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

10 PRINT "FIRST POST"

[Anonymous Coward]

20 GOTO 10

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.

Re:One of the "1977 Trinity"

[itsdapead]

So what did Apple do right (haters need not comment here)? Or What did Commodore and Radio Shack do wrong?

Yes, it's really more of a rhetorical question.

As well as the expandability mentioned by others, Apple had far better graphics than the TRS-80 (huge blocky 2x3 character-based things for pseudo-pixel-based graphics) or the PET (no pixel-based graphics, just the distant ancestors of emoji...) ISTR they also got a boost from being the original platform for Visicalc the first successful spreadsheet (I'm sure it had antecedents) and probably the first truly "new" application of the microcomputer age.

However, Apple may have been the market leader (at least in the US), but Commodore, Radio Shack, the numerous CP/M-based small business systems and many others had a sustained run of success - and Apple can't claim responsibility for their demise.

Commodore did better in Europe/UK (where Apple charged silly prices), SInclair, Acorn, Commodore and Amstrad dominated in the UK. There was a bit of a shake-up in the early 80s which killed off most of the also-rans, but the big 3 got though that. Then the IBM PC Clones arrived at home/small business/hobbyist prices (I don't think IBM alone would have got that far - remember the PCJr?) and squashed everything... and would probably have squashed Apple if that young lady hadn't burst into the auditorium and thrown her hammer at the screen.

The Mac, or maybe even just that ad, is probably the only reason we're not saying "Anybody remember Apple? What happened to them?" today is the Mac, and maybe even more specifically that famous 1984 advert.