Anyone Remember the TRS-80 Model 100 / Tandy 102 Computers?
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Here was my first computer. Never went for the VIC 20 or 64. Replaced the PET with a Atari 1024ST with a 300 baud modem. Life was never the same
They had the Tandy with the cassette tape drive at school but my first computer was a HP 71b purchased for school . First home computer was a Compaq purchased in 1995 now the darn things are all over the house .
I know what you mean by all over the house. We are a Family of 4 (me, wife, 2 daughters) and we have
1 Desktop
1 Windows Home Server
4 Laptops
1 IPAD
1 Galaxy TAB 3 Tablet
And all our smart phones are probably more powerful than our home computers were 10 years ago.
1 Desktop
1 Windows Home Server
4 Laptops
1 IPAD
1 Galaxy TAB 3 Tablet
And all our smart phones are probably more powerful than our home computers were 10 years ago.
Sorry to hog so much of the conversation. . .
It occurred to me this morning that we may see nostalgia for this era of computing only increase over the next decade. My suspicion is that as we seem to be switching over to touchscreen- and voice-based computing, a part of us is going to look back fondly on a more-tactile era.
Bob
It occurred to me this morning that we may see nostalgia for this era of computing only increase over the next decade. My suspicion is that as we seem to be switching over to touchscreen- and voice-based computing, a part of us is going to look back fondly on a more-tactile era.
Bob
Oddly enough I just watched a Youtube clip on kid's reactions to old computers. They had an Apple 2e. I drooled over Radio Shack catalogs at the TRS computers, but my first was a C64. Beat the heck out of my buddies Vic20! I still have it and the floppy drive in the original boxes.
Yeah: I saw that clip going around on Facebook yesterday. Kids were completely uninterested in a machine whose only on-screen color was green and wasn't able to access the Web. (Kids today. . . )
Re: The Radio Shack Catalog. . . It's easy to forget that in the period of, say, 1976-1986, Radio Shack was the nation's #1 personal-computer seller. They built that reputation with the TRS-80 series of desktop machines and the hugely successful Model 100/Tandy 102. (In 1983, the CEO of Radio Shack left the company to become the second-in-command at Microsoft. Can you imagine that happening now?) The situation changed dramatically once the multitude of systems/standards that were on the market in the mid-1980s sorted themselves out, with the MS-DOS-driven PCs becoming the clear winner. Tandy/Radio Shack stumbled by marketing machines that were "sort of" MS-DOS compatible but had Tandy-specific "features" -- which ended up being more like quirks. . . if not flaws. The company possibly erred too in expanding too much at this point; you may remember that they once had standalone computer-only stores in many major cities. But once the PC clones came on the market, suddenly there was no reason whatsoever to buy your computer from Radio Shack. It was cooler to get a Dell or a Gateway, in its cow-spotted box. And then the big-box electronic stores -- Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA -- came in the 1990s and it was pretty much game-over for Tandy/Radio Shack. (It was only last year that the company began to suggest that they were turning things around.)
But I feel the same kind of nostalgia when I think back to the glossy, full-color catalogs the Tinder Box was publishing in the late-1970s/early-1980s, with pipes and accessories easily filling 3/4 of the pages.
Bob
Re: The Radio Shack Catalog. . . It's easy to forget that in the period of, say, 1976-1986, Radio Shack was the nation's #1 personal-computer seller. They built that reputation with the TRS-80 series of desktop machines and the hugely successful Model 100/Tandy 102. (In 1983, the CEO of Radio Shack left the company to become the second-in-command at Microsoft. Can you imagine that happening now?) The situation changed dramatically once the multitude of systems/standards that were on the market in the mid-1980s sorted themselves out, with the MS-DOS-driven PCs becoming the clear winner. Tandy/Radio Shack stumbled by marketing machines that were "sort of" MS-DOS compatible but had Tandy-specific "features" -- which ended up being more like quirks. . . if not flaws. The company possibly erred too in expanding too much at this point; you may remember that they once had standalone computer-only stores in many major cities. But once the PC clones came on the market, suddenly there was no reason whatsoever to buy your computer from Radio Shack. It was cooler to get a Dell or a Gateway, in its cow-spotted box. And then the big-box electronic stores -- Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA -- came in the 1990s and it was pretty much game-over for Tandy/Radio Shack. (It was only last year that the company began to suggest that they were turning things around.)
But I feel the same kind of nostalgia when I think back to the glossy, full-color catalogs the Tinder Box was publishing in the late-1970s/early-1980s, with pipes and accessories easily filling 3/4 of the pages.
Bob
Hunter:
If you want to drool over Radio Shack catalogs again, you should check out this online archive of every Radio Shack catalog:
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html
Here's how the Model 100 was advertised in the 1985 catalog:
I will say this: Even if we see pipe tobacco quadruple in price down the road, for computer/tech fans that increase will be offset by the huge drops we can expect to continue seeing in that category. $120 for 8K of RAM. . .
Bob
If you want to drool over Radio Shack catalogs again, you should check out this online archive of every Radio Shack catalog:
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalog_directory.html
Here's how the Model 100 was advertised in the 1985 catalog:
I will say this: Even if we see pipe tobacco quadruple in price down the road, for computer/tech fans that increase will be offset by the huge drops we can expect to continue seeing in that category. $120 for 8K of RAM. . .
Bob
I want the acoustic coupler so I can fire up the MOJO wire they do make a USB handset don't they . :crazy: http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/electronics/detail-page/undeskplugged.jpg
Just think....20 years from now people will reminisce about the olde iPad and when you had to actually touch a computer to operate it, or when a hot machine only had one terabyte of memory. Twenty years from now I believe that "computers" will be integral to our bodies, you will have several teraflops or so of implants scattered throughout your body and several billion nanobots constantly repairing your cell structure. You will send and receive data/messages wirelessly from your own body! By then, a Commodore 64 will look like a Victrola.
I just had to mention that all this reminiscing led me to pick up a replacement Model 100 on eBay this week!
Now the trick will be if I can actually figure out a way to get text files from the M100 to my iMac. The last time I tried such a transfer, I was on a pre-WindowsXP machine. . . the kind that actually had serial ports. The theory is that I'll likely be able to communicate between them by using a USB-to-serial adapter from the iMac to a null modem plugged into an RS232 cable going into the M100. We'll see. Think it's going to be a lot of trial and error, since the Internet isn't much help with this particular arrangement. And today's Macs bear little relationship to the Apple IIe's that were around when everybody was writing all their tips and programs for the M100.
There's a guy who makes a device that plugs into the M100 and allows it to write to SD cards that can be popped straight into any modern computer. But the guy is charging $200 each. I'm sure it's worth it, given time and parts. But while I can justify a $50 M100 for nostalgia's sake, I have a harder time justifying $200 for file transfer when I've got an iPad Air staring at me. To go "there," I'd have to move from nostalgia to outrageous obsession.
Not that such a move is out of the question (as my posting in this thread might suggest!).
Bob
Now the trick will be if I can actually figure out a way to get text files from the M100 to my iMac. The last time I tried such a transfer, I was on a pre-WindowsXP machine. . . the kind that actually had serial ports. The theory is that I'll likely be able to communicate between them by using a USB-to-serial adapter from the iMac to a null modem plugged into an RS232 cable going into the M100. We'll see. Think it's going to be a lot of trial and error, since the Internet isn't much help with this particular arrangement. And today's Macs bear little relationship to the Apple IIe's that were around when everybody was writing all their tips and programs for the M100.
There's a guy who makes a device that plugs into the M100 and allows it to write to SD cards that can be popped straight into any modern computer. But the guy is charging $200 each. I'm sure it's worth it, given time and parts. But while I can justify a $50 M100 for nostalgia's sake, I have a harder time justifying $200 for file transfer when I've got an iPad Air staring at me. To go "there," I'd have to move from nostalgia to outrageous obsession.
Not that such a move is out of the question (as my posting in this thread might suggest!).
Bob
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