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Inside the TRS-80 Model 100

Posted by timothy on from the oldies-goldies-be-bop-a-lula dept.

enalbro writes "What wouldn't you give for a laptop that starts instantly, weighs 3 pounds and gets 20 hours of battery life? That's the TRS-80 Model 100 in a nutshell. Granted, it displays only 8 lines of text and has just 28 kilobytes of memory, but it's a classic, the first truly popular portable in the U.S. At PC World we have a teardown that'll show you the guts of this featherweight champ." And, like many of the best things in life, it's powered by AA batteries (as is the Apple eMate).

15 of 228 comments (clear)

  1. Eh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

    1. Re:Eh by pak9rabid · · Score: 2, Funny

      No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame. Yeah, the engineers totally should have teleported 20 years into the future and brought back wifi and SSD drives for it.
    2. Re:Eh by oodaloop · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yeah, it would have been so cool to log into DARPAnet while on the go.

      --
      Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
    3. Re:Eh by schwaang · · Score: 5, Funny

      Nah. Back then we used the 300baud modem to log in to Compuserve or MCImail and we liked it.

      That was back when people would see your email address on your business card and say "what's that?". And when you told them, they'd say "oh you nerds can talk to each other, how cute". Those people are now getting phished by hackers, so it's all good.

    4. Re:Eh by phulegart · · Score: 4, Funny

      Actually, this comment really shows how no one bothers to do a little more research than just reading titles.

      For instance... did you know...

      These computers, as well as the TRS-80 CoCos and the Model I, III, and IV units... the units that saved programs to cassette, have greater wireless capabilities than our current hardware. All it takes is to plug in the input and output that are supposed to go to the cassette recorder, and patch it into a HAM radio. It's already being done. People are sending programs and information half-way around the world, without wires and without the assistance of satellites.

      --
      "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
    5. Re:Eh by adamofgreyskull · · Score: 2, Funny

      Only Schneier knows why the parent isn't modded funny. And He's not telling.

    6. Re:Eh by Intron · · Score: 2, Funny

      Someday it will be available within one's horseless carriage.

      --
      Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
  2. celibacy required? by Quadraginta · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you can't do something better than they did 20 years ago, just don't even try, m'kay?

    Bad news for virgins, huh?

  3. Gates coding "skills" strike again... by kwabbles · · Score: 5, Funny

    From first page:

    "the Model 100 served as the portable computing workhorse of its day. Bill Gates' also ranks it as one of his favorite computers of all time, in large part because he and a friend wrote the firmware it uses."

    And then on the 4th page:
    "Peeking in from the left is the reset button, which the user needs from time to time due to a few pesky bugs in the ROM code, reminding us that even non-Windows systems can crash."

    Come on then. It's funny.

    --
    Just disrupt the deflector shield with a tachyon burst.
  4. what? no white model? by pha7boy · · Score: 3, Funny

    well, unless it comes out in all white, I'm not interested. I mean, how would I be able to look cool at the [local coffee shop]?

    --
    -- All this knowledge is giving me a raging brainer.
  5. Re:Love it! by bhtooefr · · Score: 3, Funny

    That's when you upgrade him to a TRS-80 Model... 200!

  6. Re:keyboards by R2.0 · · Score: 4, Funny

    "Sorry, but nostalgia is not a good stand-in for real-world superiority."

    I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if thousands of Model M users cried out in rage, and then continued typing.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  7. Re:Bought two used ones a long time back by f8l_0e · · Score: 5, Funny

    From page 4 of the article: "Peeking in from the left is the reset button, which the user needs from time to time due to a few pesky bugs in the ROM code, reminding us that even non-Windows systems can crash." I guess the quality of Microsoft software has stayed the same as the days when Bill was writing code.

  8. Re:Bought two used ones a long time back by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 3, Funny

    Had a nice little BASIC and lots of cool ports. Trivia: the OS was the last major coding work by Bill Gates himself.


    Yep. Witness these 'screenshots':

    Jan 12, 1908 Tue 14:03:54 (C)Microsoft
    BASIC TEXT TELCOM ADDRSS
    SCHEDL MYFILE.DO -.- -.-

    Select: _ 24121 Bytes free


    (edited for slashdot's junk characters filter)

    BASIC was highlighted. Press Enter:


    Jan 12, 1908 Tue 14:03:54 (C)Microsoft
        WARNING!
        You are about to run BASIC. This
        software can make changes to your
        system!

    ALLOW CANCEL
    Select: _ 24121 Bytes free

    Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk'
    --
    My blog
  9. Wrong! by seandiggity · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can have wireless, you just have to try harder.

    --
    Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms