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Tandys Never Die

Posted by michael on from the they-just-get-dimmer-and-dimmer dept.

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..."

5 of 172 comments (clear)

  1. Cool Computer =P by terradyn · · Score: 3, 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...

  2. Model 100 by jACL · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  3. Model 100 goes to work in the gaming industry by efedora · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. I have mine as an onbject d'art. by zulux · · Score: 3, Interesting


    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-Scre en" basic program. If you hold the space bar down, it shows the time.

    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.

  5. The Model 100 beats laptops, WinCE devices. by aussersterne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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