Ahhh, the good old days...
'Trash-80' escapes the dustbin of history with new TRS-80 emulator
If you get misty-eyed over the expression 20 IF N=1 GOTO 10 (or reach for the pen to correct me), there's another open source TRS-80 BASIC emulator available. This one reproduces the Sharp 80, a TRS-80 Model III 8-bit machine, and its author, Matthew Hamilton, has put in a lot of work to give the world the glory of white-on- …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 12:07 GMT JeffyPoooh
ASAC offered "Ahhh, the good old days..."
ASAC offered, "Ahhh, the good old days..."
No.
One of the primary reasons that people bought these systems (e.g. the TRS-80 Model III, along with a nice Daisy Wheel printer) was to do word processing for home use (e.g. university courses). In the very very early 1980s, there was virtually no other option.
One of the primary word processing applications for this purpose was 'Scrips[h]it'; pretty much the default choice as there were few other options. This application had a subtle bug, wherein if the user accidentally left the '@' key down for longer than an undefined number of milliseconds, then the cursor would come to life and inexorably move backwards turning the existing prose into ASCII gibberish. The worst case was when the user had their head down transcribing a page of notes, only to look up after a minute or two to find several pages of existing work had been auto-converted to ASCII gibberish.
The only work around was to constantly save the file. Over and over and over again. Onto the 5.25-inch floppy disks, which required a good fair fraction of a minute each time.
So, no. Not the "good old days". Just no.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 14:58 GMT Gene Cash
Re: History
Yup. Got my Trash-80 on xmas '79 - 37 years ago.
I remember trying to persuade my mainframe-programming mom to get the $250 upgrade from 4K to 16K
I also remember being banned from the school's Model III because I disputed Creationism. I hope my "science" "teacher" Michael Kratzer is burning in hell.
Edit: I also zapped the motherboard in mine, reaching around (heh) the back to press reset. The reset button was next to the expansion edge connector which was totally unbuffered and unprotected. A nice charge of static and your machine was done for. Fortunately, it was still in warranty, and I remember the upset Radio Shack folks.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 09:01 GMT Moog42
I'm (sadly) quite excited about this. First computer I ever used at school, and first bit of programming I ever did (built a Yahtzee game - so proud!)
May have to buy a new Windows machine for home use 'special research project' (to prevent Wife 1.0 downgrading Husband 1.0 to beta status).
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 12:12 GMT JeffyPoooh
My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
Mr Wheat suggested: "I had one of these machines back in the 70's..."
The TRS-80 Model III was introduced in the middle of 1980. So unless you had a prototype, it would have been the very-very early 1980s. Not 70's...
We had one as well. IIRC, bought shortly after introduction when it went on 'Sale' (slight discount) for the first time.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 20:39 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
"The TRS-80 Model III was introduced in the middle of 1980. So unless you had a prototype, it would have been the very-very early 1980s. Not 70's..."
He might have had the Model I any time after 1977. There wasn't that much difference between a Model I and a bare bones Model II. The main thing was the all in one case/screen/keyboard and inboard expansion/FDD bays instead of the external expansion unit.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 21:51 GMT Tannin
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
Model II had an expansion port in it's own large box. Model III was all-in-one.
In top-of-the-line form, the Model II allowed a massive 64k of RAM, half of it in that expandion box, which was too big to pick up in one hand. The expansion port wiring and/or connector was horribly unreliable, so the machine would just reset randomly from time to time. When the only way to get a program into the computer was to type it in with two fingers, this was a hardship.
We always had a lot of trouble with cassette storage (possibly, having spent quite a few thousand on the computer and the big 64k expansion, we should have spent a few hundred on a better tape machine!) and never did get one of those very expensive newfangled floppy drive things.
Yes, this was the 1970s. Like Mr Wheat, I am often perfectly well aware of what decade it is. Sometimes I even remember what day it is.
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Thursday 30th March 2017 02:04 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
The Model II was an expensive ($3.5k) business machine with 8-inch floppy drive BUILT IN. Still Z80, but several times the cost of a Model I, III or 4, all of which were affordable ($1k +/-) and more suitable for home use.
So if someone recalls having a Model II *at home*, then either they were extraordinarily keen at the time, or (more likely) their recollection is a bit off.
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Thursday 30th March 2017 09:38 GMT Tannin
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
It cost a lot more than 3.5k, and that was second-hand. A mate and I went halves in it. (Why? I have no idea. We were both in our late teens, earning adult wages with overtime, no mortgage, no kids, not gamblers or big drinkers, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.)
But after currency conversion and taxes, yep, $US 3.5k would be about right. But no built-in disc drive. That I guarantee. We dreamed about a disc drive.
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Sunday 2nd April 2017 08:32 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
Tannin confirmed "...no built-in disc drive. That I guarantee."
The Model II came with a BUILT IN 8-inch floppy drive.
Your claim to have owned a Model II appears to be a muddled memory. Or you paid far too much for part of a Model II with a gaping hole to the right of the screen. The former is more likely than the latter.
Here's a webpage with a picture of the Model II.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_II
Please refer to that, and consider the possibility that your recollection that you owned a Model II without a floppy drive is perhaps a bit off.
Was it a Model I Level II ?
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Thursday 30th March 2017 02:32 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: My recollection and the Internet says: July 1980
JB stated "There wasn't that much difference between a Model I and a bare bones Model II."
When you wrote "Model II" I suspect you mean Model III. If so, then your comparison is not unreasonable.
Tannin stated "Model II had an expansion port in it's own large box. ... a lot of trouble with cassette storage....never did get one of those very expensive newfangled floppy drive things. Yes, this was the 1970s."
When you wrote "Model II" I suspect you mean Model I. Your description (quoted) doesn't match the Model II.
The Model II was a big (ugly) business machine with 8-inch floppy. They were (essentially) never for home users.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_II
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 12:53 GMT Tom Kelsall
Re: Z-80
Hehehe - I went the other way around; 6502 (Commodore PET 3032 and BBC Micro Model B) to Z-80 (TRS-80 Model II). The 6502 (and 6510) were significantly simpler instruction sets and register sets than the Z-80 and therefore significantly more work to program for. The Z-80 was a positive JOY to work with after the 6502 although I will always be very nostalgic about the earlier chip.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 12:27 GMT JeffyPoooh
Re: "one line" games?
The "One-Liners" were typically written in BASIC, concatenating the expressions up to the character limit per line of about 244 [?] characters. My recollection is that this was more popular on the TRS-80 Color Computer, and the results published in The Rainbow magazine under the heading "Men [sexist] of Few Words" or the 'One-Liners" heading.
I personally wrote an Adventure Game *ENGINE* in one line of BASIC, followed by as many additional lines of DATA statements as required for each "You've entered a dungeon. To your left is a window, and on the floor is a trap door." as you like. Worked perfectly.
I also wrote a One-Liner "video game", which was a spinning circle (with a gap) and a joystick controlled line segment. Using the joystick, get the line into the spinning circle through the gap without touching. Not very exciting, except as a demo.
My recollection includes that there was an exotic PEEK/POKE technique to pack in a few extra characters, several more than could be entered by hand. This observation then led me to the technique of packing in ^h (backspace) characters, wherein placeholder characters could be replaced with backspaces. Thus one could control what the code looked like when listed, as opposed to the actual code hidden under the backspaces. It was thus possible to write a BASIC program that looked like 10 PRINT "No!" when listed, but output "Yes!" when run. Anything became possible with this trick.
Cheers.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 16:23 GMT agurney
Re: "one line" games?
"The "One-Liners" were typically written in BASIC, concatenating the expressions up to the character limit per line of about 244 [?] "
Try that on a Beeb and you'd encouter a 'musical' buffer overrun
10 G.20:G.20:G.20.... until the line's full.
the numbers didn't matter, but when you hit Return the line expanded thus:
10 GOTO 20:GOTO 20... and overran into the area allocated for sound!
I've a TRS80 sitting beside the daisy wheel printer and a handful of BBC Micros .. I doubt I'll ever power them on again, but can't bear to throw them out.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 20:47 GMT John Brown (no body)
Re: "one line" games?
"Try that on a Beeb and you'd encouter a 'musical' buffer overrun
10 G.20:G.20:G.20.... until the line's full.
the numbers didn't matter, but when you hit Return the line expanded thus:
10 GOTO 20:GOTO 20... and overran into the area allocated for sound!"
LOL, yes, but the TRS-80 was the opposite. Enter as much as you can, numbering your line as 0 (zero) because GOTO on its own would GOTO 0, saving a byte or two per GOTO, but then you press ENTER and EDIT 0. At the point you pressed ENTER, the line interpreter tokenised the BASIC commands in single byte tokens, allowing you to add more instructions to the now "shorter" line.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 11:51 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: Dragon 32
"6809 cpu IIRC"
You do, indeed, RC. In a sad, wistful sort of way, I sometimes miss my CoCo. Megabug FTW!(1)
(1) One of many contemporaneous PacMan "clones", way better than the Atari 2600 version. Featured a "synthesised" Japanese-sounding voice that screamed "Weeeeeee Gotcha!" when the aforementioned bugs caught the player, and a moving magnifier around you so it could have huge maps. And incidental music playing "La Cucaracha" (?sp) in between games.
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Thursday 30th March 2017 12:45 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: Dragon 32
OS-9 FTW, man. The C compiler for OS-9 was my first experience of C. I even patched the module loader to not check the CRC-24 when loading modules from files, because for one phase of the C compiler, it took so long that the stop-motor timer for the floppy drive expired.
And I have memories of having a problem with DP Johnson's SDisk, and phoning the man himself for tech support, and getting an updated copy of the module in the mail.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 11:54 GMT Steve the Cynic
Re: 20 IF N=1 GOTO 10
"Missing 'THEN'?"
Many BASIC dialects (including the ones in the TRS-80 machines of all stripes) allowed IF ... GOTO without the "THEN".
Weirdly, the "standard" BASIC in the TRS-80 Color Computer didn't allow "LET". At the same time, the technical oddities of the Sinclair ZX-80 and -81 program entry system meant that "LET" was mandatory. That was confusing.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 12:46 GMT Kubla Cant
LET
The latest manifestation of
EctoplasmECMA Script has introduced a "let" keyword as a fix for the tragically ill-conceived "var". To anyone with experience of early BASIC this is an unfortunate choice, as it indicates variable definition, not assignment. Using "let" more than once on the same variable causes an error. You'd think ECMA could have found a keyword with less history.
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Wednesday 29th March 2017 15:27 GMT Anonymous Coward
4 virtual discs?!
kids these days! four whole virtual discs on their TRS80? buncha coddled pansies! TWO 5 1/4 disc bays if you're Posh and Privileged, and only one and a lotta disc swapping is where ya learn CHARACTER, dammit!
now get offa mah lawn! bet you'll be wanting one of them fancy cassette players emulated thru USB next!
mine's the one with CLOAD printed on the label...
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Thursday 30th March 2017 09:38 GMT Neil 44
Our first home computer too...
TRS80 Model 1 with an expansion box and 2x 5.25 floppy disks... Bought it second hand in about 1980...
Added a Disk Doubler, purchased from the US to go from 80kB to 160kB per disk! (though you never left the SuperUtility+ disk far away in case you had to mend a disk! Became very adept at mending errors...)
Even built and added a serial board to talk to Compu$erve through an acoustic coupler later! (which was actually the means of getting stuff OFF the system later!)
I remember putting all the (48k!) RAM into the main box which greatly improved the reliability so it wasn't sending data and address signals over the interconnect cable... Also seem to remember putting a Z80A into it and increasing the clock speed (double?)
I was always impressed that it WAS modifiable and mendable! Mainly plug-in for anything significant and regular 74LSxx (might not have been LS!) for everything else.
Scripsit: yes, we used that (PhD thesis) : disassembled it, altered it (print simple graphics / greek letters with an IDS Microprism dot matrix printer and various other improvements). Later connected it to a daisywheel to print the real thing out multiple times.
Also doodled up a BASIC program (OK, it ran with compiled BASIC...) that analysed signal sequences (really analysis of strings of letters!) for DNA that provided the data for a published scientific paper that has become somewhat seminal: it has over 700 citations! Embarrassed to show the "back of fag packet" design when someone from New York wanted a copy - had to tart it up a bit and add some comments :O
Had it running until the 90s when finally we finally got an IBM-style PC to run DOS and WordPerfect...
Think its all still up in the loft...
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be :)
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Thursday 30th March 2017 14:04 GMT Bushwood Smithie
Model I / Level I. Serial number 98.
Order September 1977, delivered October 1977. The only documentation that came with it was a photocopy of a marked up proof for a reference card.
My recollection was that Tandy only expected to sell a few hundred of them. Ended up selling 500,000+ of the Model I's alone.
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Friday 31st March 2017 10:53 GMT Scoured Frisbee
While growing up my father had a model 1 with expansion, ironically he preferred the tape drive to floppies. I do remember buying cassette loading games at the flea market. Eventually my aunt sold it at a church tag sale - this was after 2000 but I think my father is still upset at her for not returning it.
He also had two model 100s (one and a spare) for work, so when he was out of town we could use the second. Eventually they came to me; one broke in the mid-noughties and I tossed it, along with the printer and tape drive and... but I kept the second. Around 2014 I started using it to "randomly"* generate the kids' lunch items. It is still going fine for purpose: boots up at least once per school day, runs the program automatically, shuts down after a minute. I've only replaced the batteries once since then!
*Worst. Randomizer. Ever. I made it a bit better by decoupling the loading of sweets and salty, but it still gives unfortunate runs of selections. Nonetheless because it is a computer the kids quit complaining, which I suppose was the real point after all. ;)