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...the TRS-80 Model I support team. I mean, after I splurged on the 16K RAM expansion and everything!

I spent ten minutes scrolling slashdot comments before I found the first "print.html" reference so I feel your pain. However, once I downloaded and saved (yes, I'm a recovering anal retentive) the article and images I noticed it was almost 5MB in size. I imagine Tom's is not too keen on people downloading 5MB of data, only to click away after 30 seconds. But I shall remember to add "print.html" to the end of future Tom's Hardware stories, and for that I am so grateful that I am bequething one of my TRS Model 80s to Anonymous Coward -- could you please contact me at your convenience?

My first machine only had 4K of memory. When I got the 16K upgrade, I was in paradise! Well, just outside paradise, anyway -- still had to save and restore to cassette tape.

And if it weren't for this obsession with GUIs and VMs, 64K would still be a useful amount of space today!

</OldePh4rt>

Oh yeah

http://www.kjsl.com/trs80/model1info.html

That was my first machine -- wish I still had it, traded it in to buy a used printer by the time I had a model III

That's one of the questions that I had at the back of my mind when I got my first PC, a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I (with the 16K expansion!) in 1977. I could program the thing in BASIC, and learned some other rudimentary stuff, but really I didn't understand it. It seemed magical.

The question stayed with me through high school, until finally in college I learned about transistors, NAND gates, latches, full adders, microcode, machine code, assembler, compilers, UNIX, and how it really worked.

But it still seems magical.

History time (related to the "What OS" poll)

level 1
4k bytes RAM. BASIC written in shorthand:
10 P. "HELLO WORLD"
20 G.10

level 2
16k bytes RAM. BASIC interpreter uses normal text:
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10

More info Here

You should be careful how much trust you put into these signatures. MD5 sums only tell you that the file hasn't been modified between the download server and your computer. If the software was trojaned, the MD5 sum can be changed to match the new trojaned software.

If there is a PGP signature, but it is from an untrusted key, that is no better than a MD5 sum. Anyone can create a PGP key with any name on it and upload it to the public keyservers. The real authentication comes from the web-of-trust. Of course, there are some mitigating factors.. like having the author sign with the same key for previous releases and then you notice that the key has changed. That can help, but only if you are vigilant.

The web-of-trust is the real important factor here. If you are a software distributor, try to get your keys signed by multiple people in the well-connected group.

If you are a software user, see if you can find a key that you trust enough to sign it.. either by a face-to-face identification verification (with a signature that you can upload to the keyservers), or by using a well-accepted key in the well-connected set and signing it LOCALLY (so that it doesn't get uploaded to the keyservers and pollute the trusted set for other users). Something from the top-50 signed keys would be suitable:.

Sites like biglumber.com maintain a list of people interested in key signings in different localities. This is a big help in getting some signatures and connecting yourself to the well-connected-set of keys.

Also, if you want to check the path of trust between two keys, check out the PGP Pathfinder. An example is the path from Werner Koch (GPG author) to Phil Zimmerman (PGP author).

This will enable you to build up your web-of-trust, which really indicates that the keys belong to who they say they do. PGP is your friend, use it wisely.

-molo

how can debian know that this key is worth trusting". This is (probably) solvable, but still quite hard.

When I went to high school, we used TRS-80's. At home, I used an Apple II In college, the net was VAX . Later, I used the product of a company that will go unnamed and unlinked. Recently (and for the past half-decade) I used linux because what I learned was the idea, not the platform. Don't underestimate the curiosity and inquisitiveness of young humans. They are amazing creatures.

Around when IBM sold Business Machines?. Yes

Even managed to kludge some hardware together to drive an IBM Golfball typewriter from my Exidy Sorcerer , which at 2.1 Mhz clockrate was the fastest gun in the west. In 1978 that is. Pre-IBM-PC. Pre-Mac. Contemporary with the TRS-80 Model 1 , the Commodore PET and the Apple II. Just have a look at the Old Computer Museum reference.

So just remember that one day, arguments about RedHat vs Debian will be considered "quaint", as the newest alphageek-wannabes argue shrilly about direct-neural-induction vs alphawave-heterodyning on the new Petaflop quantum-Beowulf-cluster-wearables.

While old codgers like me will still be trying to stop said wearables from having the usual code bloat and buffer overflows caused by AOL-Time-Warner-CNN-MicroSoft-General Motors-Unilever-Bell-Boeing-PepsiCo 31337 hackers rather than Software Engineers.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 3~

The Model 3 didn't come in a laptop. It was a battleship-grey "desktop." The Model 4 they had a luggable version (the 4p: p=it will rip your arm right off!).

The TRS-80 laptop line started with the Model 100.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 3~

The Model 3 didn't come in a laptop. It was a battleship-grey "desktop." The Model 4 they had a luggable version (the 4p: p=it will rip your arm right off!).

The TRS-80 laptop line started with the Model 100.

I'm not even going near your other fantasies.

Dude, the TRS-80 (Model I) a/k/a Trash 80, was an extremely primitive Z80-based monochrome alphanumeric/block graphics display computer which had 4K ROM and 4K RAM (or 16K for the enhanced model) when it first came out in 1977. This thing had a fairly barebones operating system, basically one step up from a KIM-I. Radio Shack outlets usually had one CPU on display, and would let kids muck around with them for hours, which is how many old geezers got their first taste of computing. Sometimes they'd have another CPU in the window which was running "Dancing Demon," a stick figure that would jerk around in rhythm with some beeps and bops. (At least, I think it had sound, can't remember, the old brain is getting rusty.) If you were to compare it to a CBM machine, your best bet would be the CBM 2001/B.

OTOH, the Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 1(aka CoCo) came out in 1980, had a kewl 6809 microprocessor and was capable, after expansion, of up to 64K. It could pump out color graphics, sound, and had loads of great games. Although it also was originally available with 4K RAM, at least it had a pretty capacious 8K ROM. Furthermore, it had an RF modulator and could therefore be used on any TV set. It was roughly analogous to the Vic20. The later CoCo3 was more like the C-64, and was arguably the last and best of the early PEEK/POKE-style BASIC-programmable home computers. (The damn thing ran OS-9!) Unfortunately for Radio Shack, the CoCos remained also-rans, squeezed in between Commodore's low-priced assault and the Apple II's high-margin cool cachet.

In high school, I learned how to program on the school district's RCA Spectra 70 mainframe that was connected to a 110 bps KSR-35 teletype in each high school via modem. The RCA Spectra 70 was a clone of the IBM 360, except for the reliability bits. It crashed all the time. It offered Dartmouth BASIC, COBOL, WATFOR FORTRAN and RPG.

My first electronic computer was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1 (AKA Trash-80) with 4K of DRAM. I really wanted an Apple II but I couldn't afford one.