Slashdot Mirror
Old-school Nerdy Comics
savetz writes "20 years before User Friendly, Doctor Fun, and Dilbert, about the only place a geek could go for a fix of nerdy comic goodness was ... Radio Shack. Tandy Computer Whiz Kids was a comic book series that was distributed for free at Radio Shack stores. It featured overeager kids stopping bad guys with their TRS-80s and acoustic modems, sweetly naive information about computers, and constant shilling of Radio Shack products. They're now on the Web."
Update: 04/19 03:44 GMT by J : We're having a bit of DB trouble tonight... bear with us.
That would have been right around 2 years before my birth...
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
Go calculate something.
I remember those things. Those kids were definitely dorky. Unfortunately, I later become equally as dorky. So perhaps I shouldn't point fingers and laugh. I never wanted to be caught with Tandy hardware, though.
The Computers That Said No To Drugs. How 80's.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
I remember as a kid, my dad would take me to Radio Shack, and it was awesome. Now, it's just sad... really really sad. If I had kids, I wouldn't take them, because I'm sure they'd find it boring.
Thanks for the memories! I think a lot of us got started in the mall stores.
Dear God, I thought these days were finally behind me.
(Oh, and First Post...
They used to pass them out at my grade school actually. Maybe thats where I got my techy-DIY mentallity.
Im off to re-read all my old favorites now.
The Monkey Pages: Not just another personal site...okay, so I lie.
Oh my God. I totally remember these. Wow, I really was a geek from a young age. Does any still have an old Battery Card?
Which means not very funny at all.
I remember picking this up and actually reading it after I used my free battery card- everything seemed to run on batteries at that time, even though I can't really remember what any of those things were.
I know I'm aging myself with this post, but I also think that those comics completely ended up turning me off from the really good shit that came out later, including anime
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Is there anything the wonderful TRS-80's of Metro City could not do?
As a side note, these things were made by Archie.
If you enjoy these, you sure enough will love the classic Hostess Fruit Pies ads that ran about the same time as these comics. Check 'em out at www.seanbaby.com
Nice to see the return of some old favorites, but Penny Arcade will still be my fave, even it is only based around gamers
Karma: Bad. Mostly because the only moderators that notice me are conservatives.
boy, were they great machines
Last year, we even hacked into Nasa with those acoustic modems
Oh wait... that was a dream :-D
In Canada, we don't fancy things like socks
http://saveie6.com/
As a self-proclaimed "new age" geek, it's nice to be able to see these comics from the past. Hopefully Michael alerted them so they can try to be prepared for the /dot effect. With all of those large graphics they are going to probably be hit hard.
And it seems that AtariMagazines should've at least upgraded it's web servers from TRS-80 model 4s to the model 12...
Or maybe the second floppy drive on the server went bad. Who knows?
I was going to read these all, but I guess it will have to wait until tommorrow.
"This is Zombo Com, and welcome to you who have come to Zombo Com" - www.zombo.com
must be really, really slow.
In other news, those comics are about the only thing from radio shack that worked as promised for that long.
Also, it's been about 10 minutes and no fp yet. Wow.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
How can we forget about the all-mighty www.penny-arcade.com Where we all learned about wanghangers.
Quality over Quantity.http://www.virusgaming.com/
...remembering these and doing a "first post" on a Friday Nite totally qualify me for "Nerd of the Month" championships?
will always be Pupkin followed by Elftor!
Not really techy, but you dont have to live computer all the time.. do you?
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
I could definitly see myself taking out someone evil with my Tandy 1000sx. Especially a Radioshack clerk, Mmmm.. savor the irony.
Is it me, or does this drug dealer, Mr. Clayton, look an awful lot like J. Jonah Jameson?
The opposite of progress is congress
i had a toothpaste comic once
I just dug out my old COCO2 and am working on getting everything working again. Now I can see some of the original ads. Feeling like emulating your old Tandy? MESS supports the Color Computer series, MC-10, Model 1-4 and Tandy 1000 MS-DOS compatable series.
If I'm going to read old, exceptionally cheesy comics, I prefer ones that have fruit pies. Fruit pies that the heroes will throw to you if you've been hoarding food or stealing national monuments. Fruit pies that are not only filled with delicious real fruit filling, but filled with the sweet taste of poetic justice.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
I don't know which is sadder- the fact that this story is here or the fact that I laughed at it because I could relate.
a comic I can relate to
The computer that said no to drugs. Oh my fucking god.
They're now on the Web
Not for long!
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
Pupkin and Elftor!
Not necessarilly techy, but the funniest things on the Internet imho!
Also, is slashdot a tad borked atm? Posts I'm making are dissapearing...
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
First post! Tandy was so old school. What happened to Tandy anyway.
That went down so fast, the server was hosed before there was nary a comment posted. Anyone happen to mirror it?
If only the the Whiz Kids had won that battle... Too many servers these days are high on meth.
ChicagoFan
Oh, blessed childhood, lost forever. No more 25-in-one, 50-in-one, 75-in-one, or (the holy grail), the 150-in-one Electronic Project Kit. No more being kicked out of Radio Shack after debugging for hours from handwritten and typewritten notes of programs cobbled together on scrap paper. No more studying for hours the TRS-80 BASIC Programming manual, featuring "Karl" in the margins, commenting on things like the odd pronunciation of the word "integer."
You really can never go back home.
"Not only does the 128K Color Computer 3 offer twice the memory, twice the speed, and even better graphics than our popular Color Computer 2, it's also compatible with the Tandy hardware accessories and software designed for the popular Color Computer 2 -- you may never outgrow it!
Heheheh
I get to read an article before it's /.'d!
Hell,I've got some of them,left over from my days of selling computers(TRS-80s and Color Computers) at the Hazard,Ky.Radio Shack.
I wonder if they are worth anything?
Geek Hillbilly
Seems like every 80s comic book had a similar plot...just say no..
I'm glad my athlon doesnt use illicit substances...although my 680x0 machines have had substance abuse problems
Its a JOKE people
The local store near my house used have stacks of them because even though they were free, no one wanted them.
Beta sux! Join the Slashcott! http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4760465&cid=46173047
BOFH (text version of present day comics) was there too. dont forget that. And all you needed was "tin" newsgroup reader.
Consensus is good, but informed dictatorship is better
I just started to read the frist episode, and I found 2 points to be interesting.
1) The include girls. The co-heroes are a boy and a girl.
2) The girl seems to know more about computers than the boy. I guess this comes from secretaries being mostly women at the time.
The pages are a bit slow to load, but it is an interesting read, a flash back to an almost forgotten past.
Cheers.
Is it just me, or did everyone wonder if the best way to "fight bad guys" with TRS-80s would be to give them the stupid things. Oh, the joys of booting off floppy that was actually, well, floppy.
Those were the days, you could make your disk double sided by cutting out the write protect area with a pair of scissors.
Actually, I think I know what happens to computers that don't say no to drugs... :-)
Karma: Excellent Birds (mostly as a result of listening to Laurie Anderson)
Another thing to waste time at work looking at. If this gives me bad karma, so be it.
Okay, so this comic came out 19 years ago, in 1984?
*Now* I understand why I keep hearing people complain about Slashdot being slow to post news stories!
Well, they were until we slashdotted their TRS-80s.
If only the Whiz Kids had won that battle... Too many servers these days are high on meth...
The server's already slowing down. I would mirror, but this thing REALLY isn't worth the trouble. Go home, people. Nothing to see here.
"Ask me about Loom"
A bit corny, but that's why it's funny
Man, that is OLD school. My first computer experience was in '81 or '82 at the local library on a TRS-80, playing 'Hunt the Wampus' and I think "Ice Climber" or some such thing. Anyone else remember this system and its games?
For some of us, the Trash-80 and all its various incarnations was our introduction to cyberspace, such as it was back in the late 70's - early 80's.
For a semi-cheesy outfit they did some very cool stuff. They didn't know squat about marketing it though and were never able to resist the temptation to lowball stuff any chance they got.
Wow, 10 minutes and no replies?
huh?
Where are the comments? Dammit I can't be the first!
"What use is power to the Keeps of Balance?" -Disnt of Nightmare LpMud
Seems that tonight their webserver is performing like a TRS-80.
Huh?
They're now on the Web.
...not anymore ;)
I put on my robe and wizard hat.
. . .so it's either being /.'ed, or the site's hosted on a TRS-80 and connected via an acoustic modem.
I don't think I've ever used a Tandy, but I remember using the high-tech Apple IIe when I was in school (around 5-6 years old, circa '84), which was the best computer there since it didn't need a tape drive.
First post?
Down with Saudi Arabia!!!
First Post? That'd be cool considering i've never posted anyway. haha
must...stop...can't...resist...
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Correction: They were on the Web.
Unfortunately, nobody knew what a Slashdotting was in 1985.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
"The Computers That
/. now alert webmasters of the impending doom of their servers?
Said No To Drugs"
"The Computer
Trap"
"News By Computer
Foils Kidnappers"
Do I sense a theme?
Also at the bottom of the page, "Hi, Slashdot people!" does
i was just thinking about these the other day. it almost makes me want to go back to my parents house and check my collection to see how many i have.
-- derby
Nerdy beyond redemption...
The year is 2003, and the evil DMCA and Patriot Act threaten the world. Earth's last best hope...the Computer Whiz Kids!
Johnny Turbo is a comic series created by TTI, the makers of the TurboDuo. Watch Johnny Turbo, together with his gay sidekick Tony, fight the evil monsters of Feka, (a.k.a. Sega) as they try to push their evil 16-bit CD console, the Sega CD, when TTI's 8-bit console is already out there!
If nothing else, check out gay sidekick Tony's reaction to the TurboDuo's AWESOME GRAPHICS.
haha guess not...
'ta
I'm making my way through this one right now. That's some vintage "war on drugs" propaganda:
All right students! I won't keep you in suspense any longer! The next surprise is a special visitor from the Coastal City Police Department here to give us all a talk about the DANGERS of drug abuse!
I can't wait to see the computer say no through their DC10 modem!
. . .we've got comics!
I want the fire back.
These are so nerdy I not only don't remember them, but I don't think I want to navigate beyond the thumbnails.
Ugh....
This space for rent.
Oh, the days when my dad was a manager at Radio Shack and would bring these home for me!
You know when you take something back to Radio Shack and if it's too cheap to repair, they give you a new one? Well, I used to get a box-full of junk from there that my dad could either throw away or bring home.
That's how I got into electronics. Walkie-Talkies and walkmen all for the fixing!!!!
"As to the historical/technological information contained in this magazine, neither Radio Shack nor Tandy Corporation, nor any of their employees makes any warranty express or implied, for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such information contained in this magazine..."
:-)
I've noticed it's hard for Radio Shack to be up-to-date on technology's cutting edge.....
[este]
WTF!?!?!? The commercial is critizing the "other guys", but obviously this customer is making no sense! Who the hell came up with this commercial?
Oh yeah, RadioShack people...
i remember those...damn i totally forgot. i actually have some in my garage.
There are some funny C64 vs. NES debates. Overall, there weren't that many Compute! articles, though. A friend of mine once got a game, and another time a disk sector editor published in Compute! magazine. That was huge for a sixteen year old! But, they weren't on the site (yet - they want your articles.)
Also, I wasn't aware there was a Datel Action Replay cartridge for the Commodore 64. They were doing it back then!
yo.
I wonder if copies of these are worth anything?
I've noticed that quite a few of my fellow Unix sysadmin-type critters were TRS-80 folks, rather than, for instance, Apple or Commodore people. I wonder if this isn't related to the fact that, for much of what we wanted to do, we had to "roll our own", rather than just go to the corner computer store and buy the latest game.
Ah, and our BASIC had an "ELSE" statement...how can you program in BASIC without an "else"?
I've never seen any of these old-school comics (maybe because NZ never got them). But they're a great classic.
Why not a guide to hardware mods instead?
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
The teacher is one hot babe! Wow! I like the touch of all the girls telling the guy what the computer program "scripsit" does! haha!! Wish that would happen in real life. *sigh* yes.. more women in CSC would be a good thing. [/lame][/nerd]
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Of the times when I was "cool" because I had 64k RAM, three voices, and 16-color graphics on my C64 and I thought it was the greatest thing to type in 10 PRINT "RICKY" : GOTO 10 and impress all the first grade teachers because I knew how to work the newfangled computer in the classroom.
:)
I wonder though - did my dad do me a favor when he brought home the computer all those years ago?
Just my TRS-80's-worth...
RickTheWizKid
PS: and to think that I actually work at the 'shack now...
Those things were some of the most baldfaced propaganda since WWII. But DeskMate will still hold a blackened and cancerous chunk of my heart . . .
these are great
Your computer can say no to drugs too! 10 INPUT A$;IF A$="Do you want some smack, ludes, coke, weed, acid, X, cough syrup, morphine, cocaine, oxycodone (Percodan®), methylphenidate (Ritalin®), and dextroamphetamine (Dexedrine®), heroin, marijuana, LSD, PCP, cocaine, acetaminophen with codeine (Tylenol® No.3), paregoric, hydrocodone with acetaminophen (Vicodin®), diazepam (Valium®), alprazolam (Xanax®), propoxyphene (Darvon®), and pentazocine (Talwin®)?" THEN PRINT "NO!"
20 PRINT "GOOD WORK, KIDS! REMEMBER, DRUGS ONLY *DRAG YOU DOWN*! HAHA! HAHA!"
30 END : REM BUY A GODDAMN TANDY!
Pretty funny, seems a lot like a reformatted FAQ/advertisement/user manual, but... aimed at kids? I can't picture anyone old enough to read this then having the money to off an buy the stuff...
Who gives a damn about old comics? I do. The geek culture to which I have become acustomed over my years in the IT industry has allowed me to laugh at myself, my friends, the fools I support, and everyone else I can think of.
Just today, somebody started quoting a StarWars Episode 4 (see also "A New Hope") and the next lines were quoted verbatum from one engineer to the next.
A few weeks ago I saw a License plate sporting the ubiquitous advice "RTFM". I honked and waved at the fellow geek that was driving. He, of course, flipped me off. (He must be the BOFH)
My favorite single comic strip of all time is the one where Dilbert's pointy-haired boss comes up and tells Dilbert that they need some Eunuch programmers. Dilbert tells pointy-haired boss that it's UNIX and that he already knows it. The boss then tells Dilbert that if the company nurse comes by, to tell her never mind. Hell, I still grin when I think of that one.
Well, back to the LAN party...
never done that before...
Don't forget reallifecomics.com too.
Anyway, I think I remember this Tnady comic back when I was young, but I'm only 19 as it is, so it was when I was quite young.
http://wsulug.org
Finally it's not offtopic for me to plug my webcomic! check it out at:
Overcaffeinated. Thanks =)
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Is there a reason why its 10:52 and I'm 4th post? Meh.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
Just imagine what these kids would be doin now: Sporting Verizon and Sprint cell phones, using Palm handhelds and HP/Compaq computers and hooked up with Linksys and Microsoft products.
Radio Shack is still the cool place to go.
On a different note, ask the guy at your local Radio Shack for a discontinued/devalued list, the manager there will be more than happy to get that stuff off his inventory and you can sometimes pick up a cell phone, router or other neat part for 97 cents or a penny.
While I am a Radio Shack employee, my comments are my own.
It's rather odd to compare this to "Dilbert" and other current nerd comics, since those have some wit to them. This reads rather more like a prolonged advertisement for the TRS-80 computer. A little subtlety would have been nice, that's all.
for once, a publication that greets the slashdot crowd in a friendly way ("Hi Slashdot people!") rather than the usual HTTP overloaded error.
"Smoking helps you lose weight - one lung at a time" -- A. E. Neumann
100's of hand scanned comic book pages + Slashdot == trouble.
This is going down like "Chemical Ali."
www.GamezCore.com For Hardcore PS2 Gamerz : By Hardcore PS2 Gamerz
palms are sweaty, pulse is high
ok, the thrill is gone.
I can't beleive I'm not the only person in the world who still has theirs... Brings back fond memories.
"We're proud of you son! Real proud!"
"And we'll be waiting for you when you get out of that rehabilitation center!"
Oh, and first post? Maybe...
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
It's been up for like half an hour. I just wanted to see what the error message is.
this is a sig.
walking down to radio shack every month to get a free battery with my battery club card, checking for a new tandy comic and looking at all the stuff.
/.'s are in the age group targeted by this blatent advertising campaign for a rather pathetic line of computers.
I'm guessing a decent percentage of
Nice memories, thanks.
slashdot was ported to a TRS-80s, and was quickly slashdotted.
The good ol' days of my computing experience.
/me huggles his CoCo 2.
The link is dead? Slashdotted already and this is the First Post lol. Too bad, I was wanting to read the comics rofl.
A comic in Argentina with plenty of nerdy characters and stuff for hobbyists
m
http://guasa.ya.com/museodehumor/rsaltapones.ht
http://guasa.ya.com/museodehumor/suplelupin.htm
http://guasa.ya.com/museodehumor/rresorte.htm
Download Opera 9 (in the BETA forum)
...not for long!
Just looking through "The computers that said NO to drugs", it really contrasts to how people think of computers these days. When the teacher unviels the Tandy it is explained that the computer is a tool useful for productivity and information. You know, stuff like word/data processing and programming to solve problems. Nowadays it's a 'magic box' that 1/2 the people don't know how to use correctly and see it as a toy.
$cat
I like toons!!
Fun times, old comics.
Nothing particularly interesting to say, sorry.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Awww.. You slashdotted it!... Now how am I going to finish reading The Computers that said no to Drugs?
You people ruin everything
air and light and time and space
The only place to find it is not on this site, whice is currently in the process of melting.
...and you know what? Even though I was a kid, they sucked back then. I might read them now for the sheer entertainment value, but certainly not out of nostalgia. If I wanted that, I'd read the other comics I read back then, like Archie and Richie Rich and Casper and... well, absolutely anything else. :)
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Only 6 issues...thought such a marketing campaign would have kept the comics rolling...
I have an idea for a superhero all the fanboys will connect with. He's called Blobman! He lives in his mother's basement.
How ya like dat?
Proudly served on a TRS-80.
What about the old Incredible Hulks when Rick Jones used his Ham radio to gather "The Teen Brigade" assist the Hulk in times of need? You might want to check out Incredible Hulk #6 for quite possibly the first truly geek comic reference. (Google yielded this as a place to read about it -- check out the bottom one.
- Senor Cliffy
I've got two or three of these comics, inc. one that isn't on the page linked in the story, featuring Superman. I'll have to put some scans up, as it's pretty fun! :-)
Having a TRS-80 Model 100 is great, but having the comics to go along with it is priceless...
Huxley
I actually have one of these. I found it lying around at my dad's house. It featured Superman, Supergirl and a wicked rad portable TRS-80 (available at Radio Shack(tm)!). They also used an incredible device known as a "modem" to connect to another computer and stop the villain. Wow, technology is amazing!
Its not quite dilbert... but you gotta dig that 70's style animation. I swear Scooby was in that first comic...
Not more than you need, just more than you want
What about the old issues of The Incredible Hulk when Rick Jones used his Ham radio to gather "The Teen Brigade" assist the Hulk in times of need? You might want to check out Incredible Hulk #6 for quite possibly the first truly geek comic reference. (Google yielded this as a place to read about it -- check out the bottom of the page.)
- Senor Cliffy
TRS80s? Bah, all you need is Michael Knight and KIT!
its hilarious and its right here: no here.
that sounds about as cheezy as BiClops from the Simpsons episode where Bart & Milhouse are managing a comic book shop...
I had a friend who had both a Model IV and a Color Computer, but I only had a Color Computer. I think I may have seen one or two of the comics, but I was more interested in the programming, and I was more eager to get the lastest issue of the Rainbow magazine.
At the next eco-hypocrisy-meeting, count the private jets used to get to the meeting. Should be interesting to see that
Wow, what happened to that, anyway? It seems everyone wants to use 1 based now.
"Insert the disk into drive 0"
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
The nostalgia. Too bad rat shack sucks so much now.
God am I old. :(
Open Source: Every now and then, you get what you don't pay for.
"Ah, remember when MSN Man foiled the BSDaemon. That sure was a great issue!"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
My letter writing campaign has paid off!
They used to be always there for that 3.5mm jack plug in times of need.
:(
Sadly, the Tandy set-up in the UK was sold to the Carphone Warehouse who just wanted it for the store locations
Is it just me, or has UserFriendly gotten, well, lame in recent years? Not that these WhizKids comics are much better, mind you . . .
I wanted to RTFA, but there was only pictures... what am I to do now?
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
sorta makes up for their shoddy products and overpriced goods.
one of the best things for hobbyists has been the means of the internet as a way to bypass the radioshack monopoly... radioshack has turned to selling shit like rc cars and cordless phoens now.
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
That page is a goner already. No other posts yet even!
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
Thanks to the Tandy Corporation, Alec attended Stanford University, all expenses paid, where he earned his degree in Computer Science. After graduation, he was hired by Pets.com as Chief Techology Officer.
However, his life took a turn for the worse, when one of the network administrators discovered his secret cache of kitty porn, thousands of images of underage cats in compromising positions. He was hanging on to his job by a thread when the technology sector crashed, and he was the first to go. Currently, Alec works the midnight-to-8AM shift at Kinko's, where he can indulge his predilection for feline pornography between customers.
Shanna was not nearly as lucky as Alec, having been seduced by an assistant manager at the local Radio Shack, where she bartered sexual favors for boxes of floppy disks and packs of resistors and capacitors (she liked the pretty color codes). When she found out she was pregnant at age 16, the manager tried to induce a miscarriage using a battery-operated remote control monster truck toy. Shanna nearly bled to death in the mall's food court.
Fortunately, she received medical attention just in time, and went on to live a long, happy life as a camgirl, living off of gifts from her Amazon.com wish list sent by middle-aged male admirers. She was recently hired by the National Beef Council as a consultant, aiding them in their quest to feed cheeseburgers to anorexic teenage girls.
And now you know the rest of the story.
This is Paul Harvey...good day!
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
This is really amazing to me. The one comic "The Computers that said No to Drugs (1985)" I had as a small child. My grandmother gave it to me when she bought me my first TRS-80. It is really amazing, I was evidently 7 years old when I first started writing endless variations of
"What is your name?"
? Sean
"Hi Sean"
God she cursed me to nerddom when I was that young. Damn you Grandma.
I think I'll have to go write that in perl now and see how far my skills have not progressed.
I used to go to Radio Shack all the time as a child and play "Pitfall" and "Duke Nukem" on the tandy's lined up. And now all they do there is try to sell me a cell phone. *sigh*
those same kids are being thrown in the klink for smoking weed after shooting their dell commercials
testing posting which seems to be broken
Who doesn't love them... and radioshack was so much fun as a kid in the 80s.... you had the *potential* right smack dab in the mall.
"The Computers That Said No To Drugs"
Heh, heh. Man those are funny. Next up, the cell phone that ate more vegetables.
-Sean
...NERDS!!! Sweet merciful crap! I mean I know this is news for nerds, but do we not have ANY standards?
Is there a reason no posts are showing up?
I work part time for a Radio Shack (don't ask). Have you ever tried to buy a computer at Radio Shack?
First, sales associates at the Ratshack know nothing about computers. Honestly, that company has no training whatsoever (ok, so a little tutorial in the back room...right).
Secondly, only the top 2% of stores ever have them in stock.
Third, if the computers are in stock, they're typically display models. When you work at Ratshack, you turn into a display model whore to make your 3 to 7% (depending on what you've sold your soul to push).
Fourth, the only decent deals are refurbished desktops. Ha, good luck finding any.
Maybe Tandy cashed in during early days, but nowadays, the only thing RatShack seems to do right are audio and telephone cables.
P.S. Can you tell I'm scheduled to work tomorrow?
I can remember these! And FP!
Wow, I remember those. Teacher in our talent development classes ( ie get the smart kids away from the dumb kids an hour a week ) used to hand those out to use to encourage us to play with the trash-80s she had in the classroom.
10 print "hello"
20 goto 10
Been there, done that
This space for rent.
Anyone else having a ridiculously hard time posting?
"And I would've gotten away with it if it wasn't for those meddling nerds!"
Table-ized A.I.
here. Go easy on me, please!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was about 9 or 10 at the time and I played around with basicA from IBM on my 286 pc at home. I also remember the IBM manual on it and programming various sounds from low pitch to high pitch and even ended up creating a simple program that created a police siren.
Only 1 or 2 of the programs worked out from the magazine because I had little patience to type in the code which was sometimes long. I was disappointed that the programs had no graphics or sound like I hoped they would. I lost interest because I was a kid at the time who was only interested in video games. Sound and video were everything for me at that immature age.
Years later I learned basic from computer math at my freshmen year in highschool and relized that I actually was programing when I read the Rainbow magazine. I just did not know it at the time.
http://saveie6.com/
I read one of the other ones and it was anti-drug also. Something tells me they all are, that was a big deal back then. Thankfully, the "Just Say No" program worked so well we have no need for such propaganda anymore. :-)
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Granted its due to technical difficulties,
but everyone and their mom claimed first post on this one...
maybe this thread wins for most every negative OT moderation??
For some reason, the system is handing them out to me like candy. I used to only get mod points once a month. I get them almost once a week now....and yes I alerted the Great Slashdot Admins. Oh well, I wish had some now. That's the funniest thing I've read all month.
+5 Fricken' Hilarious.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
"Gosh, Mr. Green, we were only doing what anyone would -- fighting terrorism -- the enemy of free people worldwide!"
Here's a complete mirror of the comics:
Tandy Computer Whiz Kid Comics
Enjoy!
...I refuse to RTFA....god help me I clicked the link...
MY EYES! MY EYES!
IT BURNS, IT BURNS! aaaaaaaaaaaaa
.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
D'oh! Thanks for blowing the ending for me.
By the way, did you get a load of that cell phone? It's like a suitcase.
TRS-80s were coded in "Microsoft Basic"
/me sees everyone start taking back their "OH I loved it" statements
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80
I detasseled corn successive summers to save up enough for a Coco 2, a Coco 3, and one of those horrible 35 track single sided (!) floppies. I used to hang out at Radio Shack all of the time, bugging the techs to let me watch them solder 64k upgrades onto the 16k coco 2.
I finally got a DiStefano 512k upgrade, OS-9 Level II, Multiview, and a mouse, and tried to write horrible programs in Basic09 in the default editor, which was basically edlin.
Had stacks of Rainbow Magazines, had the high score for Munchkin Blaster for a couple of months... was on the modem constantly calling long distance at 300 baud; no smartmodems, we had to listen for the tone and hit "connect" on the modem.
I just get the feeling that kids these days are really missing out, not growing up with that stuff. 8 bit machines you could comprehend fully, where you had to know a bit of everything to get them to do anything. I had my Coco 2 for a couple of months before I even had a tape deck for it, so I'd write a game, and tell my mom not to dare turn it off...
Good times.
these comics have no periods... anywhere. just like in archie comics.
weird.
Oh, how I loved it! It was a piece of crap, don't get me wrong, but it led me into a lifelong love affair with computers. My dad bought it in 1979, I was 8 years old, going on 9.
At first, all we had was the base unit. We loaded programs off of audio cassette tapes. Within a month or so we got a 300 baud acoustic coupled modem. My dad got an account on CompuServe. By 19080, we were online.
We had an Epson Dot Matrix printer. I used to print out naughty ascii art I downloaded off CompuServe. When it came out, we got the expansion interface, 48k of memory, and the 5.25" floppy disk drives.
I learned to program, first in BASIC, then in Z-80 assembly language. I played games: Temple of Apshai and Scott Adams text adventures were my favorites.
I read Byte magazine religiously back then. I can remember typing in page after page of code. After I got better at programming, I wrote a Dungeons and Dragons character generator, and then a simple text adventure game.
I've had a lot of better computers since then, but I still have a special place in my heart for the old Trash 80.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Incredibly so on so many levels -- crass advertising of Tandy products, sappy "there's our friend, Mr. Narcotics Officer!!", etc. Painful to read, but so bad I was compelled to suffer the indignity.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Well, it seems this will finally be not-offtopic, so I'd like to plug my own geeky webcomic, Overcaffeinated. Take a look, hope you like it -- (btw, I made this same post a long while ago, but I think it's buried in the second or third page of this story's comments due to the DB problems, so sorry for replying to your comment) =)
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
Here's a snippet of the caption underneath the cover to the first comic.
THE TRS-80 COMPUTER WHIZ KIDS (1984 Edition) was produced for the Radio Shack Division of Tandy Corporation byArchie Comic Publications, Inc. 325 Fayette Avenue, Mamaroneck, N.Y. 10543.
>
Shanna : If we study hard now, we'll be able to get better jobs later.
ROTFLMAO!!!
The Dirty Work Group
That would have been right around 2 years before my birth...
How about Gaston Lagaffe (sample comic strip included) which premiered in 1957?
Of course, computers only entered the picture around about 1977 when the earliest personal computers started to appear in offices...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That would have been right around 2 years before my birth...
How about Gaston Lagaffe (sample comic strip included) which premiered in 1957?
Of course, computers only entered the picture around about 1977 when the earliest personal computers started to appear in offices... but before that, there was plenty of other hardware hacking. Photocopiers, cars, airplane engines, perpetual motion machines...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
That would have been right around 2 years before my birth...
How about Gaston Lagaffe (sample comic strip included) which premiered in 1957?
Of course, computers only entered the picture around about 1977 when the earliest personal computers started to appear in offices... but before that, there was plenty of other hardware hacking. Photocopiers, cars, airplane engines, perpetual motion machines...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
- fighting terrorism - the enemy of free people worldwide!
- passion
It's actually quite interesting how in the comics, whenever they explain that you have to press the number 0, they use that "old-school" slashed-zero... reminds me of my Commodore days...
Oh, and I enjoyed the Computer Trap story, when they are in the Museum hiding from the terrorists, and discover a phone... so they go ahead and use their spiffy Model-100 and an acoustic coupler (gasp) to set off an emergency message... and I'm thinking, why didn't they just place a normal phone call... funny stuff.
That would have been right around 2 years before my birth...
How about Gaston Lagaffe (sample comic strip included) which premiered in 1957?
Of course, computers only entered the picture around about 1977 when the earliest personal computers started to appear in offices... but before that, there was plenty of other hardware hacking. Photocopiers, cars, airplane engines, perpetual motion machines...
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Pressing the Submit button never got a response, so I was getting frustrated. Sorry everyone.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
http://saveie6.com/
News By Computer Foils Kidnappers: Alec and Shanna invoke an AMBER Alert some twenty-plus years before its time.
Also, check out the 'portable' RS Cellular Phone.
(PS - apologies to those who lost Mod points... saw this after the fact...)
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
They'll never know what it meant to be a "child of the Eighties."
I too enjoyed the pain and humiliation of seeing something from my childhood plastered all over the Internet.
For those that would die defending it, Freedom
has a sweet taste that the protected will never know.
I could swear I remember a crossover of this with Superman, where Supes is caught in a sealed chamber at the Metropolis world fair with kryptonite or red solar radiation sapping his powers, and the kids rescue him by making a call with their analog modem. Am I dreaming?
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Zilog, which made the ubiqitous Z-80, came out with a 16 bit microprocessor called the Z-8000. As part of their marketing campaign, they created a super hero called Captain Zilog, whom they honored with a comic book, tee-shirts, and even a pack of matches proclaiming that you could get a good job programming Z8000s.
The Z-8000 did not go anywhere, unfortunately. Great kitch though!
-- Jamie
anyone know what happened to the web commic with
the little green coffee mutant.
i rellay liked that one, but can't seem to find it anymore. i thought the name of it was something like broadcast 2000 or something to that effect, but
it's been so long since i've even tried to find it.
just as a reminder, the plot was about a small programming company that was making some sort of 3d shoot game. they had an manic for a graphics guy, and they always kept him in a straight jacket. while the flunkies for the publishing company were these really generic guys in suits that had different color hats.
maybe that will be enough of a description to jog someones memory.
later