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Tandys Never Die
kevcol writes: "Great article on the SF Chronicle's website on a school bus driver in Contra Costa County California who heads a Tandy model 100 computer user group. The model 100 was the portable version of the beloved TRS-80 (jokingly known as the 'Trash 80') which was the first computer I ever laid fingers on in high school back in the day..."
I have a copy of these, and their red japanese cousin made by NEC (the pc8401, iirc).
:P
cute little things, run about a month on double AAs, have a Billy-Born MS basic, a directory listing with fancy arrow-key navigation, w00
They're tough as nails, anyway
--- Do you believe in the day?
What is there to tell or instruct users on when using a Tandy 1000... I mean how useful is a user group for that? Not just that, but why is my biggest question.
Am I lying when I tell you that im telling the truth? Or am I telling the truth when I say that Im lying?
Speaking of Yet-another-piece-of-old-hardware, are there emulators available for these Tandy boxen?
:)
And better yet, why would you want one?
The Apple IIe is my old box of choice, and at least there's plenty of emulators & ROMs available
-- Shaun "Blessed are the geeks, for they shall Internet the earth"
I'll just post this to let the person marking everything as troll a chance to burn through the mod points. Unless it gets +1 interesting.
I got a hold of one of these in high school and was very impressed by its size compared to the heavy ass suitcase portables available at the time. It had great accessories like the tape backup (audio tapes, mind you) and integrated 300 bps modem (you had to connect suction cup-like things to the phone line). You had to code some BASIC to get access to the tape and floppy drives though. Hmm...think the floppy was like 200Kbytes or something in that range. Ah, the memories...
The model 100 was the portable version of the beloved TRS-80
No. It wasn't.
It was a very useful "laptop" for it's time, but it was a TRS-80 like an IBM AT was a Macintosh.
Do some research fer crissake.
Now that I think of it, I don't think I ever saw him when he WASN'T totally baked. Seriously.
But he could do some cool stuff with it.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
yes this ^ () ^ is funny!
I think I will use it on my sig
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
i could swear i read another /. post on almost exactly the same topic, but my searches come up bare.
anyone else remember this? it was about the same tandy computers, and someone in the comments said s/he was using them for some kind of rugged research purposes, maybe marine...
...or maybe i'm smoking too much crack. but i'm allllmost sure...
This Like That - fun with words!
i laffed so hard i shit your pants.
thanks.
Nowhere near as old as the one in the article, but I had a 1000RL (8086 8mhz I think) and when I upgraded to a better machine, sent the Tandy to my cousins in the Phillipines. Their house had no air conditioning, and the machine was situated in a room that often reached well over 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the midday sun. The house is in a fishing village and is often plagued with floods and monsoons.
I visited the summer the year after and the machine worked flawlessly. I managed to play a Tandy BASIC minigolf game but had to stop because it was way too hot in the room. This continued for a few more years, and about 8 years after my initial purchase of the machine, it stopped working during a visit. I opened the case to discover it had become home to some large native flying insects... which got fried inside. In a weird sort of way, the heat didn't but also did manage to kill it eventually. Those conditions were definitely out of the bounds of a "normal operating environmeny" and I was amazed it lasted so long.
Buying a Tandy again is pretty much out of the question, but during my ownership they certainly grew on me. The RL's 3-voice PCM sound capability allowed me to exercise my interest in sound programming. Had a subscription to a Tandy magazine (can't remember which one) and specifically looked for programs that supported the special Tandy graphics. As my first (IBM-compatible) PC, it served its purpose well, letting my preteen self learn about programming, proprietariness, and patience. It was a great machine for a hobbyist.
Anybody who is awake at this hour has done way too much cocaine.
Stupid sig of the week: Perl Hackers DIIMTOW
Perhaps we were smoking the same batch? I've just searched through the archives also and can't come up with it either.
...Hanson says that he still hears from police departments, military contractors and academic researchers who still use the thing...
Which explains a whole heck of alot about NASA's current dilemmas.
--
Simplicity of character is the natural result of profound thought.
fortune cookie
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This message was posted with Xcrap!
i wrote (in basic) my first video games on an old trash 80... some horrible ansi gfx tanks running around avoiding asterisks... lol those were the days!
my programming eventually ran into the limitations of the 7 1/2" disks.
if only i had cd burner in that thing!! lol
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
I don't think it was ever called a TRS-something, it was always the model 100?
I've still got one, it still works. I have the floppy drive that connects with it. I bought this one used before going to a chess tournament in 1986 because I wanted to keep chess notes on it. Ah the memories.
...shouldn't throw rocks. There was really no such thing as a uber-TRS-80. It was a code designation for a number of computers made by Tandy Radio Shack using the Z-80 microprocessor. The Model 100 portable was as much of an "official" TRS-80 as the original Model I or business-oriented Model II or FCC-approved Model III etc etc etc....
If you want to buy one, go to EBay. Notice the TRS-80 moniker located upper right in the photo...
when will linux be ported to it?
Surely the most interesting thing about all this is the commodity fetishism of it.
:->)
We keep these old machines not because they are any good (let's face it, they are rubbish) but because they remind us of better times.
But the good times haven't gone because of machines but because of people. (Mainly those people up in Redmond
Open source, for me, is a better answer. Just like with my old Sinclair machines I can poke around and do something new and exciting.
Not quite as good as writing my first successful piece of z80 machine code 21 years ago, but still an accomplishment.
Yes, I lusted after a Model 100 when they came out (this is what they looked like if you've never seen one...) but I ended up buying the even more useful Tandy PC-2 pocket computer. It was amazing how many Physics and Chemistry equations you could store in 3.5K. Never would have made it through the core curriculum in college without my artificial memory...;)
"It remains to be seen if the human brain is powerful enough to solve the problems it has created." Dr. Richard Wallace
You don't need an apostrophe when indicating the plural form of a noun. "Tandys" is the correct word. The apostrophe would be used when talking about something belonging to the Tandy, such as "the Tandy's power supply".
Some jerkface is clearly abusing his moderation points and modding down posts as "-1, Troll" ad lib (see the replies to this post for example).
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these :D
-- Look to the Rose that blows about us--"Lo, Laughing," she says, "into the World I blow..."
The model 100 had no floppy interface, though there were external 3 1/2 floppy units available at the time. It did have a built in 300 bps modem The standard modem interface was a DIN 9 adapter on the side of the unit in which RS sold a DIN 9 to RJ-11 cable, though RS did sell an acoustic coupler for use with pay phones. Next to the modem was a secondary cassette tape interface. The screen displayed 40 cols by 8 lines, LCD. It shipped with 8K RAM in its original configuration, though it could be upgraded to 48K. The main CPU was an 8085, not a Z-80. It was in no way binary compatible with the original TRS-80.
This is an important point, the TRS-80 Model I, III, and IV was a completely different computer system from the Model 100. They weren't compatible in any way whatsoever. Just like the Model 11 and 16 wasn't compatible with the model 1/III/IV. Totally different systems. At one point I ran a BBS off of a model I for four years from 1982 to 1986, which my family originally bought in 1977. It was a good computer for its time, though it generated way too much RFI, the buffered expansion interface cable often broke requiring replacement, and the B/W monitor which shipped with the model 1 was junk. The computer, however, was fast with a 1.77 MHz Z-80. Oh well, enough memory lane...
Cheers,
--Maynard
I never had a model 100 but I loved my CoCo, Color Computer. One of the first that could actualy multi-task with a third-part OS, and you could use those new-fangled 3.5 inch floppy disks to replace audio cassets for mass-storage, transfered at 1500 baud. Tandy had some real cutting edge stuff in its day.
my first computer COSMAC ELF that never actualy ran, and used a RCA 1802 processor, 255 bytes of static ram, yes that bytes not kilobytes. input was done by setting a toggle switch to LOAD, setting the 8 toggle switches to match the bytes bit pattern and pressing the single-step button! The "mother=board was wire-wrapped.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I have an idea - if these things are so great, how about making a new one with PalmOS. It could be very thin, color screen, still run on 4 AAs... I might even buy one! It could probably sell for under $200.
When the Model 100 first came out it had very little memory (16k?). An acquaintance of mine asked if I could help with a programming project on the Model 100. He was a 'numbers' runner (illegal lottery conducted in the poorer sections of the city) and he wanted to keep track of the numbers that were bet. To avoid heavy losses he had to 'lay off' the numbers that were bet too heavily by betting those numbers with someone else. Bets were typically $.25 to $2.00 always in $.25 increments. When he tried to do the job with an M100 there wasn't enough space for the single precision values. I rewrote the program to handle the bets as integer values of quarters (Number 6666 has 450 quarters bet on it so lay off everything above 200 quarters) The amounts were displayed in real floating point values and his helpers knew immediately when a number got bet too heavily. The amounts don't sound like much but the payoff odds were very high. That Model 100 saved a lot of money.
I still have one of those model 100s in my collection. I bought it years ago to use as a very portable dumb terminal. It does the job, and runs just about forever on a set of AA batteries.
If there's anyone else around who collects old laptops, I could use a pointer to where I can obtain a ROM image for an old Epson HX-20 laptop. I have the hardware here, but someone replaced the ROMS with a custom set. I'd like to restore this system to its original working condition if I can.
I also bought one of the tiny little ones, and still use it. Mine is labelled as per the subject line even though it doesn't have a Z-80 in it, and the keyboard layout is a little different than yours: see a picture of it here. According to that page, mine was introduced in 1980, but I bought it in 1983 when the line was discontinued for the whopping price of $CAD 65 (including the soft case and cassette interface).
John Stiles has the definitive collection that run on Macs at emulation.net
I had a book on TRS-80 secrets in which I peeked and poked lots of interesting functions.
:(
I also was able to record the game "cartridges" onto my casette since they were too big for disk. You had to tape over one of the pins first.
I did BASIC in that thing. I too ran into the limits of my 4K RAM very quickly. I couldn't convience my parents to get me another 4K
I remember the "Sands of Egypt", my first RPG on a computer. I would put the casette in and type load, 1/2 hour later the game was loaded, maybe...If not I would rewind and load for another 1/2 hour. nowadays 1/2 minute would be horrendus.
I had the floppy drive too. BIg ole honking thing that plugged into the wall with its own AC adapter and cost about $300.
Ahh, those were the days. Nope, it never died. I sold it about 7 years ago to a guy who wanted something for his kid. the TRS-80 books on BASIC were/are the BEST I have ever seen. I would use them on a college level because they break it down so nicely.
Yeah, we messed with Trash 80's in junior high... Our favorite stunt back then was waiting until a buddy got a couple of "pages" of program typed in (and none of us knew how to type, so that was an accomplishment) and then whoops! Accidentally hit that orange reset key! That button was on the right of the keyboard, well away from the rest of the keys and it was just begging to be hit...
I've got some info about the Model 100 and 102 on my site at:
1 02/
1 02/web100/
http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/fetish/m
You can also find a link to the interview where Billy Goates discusses the fact that this was the last project where he personally worked on a majority of the code.
Also, I've got a back up of a pretty good web site called Web 100
http://www.ordersomewherechaos.com/rosso/fetish/m
Enjoy...
Game Boys and Game Boy Colors used the same chips as the TRS-80 (Z80's), so people often draw similarities between programming the two. The popularity of the TRS-80 might be why the Game Boy programming community got so large, and so much earlier than any other console.
I read a few years ago that the 100 was popular with reporters in undeveloped places. Built in modem (that worked over lousy phone lines). Zero boot time. Enough memory for a few articles. Rugged. Here's an article: article
http://www.quickpad.com/Item.asp?id=42
Saw this in Tiger Direct's catalog. Seems to be an "updated" Tandy M100 repackaged and beefed up. First time I saw it I immediatly pulled out my credit card, but held back until I heard more about it.
Anyone have one of these?
Years ago John Dvorak wrote articles for Infoworld, I believe, and in one of them referred to the TRS80 as a "Trash 80". John Roach, then president of Radio Shack, was not amused. He pulled Radio Shack ads from Infoworld, and shortly thereafter John Dvorak was no longer writing for Infoworld. A little thin-skinned I thought.
I have a Tandy 1800HD laptop (bit newer 286) that was passed on to me a short 3 years ago, in that short ammount of time I have spilled pepsi IN the floppy drive while the computer was in operation, it has survived a housefire, lent to my 6&10 year old cousins for a couple of months, had the battery terminals forcefully ripped out, and dropped more times than i can count, BUT IT STILL RUNS. Unfortunately i think it may be on its last leg, every now and then it is unable to boot with a "HDD Error" message, which can be fixed by (beleive it or not) hitting the back right corner as hard as possible with your fist, which somehow brings it back to life.
"The United States has no right, no desire, and no intention to impose our form of government on anyone else." - Bush 05
When I was in graduate school studying rhetoric, all the journalism folks swore by these things. They fit in a briefcase, they had a real keyboard, and they ran forever. It was (still is in my opinion) a great tool for writing anywhere.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Model I / Model III / Model 4/4P - The original TRS-80, used a Z-80 processor at 1.77 MHz. The Model I had 64x16 video, 4K to 48K RAM, and separate keyboard, video, expansion interface, and disk drives. It came standard with BASIC in ROM, and cassette tape (250 bps at first, then 500 bps). The optional 5.25" floppies held about 90K (that is NOT a typo).
The Model III was nearly identical except it put it all in one box. The big change was the availability of double-density floppies (180K).
The Model 4 looked like a Model III, but was entirely RAM-based. It held up to 128K RAM (woohoo!!), though the upper 96K was accessible as one of three 32K banks. The Model 4 also added 80x24 video. The 4P was a Model 4 in a luggable case.
The Model I/III/4 series all ran an operating system called TRSDOS. These three models were mostly upwards-compatible.
The Model II followed the Model I chronologically (and preceded the Model III - imagine that). The Model II was their business system. It had a 4 MHz Z80 processor with 32K to 64K of RAM. It had 80x24 video. It used 8" floppy drives - up to four of them - holding 600K each. It contained an internal card cage for expansion.
The Model II was a tank. The main unit was about the size of a small dorm-type refrigerator, and probably weighed about 40-50 pounds. The external floppy drive cabinet was almost as big. The Model II was the first to offer a hard drive - 8 MB on 8" platters - the cabinet was about two foot square, and about 6" high, about like an oversized desktop PC today.
The Model II ran a different and completely incompatible OS, also called TRSDOS. It was completely disk-based, containing only a minimal boot ROM. Model II software was not compatible with Model I/III/4 software.
The Model II was followed by the Model 12 - same basic system with half-height, double-sided 8" floppy drives. Slightly smaller cabinet with up to two internal 1.2 MB floppies.
The Model II/12 was later used as the core of the Motorola 68000-based Model 16. The Model 16 used the entire MII Z-80 architecture as its I/O processing subsystem. The Model 16 included a 6 MHz 68000 and supported up to 256K of RAM. The 68000 processor and its memory boards were separate cards that installed in the MII card cage. The operating system and application ran on the 68000 side.
The Model 16 came with TRSDOS 16 (another incompatible variant), but the real power came once Xenix was offered. Xenix was a port of System III UNIX enhanced with a lot of BSD features. At one time, Tandy had the largest install base of UNIX-based systems. They weren't very big, no more than nine users, but there were a lot of them. I supported about 18 of them where I worked at the time.
The Model 16 series peaked with the introduction of the Tandy 6000. This still contained the basic Model II architecture - you could still dual-boot to Z80 TRSDOS, but the design was updated to focus on Xenix use. It included an 8 MHz 68000, up to 1 MB of memory, and ultimately up to four 70 MB hard drives.
Having established itself as the leader in UNIX for small business, and having invested substantial time and dollars in building a relatively effective suppport infrastructure for UNIX, Tandy made the brilliant decision to abandon that market and focus exclusively on PC clone systems. Given their prominence in the PC world today, you can see how well that worked. The executive behind this decision later moved to Microsoft.
OK, that's the history of their original Z-80 family.
Totally separate from this, Tandy offered the Model 100 mentioned in this article. It was based on an 80C85 processor (low power - CMOS - version of the 8080, with a handful of additional instructions) and was entirely RAM-based, i.e., it had no internal floppy or hard drives. It was a stand-alone product line, completely incompatible with their other systems. The 100 was followed by the 200, and then the 600, as I recall.
Tandy's third PC line was their Color Computer ("Coco") series. All of the systems I mentioned above were strictly monochrome and used some form of monitor. The Color Computer was their launch into home TV-based systems. Again, IIRC, the Coco series were all based on the 6809 processor. The Coco series initially used cartridges and cassette tapes. Later, a floppy disk upgrade was offered using Microware's OS-9 operating system (pretty cool in its own right, similar to UNIX in many respects).
Moving on, Tandy also offered several pocket-style computers over the years. They also offered a series of PC-compatibles (more or less) beginning with the Tandy 1000. As a UNIX biggot, I didn't follow the line closely. Again, IIRC, the 1000 was a PCjr clone and the 1200 was a strict PC XT clone.
The Tandy 2000 was a high performance MS-DOS PC, offering an 80186 a year or so before IBM offered the AT. There was a version of Xenix for the 2000, but it didn't make it into the wild very often. The 2000 was followed by the 3000 and 4000 (both 286-based, I think). They were offered with Xenix, but never gained the penetration of the 16/6000 line. Tandy also offered a 5000 - I think this was their micro-channel clone. (Anyone remember micro-channel?)
That's the history off the top of my head. There were a couple of other one-of models scattered through this, and after the 3000 & 4000, Tandy moved full-bore into forgettable PC clones. In its early days, however, Tandy was neck-and-neck with Apple for most computers sold.
Yes, I need a life.
Now that was a computer. 6502, keyboard, 4K ram
;-)
video modulator..Kansas City standard cassette.
You haven't lived until understand the difference between indexed indirect and indirect indexed.
Or perhaps you haven't lived if you do.
My brother still has one running a mirror ball on a dance floor. (Poor kid)
I believe the tandy 100 was the last computer ol bill gates actually contributed code to.
Candy, candies. Sandy, sandies. Tandy, tandies. Tomaeto, Tomahto, Potaeto, Potahtoe (Quaylism). Let's call the whole thing off. This is the internet, IMHO. Since when do we care about grammour?
Tandy is about as bad as the trash 80
www.radioshacksucks.com
nuff said
Any one know of a link to screen shots of these dinosaurs? Photo's of the whole machine would be cool too!
"Donnie, your out of your element"
I've still got mine, although it hasn't been powered up in ages. I also bought the ultra cool floppy drive.
I committed my first hardware hacks on it. A slide switch to flip pins 2 and 3 on the serial port so I could ditch the null modem, and I cut a couple traces and added a couple wires so I could use ni-cads and have them recharge while plugged into the AC adapter.
They are often for sale on E-bay and usually sell for under $50.
I had one of every computer back in the 80's. Commie 64, the 128 D, a TRS-80 Coco, an Atari 800XL, a coleco Adam and a TI99/4a.The TRS-80 was the worst of them. It had a limited BASIC that was more akin the the IBM than it was to anything else, IIRC.
Back then, I compared the capability of BASIC. The Commodore series had by far the best, and came with the SID chip (sound chip). What was cool, back then, when you bought software, the floppies came with versions of software for ALL the machines out at that time. One copy gave you a version for the Atari line, the Texas instuments line, the commie line as well as the 'Trash-80's". They truly were all different.
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
Another feature was that the memory was always powered (I don't think it was FLASH or anything fancy), but basically you could just turn the thing off and when you turned it back on it was exactly where it had been left (e.g., editing some file).
http://www.hawknest.com/
A fair number of journalists *still* use these little gems.
Why, you ask? Besides the fact that they have a very useable word processor and run for weeks on a handful or batteries, there is a biggie.
You can type quite quickly on them with one hand without having to set it down on something. That is something that you simply cannot say about a modern clam-shell laptop.
I mounted a 16K model-100 on the wall - with the powercord hidden by the dry-wall. It has a crappy "Draw-Random-Lines-And-Pereodically-Clear-The-Scr
It's easily the most facinating thing, for my guests, in my house. It's a reminder to me that computing doesen't have to be high-powered and expensive in order to make our quality of life better.
Side note - the things have a built in 300 Baud modem and a serial port (typical Radio-Shack DIN-5 style), I have another one that I hookup to all the OpenBSD routers/firewalls that I've installed for my clients - the batteries never seem to run out.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
So, if this is the kind of laptop you like, you can get modern alternatives, and they even run software for which you can get development systems.
Hey, I have a TRS-80 model 4p available for sale.
Works great, every software title ever made is available somewhere on the internet. Plus there are great emulators for the pc that will write to floppies formatted for the trs-80!!! This monster portable comp has builtin screen,keyboard, 2 floppy drives, and builtin SPEAKER!!!!! - TRS-80 model 4 didnt have a builtin speaker! All this in a sewing machine size case!!!
To the hightest bidder...
My Tandy 1000 SX still runs, with all the original parts (plus a couple upgrades). Unlike my 486dx, Pentium 266, and PII 400. All of those eventually had mobos/procs/hard drives die on me.
Of course, the best I can do with it is play Bard's Tale. But hey...
I remember it too, but maybe he was using the CoCo 1 or II?
My Model 100 died of unknown causes; it just wouldn't turn on anymore. So I bought a new one via eBay for nostalgia's sake.
Back in the day, one of the best places for M100 stuff was the M100SIG forum on Compu$erve (it's probably still there, but I'm not a member anymore). Lots of shareware and freeware, most with source code. We ran a disassembler on the ROM image (I probably still have a 3-inch thick hard copy) and extended the built-in utilities with our own Z80 code. Anyone remember XMDPW6.CO? It was an enhancement to the terminal emulator to add things like XModem file transfers. I added a keyboard macro facility to that with about 20 lines of assembler code.
/. headlines! Maybe I'll dust mine off...
I like the idea of hanging one on the wall as clock/conversation piece. With a serial connection to another box it could even receive live internet updates for things like
I wrote my first book on a Model 100. It's a great machine, much better than a laptop or a WinCE PDA these days.
Instant on, battery life on the order of 20 hours with a few AA cells, no moving parts so no need to be delicate, display with large pixels easily readable in sunlight or lamplight, very light, full-size keyboard... to get your data into your PC, you just connect it to the serial port and "capture" your data using a program like Procomm, Telix or (for those of you who are a little younger) HyperTerminal. On a Unix system, you just redirect it from the right device to a file. Nice and simple and clean.
Why did I stop using mine? It got stolen at a public library when I turned my back for about a second and a half. Seriously, whoever stole it must have been waiting to snatch it and run like the wind. I looked into replacing it (the theft occurred in the early '90s) but they were still quite expensive at that time.
I bought a 386 laptop instead but regretted it afterward because the M100 was a much better machine with much better ergonomics.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
That's because you're thinking of this article in Wired Magazine: Never Say Die.
Sure, this:
2 20 7
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/07/24/125
The Model 100 was certainly a very early practical portable machine, and definitely had similar capabilities to a stripped down TRS-80, but it runs on an Intel 8085.
I have one and I still use it when going to the library, to keep track of books I'm looking for and to take notes. You can pump the memory up to a meg or so and use that memory with cetain word processing packages. Now that I have a Psion 5mx it gets used less often.
I know several people who still use their Tandy 100's on a daily basis. Those things are amazingly tough, and amazingly long-lasting in the battery department. (Imagine running one of those on a set of 1800 mAh NiMHs! :) ) I've found Tandy 100's in all sorts of places in my travels (garage sales, flea markets, thrift stores) and all of them were still functional. And they're amazingly light as well. When all you need is a note-taking machine or maybe a simple text terminal, you can't beat the Tandy 100. Sure beats lugging around a laptop.
The only problem I see is in getting the files out to yoru regular computer. But if memory serves me correctly, there were ports on the thing (I'm pretty sure it had a parallel port, and I seem to recall it having a serial as well). I think there was even an internal modem option available(? - correct me if I'm wrong please). And since the thing had BASIC on it, I suppose you could hack together a crude file transfer program of sorts.
Yomigaeru Aiyan Geek!!!
Yes, there are plenty of ways to get data in & out - serial, parallel, audio-cassette, 300baud modem. There is a freeware MS-DOS program that allows a PC to talk to it over a serial line and emulate a disk drive so the M100 can save & retrieve files by name.
Some hams even hooked it up to packet radio devices to run it wireless.
Still, though, it's oddly reassuring to know that these things are still out there doing stuff.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
I have several of these machines lying around, and I've always meant
to gut out the PCB/CPU/RAM inside and replace it with a really small
SBC (like the ones shown here). What's held me
back is interfacing with the Model 100's keyboard and LCD controller.
Has anybody done any work like this, or does anybody have advice to
impart about the task?
there are a couple of foreign correspondants who continue to use these with handset coupled modems. supposedly they are simple, durable, and able to connect in horrible conditions over payphones. wish my ti book was able to survive the drop to the floor. ouch... a thousand bucks, please.
Maybe if slashdot's search functionality didn't SUCK MY ASS, we could use it to find out. I use google to search slashdot, just add site:slashdot.org to your query.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
i remember when the modell 100 came out, even then i thought, the machine was just so "right". think about how the machine could have been wrong.
if it came out with a one line display or, even more likley, a chicklet keyboard like the one used on the first version of the color computer, it would've been a curiosity, remembered like the sinclair zx computers are recalled today. but because the 100 had just the right combination of elements (real keyboard, a two dimensional display, a full set of I/O ports, and really useful applications) it's remebered as one of the most successful alternative computers at the dawn of the peecee era.
the model 100 had plenty of competition. luggable computers, pocket computers, etc. when i was in college, the school got a "great deal" on portable computers from texas instruments. one was issued to every incoming freshman that year. they were about the same size as the model 100, but only had a single line display and a chicklet keyboard. and they never went beyond being curiosities and playthings. the coolest thing about them was that with a simple command you could change their language from english to german.
when religion is no longer the opiate of the masses, governments will resort to real opiates.
NEC built this machine and marketed an almost identical model under their own name.
Bill Gates wrote the apps (addressbook, etc.) which were included in the machines ROM.
The machine was very popular with journalists. Using the modem/acoustic coupler, they no longer needed to dictate their stories back to the newsroom.
This model just happened to be the most portable of the Trash-80 line. I ran into a TRS-80 4P when I was in high school. Yes, this is the TRS-80 model 4 - portable. 30 pound behemoth that needed to be plugged into the wall. Ok, it wasn't very portable, but on the bottom of the machine, it claimed to be portable! C'mon, it had a handle!
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I purchased a Tandy 102 through Ebay soon after a similar article (featuring Rick Hanson) was posted on Slashdot last summer.
I find it convenient for writing notes and recording data. I use it more often than my PDAs. Its light, and it has a half-way decent keyboard.
Also, I found it useful, in a modern way, when I programmed it to store data (my weight) in an XML-based format. Then, I was able to transfer the data to my PC, and graph it in Excel.
I haven't use it with my Linux box yet. That's on my todo list.
BTW. Does anyone else there have other ideas on using XML to breath life into similar machines?
No data, no cry
I remember this as well. In fact, I bookmarked the site the first time around. I double checked the second I saw this article to make sure it was the same site. Sure enough...
It was either on here or on HardOCP, but I just don't remember.
Ah...I still have my Model 100, and it works perfectly, other than sticky keys. It was my first computer, and I learned to program on it. Many hundreds of hours were spent writing Choose Your Own Adventure-style games, Adventure games, and with time, lots of peek & poke video games.
It had 24 KB of ram, and when I ran out, I wrote programs to cassette tape. Years later, when I first used a modem (we didn't have a phone back then), my first thought was that it sounded just like those cassette tapes.
I still remember the "edit" trick...you could only edit a limited amount of program code at once, and if you wrote too much while in Edit mode, it wouldn't let you exit without deleting it. But if you did a Cut, then exited Edit mode, you could Paste it, and still keep your code.
Be happy. (c:
Think online RPGs are a recent invention? We had one of these "laptops" in the house (in addition to the Model III, Model IV and Color Computer which I turned into my first MIDI device) and because of the amazing 300 baud modem, we had a Compuserve account.
One of the coolest things on Compuserve was a very basic RPG. Problem with it was that it was formatted for 80 character screens, and the Model 100 had something like 15 lines. I had to read the descriptions of each room as fast as I possibly could. I ended up typing random directions just to get a chance to read the room info again.
I ended up getting my first scolding for racking up a phone bill online when I was in 5th grade (84-85). Man, those were the days.
Well, Tandies straight suck. But, they die hard...a friend and I acquired one, took the case off, and started prying things off the motherboard until the speaker stopped beeping. It took about 10 minutes with a hammer and two screwdrivers to kill it.
I'll skip the rest of the swan song to deliver on the promise of the Subject:
There are unpopulated card-edge perf boards with a 0.200 inch center distance. None of them seem to fit. That's ok. Just get one anyway. (Get a standard PC jobbie or ISA.) Do NOT use one without the shiny anular solder-sticks-to-it rings at the holes connected electrically to each of the card edge traces. (Sorry for the elite jargon there. :-)) Count the contacts in the slot. Simply saw/hack off the part of the perf board's card edge that won't fit in. I used a sheetrock saw. Yes. Eric Raymond's "others have to call you it first" definitions do not count! I hacked off what wouldn't fit. In Cartesian logic, I hack, therefore I am a hacker. ;-p
Ok...
Now that your card edge fits physically, you need to get yourself some wire wrap wire, several wire wrap sockets, a precise-temp soldering iron, and more patience than a Web addict could ever imagine. One by one, wrap the wire around a pin, and put the other (pathetically skinny) bit of shaved kynar through the hole that connects to the card edge trace. Don't worry about pinouts (YET). Just make it organized for your own view of things.
Leave the sockets empty. Ok. Now get the trash 80 going, and play with it as normal. If it still works, then you didn't flub with the soldering iron. Turn it off now.
For now, forget about what you just did. Get an ordinary breadboard, and focus on that. Get a 74LS374 transparent latch or two. Focus on your project from the peripheral side for now, and do your "end-of-the-wire" thing. (In my case, it was a kludgy-but-effective nonlinear pulse width modulator with homebrew 3-bit-resolution D-to-A converter built from generic op amps and a darlington output to a hobby motor. YMMV)
Ok. If your hand-connected digital signals do what they must "within" the breadboard(s), then trust your 74LS374's for now, but don't power up. Now consult the specs of the system bus, but forget about timing. The write signal works fine as a transparent latching signal. Just run the wires from your real breadboard to the "hack breadboard" (i.e., array of empty DIP sockets).
The clock speed is so slow that I could get breadboard-to-Trash-80 lines (unshielded, untwisted) more than 4 feet. Pay close attention to address demultiplexing signals but not to their timing. The bus strobes data S L O W L Y.
Now boot up, and POKE to your heart's content. There is no separate I/O space. Map your device anywhere in address space where the pathetic (but loveable) internal RAM chips are not. I was a bit lucky. I was so darned conservative and careful at the early stages that my system worked on the first try. Don't budget more than $50, and spend most of that on the breadboarding and 74LSxxx inventory. (Ok. Splurge $150 or so for the very best soldering station that you can afford. It pays for itself RAPIDLY even if you figure your time at 5 bucks an hour.)
Still, I advise against getting fancy digital chips. The odds are that if you get too fancy then they will expect cleaner signals than this kludgy system can deliver.
Other than that, all I can tell you is that it worked for me.
Sorry for the brain fart. The TTL chip was 74LS373, not 74LS374.
The Model 100 portable was as much of an "official" TRS-80 as the original Model I or business-oriented Model II or FCC-approved Model III etc etc etc
Groovy. I'll put a Ford logo on my laptop and then I'll be able to drive it to work.
The Model 100 wasn't a "portable version" of anything - it was a platform in and of itself. That was my point. You can put a "TRS-80" sticker on a grizzly bear if you care to, just don't expect it to load and run Android Nim.
Model 100 : TRS-80 :. Newton : Macintosh
actually.
Err, yes, that's a much better analogy. Thank you.
Footnote: Up until a couple of years ago, the PC2 was still standard issue in the Internal Revenue Service. It was used by field officers to calculate interest on those (very rare) occasions when a customer said "OK, I'll pay in full right now. How much do I owe?" If you were caught out of the office and unable to get to the mainframe app that calculated balances, you whipped out your PC2, hoped it had been updated with the latest interest rate for the quarter, and arrived at your best guess.
Every quarter, the interest rates would change and IT would have to go modify the basic progam on every one of those things in the field. What a pain, but they fulfilled a real need.
The M100 was the first consumer computer taken up in space. NASA replaced the plastic display cover with some sort of quartz window, but it was otherwise unmodified. I always thought it funny that the airlines wouldn't allow you to use a M100 in flight but NASA would....
I used a 102, the updated model, in law school *87-88). It came with 24k, and I never got around to getting the 8k chip to put in the empty socket when they dropped down to $5 or so.
At the time in san diego, there was a bbs that actually *ran* on one of these (1.2mhz 8080 equiv, 300 baud internal pulse dialing modem).
I had the expansion disk, but it wasn't much use--50k (100k? ) on a 3.5" disk. I usually just threw the files to a basic program on a mac to catch them. I also found a program that would run on my XT to let it serve as a "Disk" for the 102 (the disk connected by standard rs-232).
The display was an amazing 8x40, though there was a function key to display the other/prior 8 lines. You could also bit address the pixels.
The simple flat design still beats the clamshell laptop design if you're just typing in text; it's much easier to balance.
It wanted 4 AA batteries for something like 20 hours on alkalines. Some folks used an empty bit of case to hold a 5th to use nicads--which were 1.2v rather than 1.5. I just used 4 nicads, and it lasted longer than if I'd made the mod(CMOS current draw is proportional to voltage applied).
I still occasionally haul it out.
hawk