It's the 40th Anniversary of Radio Shack's TRS-80 (smithsonianmag.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Smithsonsian: It was with minimal expectations that, on August 3, 1977, Tandy Corporation teamed up with Radio Shack to release the TRS-80, one of the first personal computers available to consumer markets. While Don French -- a buyer for the Tandy Radio Shack consumer electronic chain -- had convinced some Tandy executives of the need to release a personal computer, most felt it was unlikely to gross substantial profits. This bulky item with complex operating procedures would never sell, they thought, more than 1,000 units in its first month... As it turned out, the TRS-80 surpassed even the most cautious sales estimates by tenfold within its first month on the market; the burgeoning prospects of a new era in personal electronics and computing could no longer be denied.
It had no hard drive and four kilobytes of memory, according to the article. Radio Shack's $600 PC was preceded by the MITS Altair, as well as PCs from both Apple and IBM, but "the TRS-80 was one of the first products that came fully assembled and ready to use, bridging the gap in accessibility between hobbyists -- who took interest in the actual building of the computer -- and the average American consumer, who wanted to know what this new, cutting-edge technology had in store for them."

Does this bring back any memories for anyone?

Comments

A friend had one... Good for its time.

[pubwvj]

The TRS-80 wasn't my first computer but a friend had one which I used. It was a good intro to concepts for it's time.

The first 'personal' computer I used was a KIM-1 which was a motherboard with a hex keypad and hex LED output. So the TRS-80 was a huge step up from that.

My second computer was the Apple I at school which was very barebones but again a step up from the KIM-1.

I bought a Z-80 based Exidy Sorcerer which came with minimal memory that I boosted by piggy backing the additional memory chips literally on the backs of the built in memory and doing a little soldered wire wrapping to reroute a few signals.

But the first computer I used was a mainframe at UNH at Keene, NH. That was punch cards. So all of the above were huge steps up from that. Mostly because of time. With the university mainframe one only got a little bit of time to use the system. With a home computer one is able to really work with it, mod it and learn.

So while many people diss the TRS-80, calling it the Trash-80, they are missing the point. For it's time it was a good intro to computing.

Re: Mine had 16k

[kenh]

later upgraded it to 48k (the max, 16k was used by the display)

No, it wasn't.

The base Model I supported 16 Kilobytes it the main unit, another 32 Kilobytes could be added to the Expansion Base.

The video display in the TRS-80 was character-based, and displaying 16 lines of 64 characters did not occupy 16 Kilobytes - the base model only had 4 Kilobytes.