retro technology. check this out

http://www.2much.net/bbs-pictures2/trs-80-model4.jpg

This is a TRS-80 Model 4 that I've had forever. It had stopped working and I kind of gave up on it and tonight, I decided to dig it out and see if it worked. It didn't, but I found a lose wire inside, soldered it back, and Holy shit, it worked!

Not only that, but I was able to boot old versions of DOS (TRS-DOS, MS-DOS, etc) from 5.25" floppy diskettes too!

And not only that, but, I was able to load an old game called Cosmic Fighter, from a freaking Cassette!! Both the cassette and the cassette player are over 35 years old, and they both still work!

(For you youngins' - 5.25" Flopies were THE TITS when it came to reading and writing programs and files. THE TITS I Say!

The TRS-80 was my second computer after my first Sinclair. That thing is probably worth a fortune to some collector.

Pretty impressive how good a condition you've kept it in - you're not a smoker I can tell. It would make a good conversation piece displayed.

And a fun tidbit is the the Tandy Leather company, which is still around today, built it.

I got to say, it's an extremely impressive piece of work!
That's extremely rare to be found and plus when you find one, it's definitely worth a lot :thumbsup

That looks cool and great job with the wiring :thumbsup

you are a keeper.

This is retro. The TRS-80 Model 4 is generations ahead of this little beast.

http://bbspics.com/images/2015/06/07/IMG_0075.md.jpg

what is that thing on the right?

our commodore 64 still worked up until we got rid of it 2 yr ago moving here...

quality was good 30 yrs ago :2 cents:

The thing on the right of Mark's picture is the TRS 80 Modem II

electrical dreams ready :thumbsup

WoW those TRS-80's were so pimped out :helpme

my z80 still works

Woah is that yours?

And can I have it?


That is a Radio Shack Trs-80 MODEM (Model II) from 1982. It's a "Smart Modem" in that it can auto-dial and auto-answer, at a whopping 300 Baud. 300 Baud!!


"Z80"? Do you mean a Sinclair 80?

ZX80. Z80 was the name of the processor inside it, designed by Zilog. I can probably still remember how to code it.

I meant zx80

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LYqIRiBX24...0+and+zx81.jpg

I also have the 81 :)

This is more or less what we were taught on in high school in the early 1980s.

I was able to take "computers 1" where we spent an entire quarter programming the computer to draw six lines in the shape of a house. I was unable to take "computers 2" because my math skills were not good enough. Instead I took study hall, where I spent all of my time in the computer lab teaching myself how to code in basic, Fortran, and COBOL. While the "smart people" in class were learning how to draw simple pictures in class I was writing entire programs including a contact book where I stored contacts, and a letter writing program which was a super simple version of Microsoft Word.

I went into the military and other than seeing a few computers in our admin area, I had pretty much forgotten all about computers. It wasn't until I started work at the phone company that I saw computers in the real work place and got interested again.

Wow that's so.. strange! It is a little similar to my own High School experience. We had "Data 1 & 2" in Grade 9, "Data 3&4" in Grade 10, and "5&6" in grade 11.

I talked my way into getting Data 1&2 in Grade 8, and all they were teaching was Punch Cards. Seriously! They didn't even have the machines, we just had to make holes in the cards with a bent paper clip, and the teacher graded us by looking through the holes.

I went to the principal and told him I loved computers, but that this class was useless. When he told me I had to stay, I told him I could complete the final exam which included some computer history too, way before the class even finished.

He didn't test me, but in Grade 8, he let me take Data 3&4 and 5&6 all in the same year. This was alot more fun because we got to use real computers (the TRS-80, a Terminal connected to an HP200f time share computer), and we got to learn real languages like Basic, Fortan and Cobol.

Surprisingly, this didn;t make me a hit with the ladies. (They mostly enjoyed jocks beating up the computer nerds). godamcfuckingbastardjocksoooOooohthosesonsofabitch es....

For me it was the Sinclair...TI994a...TRS80 and then a long break until and NEC laptop in the very late 80s.

Worked on IBM 36's during the day time

Did anybody ever figure out how to get data on IBM main frames to work with PCs? I think it was a major problem to get everything merged into one operating system :helpme

Oh my god that is too funny.

Back then schools were way behind in the times. Even colleges too. I started college in 1998 and they just be certified to teach Windows 95.

Trust me... Somewhere there is a government department or a college or something that still uses some outdated computer system. I know we've all seen that old Windows machines that runs the heating and AC at that school...

It doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that you're a bit of a computer nerd. On the other hand I'm the direct opposite of you and therefore I go to bed every night praying for a giant solar flair to pound us back into the stone age. :1orglaugh So I'll just throw this out to you as something for you to think about.

Old tech was better tech,

It required a human being element to make it work and it was tough to destroy. A good example is my hobby of restoring cars. For the most part every car, regardless of make, that's been newer than 2008 has been a piece of shit. One repair problem after the next and 60% of the time it's the computer that's faulty. Even if I find a used ECM I'm required to pay a mechanic a tidy sum of money to flash it with my VIN.

Even when it's the ECM I've got to tear down large parts of the vehicle to get at the faulty part. For example I had to change an alternator on a 5.7 Charger by removing a drive axel and large sections of the under body to get at it. Now compare this to my collection of 80s and 70s cars and the repairs are about as easy as your old Tandy Computer.

Old tech is reliable, fixable, never needs updating and the human being maintains control. New tech breaks when you sneeze on it, is hard to fix, outdates within months and humans are quickly becoming obsolete. Ultimately today's version of technology just costs us money while lowering our earning potential. A good example of this is the porn industry, we used to spend $250K just to make a movie versus $250 to film a POV hooker.


10 print "Rant mode over"
20 goto 10
Run

Nice condition computer - Wish I still had my old ones, but they wouldn't look as nice as yours :)

I forget when this was, some time in the mid 90's, I was offered a job teaching "computers". (Not programming, not even an OS, they still just called it "computers"). They gave me a little tour of the school and then into the computer room, and it was loaded up with the shittiest, slowest, most under-powered IBM XT Clones I had ever seen. This is way after the AT, 386 and 486's were out too because the Intel Pentium's had just come out about a year earlier. What a joke.


No way, I completely disagree. Modern tech is sick. It's super fast, super efficient, and borders on magic. We have more computer power in our phones than the Nasa Apollo missions had in giant rooms. We have touch sensitive screens, computer animation, Siri, Watson, Quantum computers, Robots on Mars, Space Telescopes, electric self-driving cars, GPS, and on and on and on.

That being said though, I would love to get my hands on one of those giant reel-to-reel data records we used to see in old Sci-Fi movies like this thing

http://drhart.ucoz.com/Mainframe/TapeDrive.jpg

To me this is retro-computer porn.

That's great and all...but you can't beat your meat with this thing.

I actually know a gentleman that worked on Apollo 17. He told me that if anyone could land a man on the moon using nothing but a phone then that man could demand any sum of money he wanted from the goverment.

In short, we can agree to disagree

You may have a point :thumbsup:1orglaugh

I've been watching Mad Men (again) and it's amazing how simple everything was back then. You couldn't watch TV at 4am because there was only three channels and none of them were in operation at 4am. At the same time, if you broke down at 4am in the middle of no where.... You had to walk to get to a phone. I remember driving into San Francisco to explore the city - If I had issues we had to call people. If they weren't by the phone, you were shit out of luck.

No way I want to go back to that. You can reach me 24/7 no matter where in the world I am. I have GPS so I never ever get lost. I have a 2012 Jeep Grand Cherokee and I was worried because Jeep is always at the bottom of reliability lists but I've only had one problem, it was minor, and I've never had an issue again. People will argue "things were made better back then" but oddly enough.... Seems to me every car made "back then" had a muffler that eventually had issues and came loose, yet I don't see this any more now. Also, ever notice you don't see beat up cars on the road any more?

Our world now is amazing....

http://www.2much.net/bbs-pictures2/trs-80-model4-2.jpg

It doesn't take much for me. ;)


Smartphone is millions of times faster than NASA's 1960s computers
A modern smartphone or a vintage supercomputer: which is more powerful?

Even Michio Kaku says Physics of the Future | Knopf Doubleday

The internet says a lot of things including that I'm dead. Just the same I'll wait until I see nasa do a space shuttle launch with just a phone.

Oh and Micho Kaku appears to be a bigger attention whore than Savannah (Wilsey). At least he's less drama than Savannah.

notinmybackyard,

You can believe whatever you want to believe, but denying science and the progress of computer technology isn't the best thing you can do for yourself.

Good luck.

I remember when they used do to that on a printer... You know, the old school printers.

I had one. They suck.
Edit: i had the one with no monitor. You must have grown up relatively wealthy. The ones with the built on monitor werent cheap.

Flashing Bat File with Colors
 

In the early 80s I discovered basic programming language with this little gem; Epson HX20

http://dl.maximumpc.com/galleries/25...20_01_full.jpg

I think maybe you are referring to the TRS-80 Model 1. The model 1's came out in the late 70's and were 2 separate pieces. 1 Unit was a combination computer and keyboard, and the second piece was the monitor.

http://www.2much.net/bbs-pictures2/trs-80-gfy.jpg

(That thing between the keyboard and monitor is called an Expansion Interface. It contained things like additional memory, and you could install extras such as an RS-232c card, a floppy disk controller, etc. I think it came with a printer port but I'm not sure.)

And no, not rich - my parents bought me a Model 1 when I was a kid for Christmas. I think the price was about $1100 at the time and I think they had to borrow to get it for me. What a gift.

Wow how cool! One of my first jobs was working for a company that sold these and wrote software for them. Was this one of the first true portable computers?

I had a TRS-80 Model Three. It was all one piece, but silver and black. It was ok to code with. In the late 80's a ran a sign engraving business with it.

My friends and I wreaked havoc with our Commodore 64s and one of my friends with rich parents had an Amiga. A couple had Atari 800s.

I started off with a Timex Sinclair, it had a whole 2k RAM onboard, but then I saved up my money and got the 16k expansion pack. All my friends were jealous.

Yes it's mine and no you can't have it :)

WoW
 

This stuff is too cool, don't know what happened to my Sperry something we used for my college business classes. Had the big floppy disks and could only store minimal data. Dos prompts were a drag. I leaped light years ahead when I bought my first windows, PC :helpme

But I want it.

This was my first, back in the early 80s. I thought it would be worth more on eBay but no...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...9-IMG_7132.jpg

Remember
10: print "duke skywalker"
20 goto 10
/run
Or something like that lol.

In the mid 1980s I attended a computer class held in the back room of a Tandy Electronics store (which was the Australian version of Radio Shack). There was a room full of these machines, but the majority had no floppy or hard drives. So how did you get programs onto them? The method used was ingenious: students type CLOAD (load program from cassette) and then the instructor CSAVEs the program on his master computer (which did have storage). All of the computer's cassette ports were connected to the instructor's computer, so that they could simultaneously listen to the broadcast of the program it was "saving", via the cassette port. Pretty amazing that you could set up a rudimentary network using nothing more than a simple analog distribution amplifier.

Yes that's exactly right!

When I was about 18 or 19, one of my first jobs was teaching computers at this little office that someone had set up. They had 6 TRS-80 Model 3's. The "Network Controller" from Radio Shack worked just as you described, by Cassette port.


http://www.trs-80.com/images/hw-model1-network2.png

My friend and I convinced the owner to let us build one for him because these things were too expensive (About $1400 I think). So what we did was connect the output of the Teaching computer to a simple audio amp (5 watts maybe, I don't remember), and sent the output of the amp to the input of each TRS-80 via audio cable, and it worked! The students typed CLOAD while the teacher typed CSAVE, and voila!

I'll do you even 1 better:

In the 80's I had written a BBS program, that people could dial into and post messages. It was popular, and adult, even though it could only accept 1 user at a time.

I added a second Model 3, modem and phone line so now 2 people could login at the same time. But now of course, I wanted chat.

So I made a special little cable that connected Cassette port Output, to the Cassette port Input of the other machine. A friend of mine and I wrote a program in machine language that would then let each Model 3 communicate with the other in real time via the cassette port! When a user from machine A wanted to chat with a user on Machine B, they would get a message, accept the request, and then be able to chat!

It was cool as hell at the time and today seems even cooler.

Haha, should have known there was an overpriced product to provide this networking service, rather than a cool hack thought of by some employee. Tandy Electronics was always the dumbed down and expensive store, selling a mix of gadgets, and low level electronic components, but even the small components were always packaged in a pretty plastic and cardboard display box. The packaging for a couple of resistors probably cost more than the actual product, and took up a hell of a lot more space. At another hobbyist store you just popped open a small drawer and took as many as you needed to the counter.

The TRS-80 was pretty cool, though. But expensive.