Slashdot Mirror
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..."
Tandy 100. One hundred. 100. Read the friggin' article! They were indestructible portable machines with full keyboards, long battery life, and RS-232 back before there was anything like them.
Amstrad CPC Emulators, Apple II Emulators, Arcade Emulators (Multi-Game), Arcadia 2001 Emulators, Atari 2600 Emulators, Atari 5200 Emulators, Atari 7800 Emulators, Atari Lynx Emulators, Coleco Emulators, Commodore 64 Emulators, Magnavox Odyssey Emulators, MSX Emulators, NeoGeo Emulators, NES Emulators, Odyssey Emulators, Sega Genesis Emulators, Sega Master System Emulators, TurboGrafx16 Emulators, Vectrex Emulators.
Which means this tandy is prehistoric
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.
...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...
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
"Which explains a whole heck of alot about NASA's current dilemmas."
i dunno... back in the day when i used to code on my trash-80 coco2 and 3, "stability" was never a problem, it wasnt even an issue to be discussed. We all took for granted that you COULDN'T crash your computer unless you you started really fusking with the OS, or did something to crash it on purpose.. aside from that, i would probly trust a trash-80 to run my life support if i had to choose that or a pc.. (yea sure sure, linux, whatever, till someone "gets root" and then really DOES 0wN J00)
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
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.
The original batch of Model 100's were under the TRS-80 brand. Then, Tandy Corp. dropped the TRS-80 brand from its entire line, when it became the Tandy Model 100. Then, the word "Model" was removed, and became the Tandy 100, then the Tandy 102. Clamshell versions were released under the Tandy 2xx line. As mentioned earlier, these were closer to souped-up TRS-80 Pocket Computers rather than scaled-down TRS-80 desktops. Meaning, Tandy 100's didn't run TRS-DOS. This doesn't mean much because TRS-DOS was customized for each model leaving 5 relatively incompatible families of TRS-80 machines: Models I, III and the IV/4 lines; Models II, 12, 16, etc.; Color Computers; Pocket Computers; and Models 10x-2xx.
(from a RadioShack alum and Tandy enthusiast... won my first few amateur programming competitions on Trash-80s)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.
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.
1) NASA likes to buy milspec stuff, and I think it was a milspec IC
2) How would you like to send the latest and greatest (and more complicated and fragile) CPU to Mars only to find out it can't divide properly? Most (all?) off the bugs in the 8045 (if I remember the chip - I could be wrong) were known when it was sent - it was already many many years old and well understood when the mission left the launchpad.