Transcription
Podcast. My name is Martin Wol, and I'm the official podcast representative of Golem.de. This podcast is the English original version of a talk with Richard Eser about his TRS-80. We made a translated version with a machine learning tool. This German version is available on the same platforms as this podcast and will be linked in the show notes as well. My guest, Richard Eser, agreed to this experimental translation.
Hello and welcome to another episode. Yeah, which is very strange for me to say this in English, and I still haven't come to terms with that. There are two episodes that are in English right now. There's one about a Soviet computer with Eugene and the one we are recording right now. Richard Eser, thank you for coming here.
The point is, Richard, just so you know, because you obviously don't speak German, you didn't listen to this podcast, but I always start the podcast by saying, "Yeah, my name is that and that, and I'm the podcast director of Golem." I should be an English translation for that, but I'm not sure if this is going to be a standard that we are doing English podcasts. So, I'll give this to Future Martin to take care of.
Richard, thank you for coming to my office and to talk about the TRS-80. I met you at VCF, which is the Vintage Computer Festival Berlin, yes, a couple of weeks ago. I was drawn to your desk when I saw this gray computer with something that looked like a TV as a monitor. I, of course, knew it was a TRS-80, but as is usually the case in Europe, I don't know much about it.
So, where did you see your first TRS-80, and what's the story behind it? My first TRS-80 actually is the bigger one that was there. I had three TRS-80s there: there was the Model 1, the Model 3, and then the Model 100 that I have. I also have another one that would be the Coco 2, or the Color Computer 2, that is also labeled as a TRS-80, but that one actually has a problem, so I did not bring it.
The TRS-80 that you're describing is the TRS-80 Model 1, and its monitor is a black-and-white TV. Is this computer actually the one that you got back then, or did you have one? So, how did you start computing? Oh, I started computing with an actual computer, which would be a Commodore 64. That would be my first actual computer. I've used Apple II OS in the past, but that was for the classroom.
I've used consoles, or I should say I've played on video game consoles, the Atari 2600. So, I'm dating myself. You do, but I played on the Atari 2600 as well, and it was not in the '70s, that's what I can say. So, we're talking, I think, about the '80s.
One thing I have to say: you're from the US. I mean, we have to have this. There is a difference. You started computing in the '80s in the US, but where did it take you from there? A lot of places in the United States. First, it was computing in California, then I moved to New Mexico, a Southwestern state. While I was there in New Mexico, I lived there for about 20 years and graduated with a computer science degree. Then I moved up to Seattle and worked with multiple companies all the way through.
Back in New Mexico, I actually worked at Intel as a computer technician and network guy. Then in Seattle, I worked for backup administration with Amazon, and then I worked as Azure support, doing cloud computing for Microsoft directly. Well, in the sense, I shouldn't say directly, as a contractor. Another company contracted my services to Microsoft. I still was on Microsoft territory, doing Microsoft's work directly.
It says in your LinkedIn, which I put in the show notes, of course, "a seasoned Linux administrator with strong DevOps automation with Ansible and Python." I understand the words "with" and "with." Okay, I know what Linux is, and I know what an administrator does, but DevOps and, okay, Python—I know what Python is; it's a snake, of course.
Ansible is a configuration tool or configuration language, and DevOps is development operations. The idea is to have the ability to automate deploying computers or changing computers. So, you have a company that has multiple, say, 500 servers doing your work, but you want to change that to something else. Instead of doing each and every server to a specific point, you have programs to do that.
So, you have Ansible, which reaches out to all those computers and changes the configuration programmatically, where you actually just tell it to do its thing, and it does it. I certainly heard that before, but I never dared to ask what it is. Thank you for telling me.
And also, at the moment, you're looking for work as well? Yeah, I am. So, C is in professional. While I would say that I can understand some Deutsch, it's like, yeah, I would not...
So, learning more, which is already 50... No, it's not 50% of the way there. I think for you speaking people, that is a big hurdle to take. So, there's a reason why we do this podcast in English from now on. Did you start collecting when you were still in the US?
Okay, yeah, that's one of the more expensive parts about moving to the... I would reckon that would be not so cheap. So, you brought the TRS-80. It's a real... It's a US American. It is a US. I was running a transformer while I was at the Berlin Festival. I was using a large 2000-watt transformer, and I was powering everything on. Luckily, those computers were able to handle the 50 Hz that normally happens in Europe.
That's a thing that we don't... I think sometimes we don't really appreciate the stuff we have right now. I never have to care about anything of that anymore at all. If I go to the US, I just take my usual with me, and I have a plug that adapts. Most plugs these days have that ability to switch from the high voltage to the low voltage automatically.
So, even the smallest plug for your phone, the adapter, is already set for that, and all you have to do is just change the way that it's plugged in. So, let's get back to the '80s. Sure, you had a C64, which I always thought was not that common in the US, but it was very common. It was one of the big ones. It was considered, if not the biggest, one of the biggest in the '80s.
The Atari had the 400 and 800, and that was big, but it was starting to fall away a little bit. Then Commodore opened up cheap computers, and the C64 just pretty much threw that door open. Apples were too big, were too expensive to be completely a game machine or a machine that you would give your kid, but a Commodore was in that nice price point where you could do that.
As you're saying that, I remember that. That's right. There was a commercial with William Shatner of Star Trek fame who praised the VIC-20 as the wonder computer of the '80s. I guess that was when it first came out in 1980. It was considered that way because it was one of the first computers with actual graphics—this colored graphics—cheap.
But we'll go back three years. That is 1977. There is the so-called 1977 Trinity, which is comprised of the Apple II, the TRS-80, and the Commodore PET.
Okay, so if you could choose which one would you... If right now, if I choose? I like the fact that the Apple had the high graphics. You would have to put a lot more effort for the PET. The PET actually, I think, didn't have any type of graphics outside of the alphanumeric, and the TRS-80 had very blocky graphics, and also it was only two colors, while the Apple had 16 or six.
So, it was more expensive, but it also did more. It did. This Trinity, in a way, kick-started the home computer revolution because these three were the first ones that came assembled and were ready to purchase in, yes, like a shop, a normal store. I mean, of course, you had to fiddle with any type of selections. You did not have to work with ROM chips or any type. You didn't have to install, and you did not have to make them. You did not have to actually solder them up, which the other ones you did if you wanted to save money, or you had to pay extra to have someone else do it for you.
So, the other two, we can cover the PET, which are like... If I go by looks, I would say the PET, but on the other hand, the TRS-80 has a very distinct look. I would say it's special. So, but we'll stick with the TRS-80.
Sure, do you know the backstory? I mean, TRS stands for Tandy Radio Shack, which is beforehand. I know that Tandy Company got into Radio Shack first. So, they bought the electronics company Tandy—sorry, Radio Shack—and worked with the distribution of electronics.
Then, as technology advanced into the '70s, they saw an opportunity to put a lot of those off-the-shelf components into a computer because computers at the time of 1970, 1975, when they probably started to actually look into it, they probably saw that, yeah, we could probably do this.
Since they were already a company with resources, they could do it relatively cheaply, and that's what the big push for the TRS-80 Model 1 was. It was cheap. It was far cheaper. I think it was like half the cost of a... Welcome to the numbers. I have them here. No, welcome to the... Oh, the juicy numbers. Welcome to them.
But okay, Radio Shack is a name that, even for someone who's not fluent in English or whatever, it's a strange name. I mean, what even is a Radio Shack? It turns out a Radio Shack is where the radio is at. The ham radio guys, mostly guys, I presume, in the early years of radio, like in the '20s or whatever, there was a growing scene of amateur radio people, and they were catered to by this company, which called itself after what they said, where the radio station is, which is the Radio Shack.
So, everybody knew, okay, this is where I can get my electronics fixed, whatever it is. And then, as you said, Tandy bought them, and Tandy was a leather tanning company. It is a bit strange to have this, because I'm sure you know that there's another leather company with their hands in microelectronics, which is Kiko.
Is that normal in the US that leather companies start doubling in microelectronics? I honestly don't know, but after thinking about it, that is kind of interesting that you would have two leather companies get into electronics about the same time and then produce computers.
It is strange, and neither of their computers has a leather finish. Well, that's a miss. That is kind of... I mean, it could have been so nice. I mean, I think they wanted to keep the prices down, so I think having an extra $100 in the leather... There might have also been heat issues. I don't know.
Yeah, we'll never find out, but what we can find out is the story behind the TRS-80. There is a funny story about the way they introduced it to the higher-ups. Do you know about this?
Not entirely, no. There is... I did some research before this podcast, and I found this story about how one of the sales... No, not the sales guys. What's the opposite? You have like a researcher. No, if you have such a big electronics chain, they have a person that looks into stuff.
That's the buyer. Okay, so it's that easy. There's one of those buyers, and he's meeting with other people, and then they go, "Yeah, wouldn't that be nice to have a computer kit?" Because they saw that this is a thing.
In the Homebrew Computer Club, which was a thing then, there was one of those guys called Steve Linger, who obviously was very talented in developing ideas for turning this into a real product. Because there's one thing to say, "Okay, we are like an electronics chain, and we can do all that. We have the parts," but you have to have the knowledge to put this together.
He said, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a computer that isn't a kit, that is all put together already?" That was the trend in the late '70s. They did it with not a lot of money. There is one number, and it is $150,000 for the development of the whole computer, which is astonishingly low.
But yeah, I remember stories of millions being sent to Atari for its 2600. So much so that they actually had to get investment from Time Warner for the Atari 2600 because they needed that much research to see that the TRS-80... I knew it felt like the TRS-80 came across as something cobbled together.
Oddly enough, similar to the original IBMs, actually, because those were very much just thrown together and then had a BIOS. But that's essentially what happened here. I could see that they had a very simple... They had a Z80 memory in this case, I think four kilobytes total for the first, a very basic ROM, and they could fit and then just put it into a plastic case.
They had the means of production, which Atari probably didn't have. I mean, they had probably all the components that they needed already on shelves, which Radio Shack probably had, which brings us to the monitor, which is a good point.
How they used already existing technology that they had to put this computer together, because the monitor was just a TV without the tuner. I actually opened up the one that I had. I recently picked up the power supply to it. So, at that festival or at that meetup, it was really the first time I turned it on and left it on for any length of time.
I did open it up and dust out the key. That TV and looked at it to make sure that the capacitors didn't have any issues or anything like that. It was just... But that was the first time I was like, and it handled itself very well.
But I could see where a tuner would be because they had the cutouts for the dials in the back. In those times, you had full dials to turn on, and so you had the volume control, and you had the dial, and then maybe you used UHF and so forth, and you would have to kind of click it to the right one.
If you know what to look for, you'll see it because I will link a picture of one in the show notes, of course. You'll see that the actual screen is not centered, which is very unusual for a computer screen because there's no reason to not make it centered.
But if it's a TV, which has obviously a speaker on the right or the left side—in this case, on the right side—then it's not centered. So, yeah, we put that in the show notes. Even in the '70s, actually, black-and-white TVs were a commodity, and they were very cheap because the electronics were simple.
The color TVs were, of course, but you could, with a simple black-and-white screen, make the computer, and this is essentially what they did. So, we're still in the '70s, and the construction... No, the project TRS-80 is underway.
It was all green-lit, and they put it all together, and they had a... Do you know the story about the first presentation to the higher-ups? It must have been interesting.
It is. They showed it to Charles David Tandy, one of the Tandy's, and that was, yeah, as the name suggests, it's like one of the really the bosses of the corporation. They showed it with a tax accounting program because it should have some use. I mean, yeah, they wouldn't show a game to this guy, but you know, everybody's got to do their taxes.
So, one of the points, of course, is you have to enter your salary, which he did, which led the program to crash because the salary was over $150,000. It was a 16-bit integer, and they asked him, "Okay, it's okay to earn that much money, but for the computer, it would be good if you could only have $32,000 a year of income."
So, which he agreed not to have that less income, but he agreed to type it in, and then it worked, and yeah, they got it out the door. I don't know where this anecdote is from. I'll try to put a link in the description. I'm not sure if it's accurate, but it's very nice.
I mean, yeah, it sounds interesting. Yeah, it does because they were estimating how many computers will they sell. I mean, there was no precedent to that.
In the 1970s, especially if it was '77, yeah, there's no precedent because those three in the original triumvirate—that was it. Because I think Atari's computers came out in 1979, so these three were it. These were the first three.
So, they thought... I mean, the guys who... French was one. One was called Mr. French. He was from Radio Shack, and the Ninja was the one who came from the Homebrew Computer Club, and they were very optimistic. They said, "We could do 50,000," but the executives thought, "Nah, come on, 3,000." That is what we settled on.
Okay, then one of them told them, "Okay, so let's do 3,500 because that is the amount of stores we have." So, even if they're not sold, the store can use them for accounting, which would be good, wouldn't it be? So, they said, "Okay, we'll do that."
Now, what happened was that 15,000 people in the first days after the announcement called Radio Shack to purchase a TRS-80. The whole telephone line went blacked out. I could see that could be funny, and it's definitely... In the first one and a half months, they sold over 10,000 and over 200,000 during the product's lifetime, which is quite a lot for that time.
I think for the 1970s, because that's actually Apple II numbers in that realm. If you're selling hundreds of thousands, that's what the Apple II... No, that's the part where I got to go with the numbers now. The TRS-80, at first, the price for a kit—they obviously had a kit, but it wasn't expected that many people would buy it—was $399, which is $2,000 today.
The normal one with the monitor and the tape recorder, which is, of course, necessary to get data in and out of this thing, was $599, which is $3,116.59 in today's money. This would have amounted to over 7,000,000 Deutschmarks in Germany.
So, you can immediately see why it took so long for Germany to catch up with computers. The exchange rate for the US currency for the dollar was so high that the prices were up in the sky.
I'll give you another example because I love it. The Apple II, which was the most expensive of... Yeah, it's the premium. That was, in dollars, $1,298 at launch, which amounts to over $6,700 today.
And it amounted to a staggering 15,600 Deutschmarks. Now, a VW Cabrio, or Beetle as you might call it, in 1977 in the Cabrio version, which is the better one with a cigarette lighter as a standard, would have cost you 13,25 Deutschmarks.
There you go. That's an Apple computer for you in 1977. So, to just put us into perspective, why didn't the Germans have computers when the US people had them in the end of the '70s and the beginning of the '80s?
It is really... The currency was difficult to get a computer for that sum of money. Even if you say it's complicated in the US because there was no precedent and people didn't know what to expect, imagine the situation in Europe. It was even worse.
So, I already mentioned that it sold very well. Are there other reasons that come to mind why it would have been successful? Radio Shack itself, they owned the distribution. They owned Radio Shack, so they could send them to those shops, and the shops could buy them.
Also, because Radio Shack had all the electronics and was a big player in electronics, the people that would gravitate who would want to buy a computer were already going to these shops. So, finding a computer that costs half as much or more than half than, say, an Apple II would probably go for that, especially if they were thinking of business-related items.
I mean, the reason why I picked the Apple II is because of the graphics. However, if I was after an accountant or doing job or work, then it becomes much harder to say whether you want it or not because they both blip, and the graphics that you do get are functional. They're just black and white, and you can also see...
The killer app, as Apple II would say, would be the QuickCalc. Yeah, was it SuperCalc? What was it? One of the C... Essentially, the spreadsheet, and the spreadsheet can also be put on the PET. It could be on the TRS-80 as well. You need to have some extra memory to it, but yeah, you could run that as well.
Putting in memory after the fact is also quite possible, and that's what you had, an adapter that could give you extra memory. So, instead of saying 4K, you could have 20K, and then you can do basic spreadsheets and ledgering and such.
There is also some technology I could have brought. I have a suite. I have an accounting software package. While it doesn't... While it's not leather-bound, it has the soft vinyl to it, and it's three that you can squeeze this vinyl stuff where there is inside.
Not quite leather-bound, but it's definitely trying to imitate things. Yeah, it's trying to imitate it. Three volumes. Okay, it has all the software that I want, and everything is... Is it on disk or is it on tape? I think it's on disk.
Okay, it definitely would come in later. I mean, so I could apply it to the TRS-80 Model 3 that I have, and that one still has the same tube as the Model 1. It's a TV, but it's just the tube.
We should get to the follow-up generations, but we need to do some of the specifications. You already mentioned it. The standard configuration was 4 kilobytes, which, if you hear it today, is absolutely meager, but memory was very expensive.
Yes, it was extremely expensive, and the prices were falling fast. So, like, I mean, three or four years later, that would have been... Three or four years later, you had the VIC-20, which was 16K, like four times for less.
Then even a year or two later, you would have the Commodore 64 with 64K active memory. This was astronomically expensive in '77. 4 kilobytes, which was respectable. You had, as mentioned, a cassette interface where you could store and load programs.
You had this monochrome monitor, which had 64 by 16 text mode. So, that is that. And you had a Z80. Z80, there is the American for you. It's called the Z80; however, it could be called the Z8 as well, but that's more of an English term.
But in America, it's usually called the Z8. I think the Z actually is a better way to say it, but that's beside the point. Okay, the point is 1.77 megahertz, which is not bad at all. And yeah, you have BASIC in ROM.
Yes, which is a big selling point, I think. Yeah, it was because a lot of even later companies had BASIC in a tape or a cassette. You mentioned the Kiko. Well, their computer, the Kiko Adam, you had to install the... You had to run the BASIC off of a tape.
So, I mean, all three of the Trinity had BASIC. I guess... Oh no, didn't Apple have to deliver it afterwards? There might have been a glitch, but it had similar BASIC in that it was Inger BASIC. Both the TRS-80 and the Apple II had a BASIC, which didn't have a whole lot.
It didn't have the floating point because that took a lot of space, so it dealt with integer math, like you said, the 16-bit integer math. So, you can only have values to 65,000. So, when it came to doing floating point, you usually needed 32 bits, or essentially double that, and you also needed the mechanisms and the routines to use actual floating point.
That took up much more space. So, when they did bring out new stuff or so, they upgraded the BASIC. Level 2, I think it was 12 kilobytes for it, but that had the ability to handle 32-bit floating point, which most of the BASICs in that 8-bit era had.
You can still work with 32-bit floating point, but these days you can go up to absurd floating point. But I'm digressing again. There's no context of today's, and you can't really compare any of that to today's computers.
That would have been... Yeah, so you could expand this by later buying an expansion interface, which looks very computery. It is like a box, gray-silver appeal. I think that was the big thing for them was to put it under the monitor, and it looks good.
It does have a floppy disk controller, an expansion port, a serial port. You could put RAM into that, up to 32K. You had signals. It says signals for a real-time clock. I don't know what you would need a real-time clock for.
There is actually a reason because of the whole Radio Shack tie-in with the electronics. They actually did a lot of home automation early. You talk about smart homes and figuring things out and timing everything. That was done with Radio Shack equipment then.
So, in the 1970s, it was very basic, and you didn't have any type of feedback. It was all just timers, essentially, but you could make a timer for your heaters, for lights, all of that back in the '80s. Imagine that you have a TRS-80, and you start home automation in the '80s. I mean, in like 1978, '79.
That would be, I mean, talking about cutting edge. Yeah, I mean, really, that is a whole different level of... And you can time it. You can sequence it. I actually have a couple of books on interfacing the TRS-80 to various tools.
There were also a lot of books on doing it with other computers, but TRS-80 really, because again, it has the Radio Shack angle or the Radio Shack source, so it was already geared for using those electronics with it.
Now, I won't say it was compatible because you had to actually do your own soldering, but there was more cross-pollination, if you can understand the term, where you're in the store, you have it, and then you have these components, and then you can find the books for these components to work with it.
So, while you just simply plug it in and go, you can find the resources necessary to do it. Anyway, as you're an American and as you no doubt have been in a Radio Shack store in your life...
Yeah, I have. Do you remember how it was when you first came into such a store? What's it feel like? Oh, interesting mix because the stories that I remember, the first half is for the consumer.
So, this is where you would have your remote, you would have your general-purpose items, your stereos, your various tools, and remote control cars. They were very big on remote control cars. That was the big thing when I remember.
But in the later part, or should I say in the back of the store, away from all the stereos and such, you had the raw electronics. So, you would have the chips, the resistors. You would have all of the base electronics that you wanted. You might have some kits, but this is where if you needed to get a part, you would get it from there.
So, Radio Shack was sort of this mix of, at least in the later years, a mix of the easy-to-get, straight, you just simply buy and go and take home to the electronics that you wanted. There was a little bit of a premium because it was all nice and packaged, and it had the brand name.
I mean, you could always go to a distributor or a non-Radio Shack branded electronic shop and then buy direct that way. You usually get better prices, but you won't get the brand name. Then you'll get some things that are sort of in the middle.
But Radio Shack, I remember, had the electronic toys, had the remote control cars. That was one of the big places where you can get half-decent electronics. You can get some very cheap stuff, or you can get some very expensive remote control cars.
There you also had stereo equipment and, of course, TVs. I mean, it's interesting because they seem to still then have catered to the ham radio crowd and all the people who just wanted to tinker with electronics at all, which is not how you would imagine a contemporary Media Markt or whatever we have now, which is quite different.
Even a cable run is like triple of what it should cost, and like a cable is already... A cable is already like advanced stuff. That's already considered something that is advanced, and you could... Yeah, a cable.
Yeah, you get a Hama cable for 10 euros or something like that. There you go, and that's already the advanced stuff. I'm not talking about soldering stations or components or anything. A cable is already like...
And it's been like that for quite a while. I remember that even in the 2000s, like the most advanced thing that you could ask for is a specialized printer cable or something. There's no... You know, you can't buy like, I don't know, like boards or stuff to solder something right there.
I can't imagine. I can't remember any of those. Go. Yeah, well, Media Markt had the CDs. You had the appliances. You had a lot of coffee makers. That's right. And you had the photos.
It felt more like a Sears or essentially a department store. It's a department store, maybe for electronics. Yeah, maybe my comparison is wrong because we had, of course, stores like that in Germany too. They were called Conrad and Reichelt.
And they were like... I would like to go back to... I would like to go to a Conrad if they're still around. I guess they're all closed right now. I think I read a news on Golem.de, which we should mention right here right now, that the last ones are closed too.
But I would like to have seen one. I would have liked to have seen one. Okay, yeah, I don't know. But Berlin did have at least one. I don't know. I'm still... I would like to find a good electronic store in Berlin. Hints about this and also future guests and topics to podcast@golem.de, please.
Now, back to the story of the TRS-80. So, it did start pretty well, and then it did continue to do well. So well, in fact, that there were successors. As you said, there was a... You said you have a Model 3, so that probably was a Model 2.
Okay, the Model 3 is essentially a Model 1 with the memory. So, it has 48 kilobytes instead of 4. It has the BASIC Level 2, so it had the floating point. It has a built-in monitor, which is still the same monitor as the Level 1.
It's the TV, but it's just the tube and some of the electronics to deconstruct. But it has two floppy disks, 5 and a quarter, or essentially the standard 5 and a quarter design. Now, the Model 2 had less memory. I think it was 32 kilobytes but had 8-inch drives.
Then there was the Model 4, which I think had refinements and also, I think, a high-definition graphics—something that was lacking with the other models. They had fairly simple... So, it was 128 by 48 pixels that you can get access to, while more common machines, especially when the '80s started to come around, had like 192 or 256 or 300.
So, the graphics needed to be improved, so that's where the Model 4 came in to be. There were also the color computers, which already had... Essentially, those were the home lines for more gameplay for the gamer that would essentially compete against the Commodore 64 and the Commodore VIC-20.
So, were they compatible? No, of course not. It's the '80s we're talking about. Of course, they're not compatible. Back, yeah, the 8-bit era of computers, there was very little direct compatibility, even between typical machines.
You actually have examples right here. You have a Commodore 64 or 128, and then you have a... Oh, I wish it was a 128, but it's a 64. Yeah, it's a Commodore 64. It's a Plus/4. Yeah, and you have the Plus/4. You have the Commodore 16. They're not compatible.
No, same company and almost the same look. No, okay, okay, you got me there. But they are not called... They're not called C16 Model 1, 2, and 3. They have different names.
Those are... Those are compatible. Now, the TRS-80, the Model 1, Model 2, Model 3, Model 4 are compatible. It was when I introduced the color computer, the Coco, I'll say that's not compatible because it uses a completely different architecture and actually a different processor entirely.
But it's not the nice, pretty... Or I shouldn't say the black-and-white ones that I have, but the Model 2 looks also... It does look entirely different than the Model 1. It looks much... I would say sleeker, but I'm not sure what they were going for with this one.
It has the TV-style aesthetics with the non-centered screen, but on the right, there is a disk drive. Yep, which makes sense, I guess. And then you have a separate keyboard. Does it house the computer, the keyboard?
Is it in the... If in the Model 3 that I have? No, it does not. The computer is actually in the back model of the screen. The Model 1, it is. It's very similar. The Model 1 and the Model... And the Commodore 64 are very close in the sense of the form in that you have the keyboard above the computer.
So, in the Model 1, it is. It is above the computer, so you would be typing essentially on the computer itself. The Model 2, I'm unsure. It could be using a line, essentially a very thick cable that goes to the machine.
I suspect that they might be doing the same thing with the Model 3 and have the computer in the back and then just have a wire that goes to the keyboard. We had the TRS-80. We had the TRS-80 models that followed. None of them, to my knowledge, came to Europe with any success, did they?
I don't recall. The TRS-80s actually aren't well known even in the United States. They were superseded by Commodore and by the Apple and the IBM. They were still around in the late '80s, but because Tandy switched over to the IBMs with the Tandy 1000 and its brand, the predecessors, or in this case, the TRS-80s fell away.
They were never really loved. They were convenient in the sense that they were cheap. They did the job, but no one had the love or the passion that some of the others did because you had the Commodore, which was fairly passionate for a lot of people because it was their first computer.
It was also a gaming computer, so the kids, like myself, would gravitate to the Commodore, even though you kind of took... You look at the basics, and the C64 basics was terrible, but you didn't have that sort of emotional tie with the TRS-80, and then when the...
As you would with the Apple II. Now, I think the Apple II had a little bit more because you essentially had Jobs and Wozniak, and you also paid this very high amount for this pretty thing, so you kind of felt like you had to fight for it.
Also, it had a lot going for it, like the... You already mentioned it. It had expansion capabilities. It was a really good computer that shouldn't be underestimated.
Back to the TRS-80. You said software. Now, what we skipped was games. Are there any games? Are there good games? There are some good games. There's also some demonstration games.
There was one called the Dancing Demon. That's considered one of the more favorite that I see a lot in the chats because I think it has some of the better animation. There's actually a flight simulator too. That actually did 3D graphics.
So, while you couldn't have the detail, say, with the Apple II, you did have that. There were some graphics like that, as then pretty much all the text games. So, like the Zorks definitely were moved over because that's relatively easy to do.
So, text-based games, Infocom probably was there. What other ones? Most, but there really wasn't a whole lot of games on the TRS-80s themselves. That was moved over to the color computers. Those are where a lot of the games were played.
So, you would have your Muncher and so forth. Now, there were some games that were brought back, but games were never a thing for the TRS-80. It was never considered a game machine. It was a very business-oriented machine.
Okay, so this is probably also a reason, as you said, for it being a more obscure and forgotten computer because you don't have emotional ties to it. If you don't have emotional ties to it, and it's just a small computer from the beginning of the '80s, I mean, it obviously sold reasonably well.
It made an impact, at least for its company, for Radio Shack to continue producing computers. You said they transitioned to PC compatibles, and they also removed Radio Shack from the name.
And there's one... I mean, I don't know if it's true, but one take on that is that they wanted to get rid of the name Radio Shack or Trash 80, which were synonyms for these computers, right? Because they didn't have the personal or the public view that, say, the Atari or the Commodore had.
The Trash 80 is a common trope because it didn't have the pretty graphics. It didn't have the look, and it was considered, I should say, not a substandard computer, even though it worked perfectly fine. It had all the necessary tools to do it, and for a business owner, it can do a lot.
And of course, it did something that most of the others didn't do, and that was the home automation side of things because of its tie with Radio Shack. Yeah, like that. Actually, the Tandy's for a while actually proved very useful.
The Tandy 1000 of the PC compatibles, they were actually pushing things a little. They pushed some of the boundaries because the IBM at the time, IBM PC, didn't have great graphics, didn't have any of that, but the Tandy 1000 did.
That's why you have the Tandy standard. When you look at early PC graphics, you'll see Tandy's there. That's because Tandy pushed for more colors in this 320. This space that usually is with the CGA went past that and was considered a viable option for computer graphics in the early '80s with the IBM compatibles.
Before we come to the model that you brought with you, because of course you couldn't bring the Model 1 with you for liability reasons, I would say you do have one with you. But before we come to that, the final thing.
So, if someone who's listening to this podcast wants to relive the TRS-80 days, what are the options today? I mean, obviously, you said you brought yours from the US. So, if, for example, I go to Las Vegas in January, if I could pick up one and bring it here, it would be...
Even if someone would give the computer to me for free, it would be very, very expensive to get it here, and very... The shipping would be high, 50 to 200 euros just to ship. So, and we already established that there is probably not a high chance to find one used on eBay in Europe, or is there?
Well, let me put it... Let me say one thing about that. The power supply that I got for my Model 1, the one that I just found, is a European plug. So, they're out there somewhere.
They're out there somewhere. If you are interested in hunting one down, I suspect you could find one. I see one. I see one on eBay. Yeah, it's 200 euros, and it's just a keyboard.
Yeah, and then you just simply have to hook it up. But you might have to have an interface. I don't know if that's the keyboard or if it's the Model 1 because there is an interface that is needed. It does need to be tied to the monitor.
Okay, and I see a user manual for 40. So, if you don't have anything, you at least have that. But what are the real options right now? Is there emulation?
Yes, there is. There is definitely a lot of emulation for that. So, you can go in and check things out. I'm thinking about... I might use an emulator just to program some BASIC because the editing on a computer is interesting because it doesn't allow you to edit at all the places, but you can edit a line of code.
It is very deep in the sense that you have a lot of controls in that editing, but it is very... If you do not have a manual, it is very confusing and becomes a problem. So, the 40 euros are probably justified for the manual.
I don't know. So, is there anything... If you have such a computer, some computers, they have known weak spots. They know the capacitors are all... You know, is there something like that that is known to you?
Not that I know of for the capacitors. I haven't seen any weak capacitors. So, you didn't have to do any maintenance on your models because they just turned on?
Yeah, they turned on. I could check... I could check the... I mean, old capacitors definitely leak over time. I probably could spend like a full freaking... Like a half a year or full year just replacing the capacitors in all the systems.
But there are some... There are cases like the Amiga, I think it's 600 and 1200, where you have to swap a lot of parts because they're known to all break down. This is on the 1200. I have a 1200, and yes, I had to replace all the capacitors.
So, that's what I mean. That's more like the kind of thing that I mean. But if there is no such weak spot, then all the better. I don't think so.
Yeah, great. They weren't cutting as many... I guess the components were better built back then. I don't know. You could make that assumption.
Yeah, yeah. On the other hand, there are these notorious reefer capacitors, which definitely are... Yes, thank you for reminding me about the reefers because I did replace them on my TRS-80 Model 3 because the power supplies, while the rest of the power supply is fine, the reefers definitely...
Because I could see the cracking, so I replaced those. Friend, I forgot about that. Thank you. You're welcome.
Now we come to the first computer that we mentioned, the first TRS-80 that we mentioned in this podcast an age ago when we started it. It is the TRS-80 Model 100, and I said it's neither TRS nor is it 80.
I said it's not TRS because it's actually a model from a Japanese company called Kosaï, and it's not 80 because it doesn't have a Z80 in it, but it has like a CPU in it that has an 80 in it. It seems to be an Intel 8085, which is strange. That sounds like an Intel. Like, that's a strange chip.
So, it's a portable computer, and not only that, it's really... It is really portable. It's pocketable even. I think you could... Yeah, you could have like maybe in a backpack.
Yeah, like that's what I mean. Yeah, so it is very light. I am like holding it right now, and I have... You can hold it in one hand. It is... It is a bit thicker than an iPad.
You could say that. Yeah, yeah. It's a very thick iPad with a keyboard, and it is... It's a bit heavier than my very lightweight normal notebook with 1.3 kg. That is not much.
I guess that's without batteries. I feel like this would be close to about just a kilo. But, okay, I'm just reading what it says here, and it's running on four AA batteries, which is amazing for next to 20 hours.
Yeah, for about 20 hours. There are no... The LED or say the display is very classic LCD, non-backlit. Yeah, non-backlit. It has the standard LCD ghosting. You can change the contrast, but it was very good for reporters back in the 1980s because they could carry it around and then type in their correspondents.
It has an RS-232 port, so they could send that information out, and it also has a good keyboard. Yeah, it has a nice... There you go. It has a very nice physical keyboard, the mechanical keyboards that everybody likes to talk about now.
And if we say that the TRS-80, the original, was a success, this one was even more because it was sold under different brands. They shipped around 6 million of them in total worldwide, which means, in opposition to the TRS-80 that we talked about in this podcast, you can actually go and buy one right now for not a whole lot of money.
I mean, everything is expensive today if it's retro, but it's possible to find one of these, and they usually work. I think it's a nice... Like, yeah, it's a nice... If you wanted to get into that, this is probably a very good start.
You don't have to worry about Hertz or voltages too much. All you have to do is pop in some batteries. You will have to deal with cassettes or finding a way to get data in and out of it.
However, that's all... Now, there are some caveats. One of them is this computer cannot count above the year 2000. So, whatever you do, you should make sure that it happens before the year 2000, which is like generally a good kind of advice, I think.
I could see it having the problem that would be baked into the ROM, and but it does have the ability to have extra ROMs. There is a switch. It also comes with BASIC, so it's a computer that you can... Yeah, you can get some basic skills.
Yep, and it is, in a certain point, has some historic value in Germany because there was a hack in the '80s. It's called the BTX hack. Have you ever heard of that?
No, I haven't. There was a kind of online service that the Deutsche Post had. It was called BTX for Bildtext, like screen text, and you could log in. The CCC, the hacking club in Germany, they wanted to prove that it is unsafe so that you can hack into it and you can read personal data, which the Post said isn't possible.
Oops, but they managed to get into the account of a bank, but not in their banking account, but into their BTX account. Then they had the bank call their website, whatever it is called, like the site that they had, which was billing them for $9.99 every time.
Wow. So, there was a point in the whole hack where this had to be automated. The bank had to, you know, automatically, and that was done with a TRS-80 Model 100, which I never knew, but I found out doing the research for this episode.
It's strange. Okay, Richard, thank you so much for being here and talking with me about the TRS-80. Thank all of you for listening so long to us. I don't know how long this podcast is.
I don't know. We'll have a last coffee today, I think. And if you want to meet Richard, you're probably... You'll be at the next Vintage Computing Festival, is that?
Yeah, yeah, and I'm a regular at our monthly and bimonthly meeting, Retro Meets. We do a monthly retro meet where essentially a bunch of us friends get together and just hang out. We do old computers.
Literally, actually tomorrow, we plan to be... I plan to go down to a place called eLab or Berlin Creators, and that is where we just simply throw together old computers and just play with them.
So, I'll probably bring my Coco 2 computer there because I want to see if I can get it. I want to install a mod so that I can display more than just the RF signal that's there.
But, and then two weeks, or sorry, three weeks from now, at the last Saturday of each month, we have an Amiga meet where we set up Amigas. Generally, I... But any computer can be brought in, and we'll be happy to help if you have problems with it or if you just want to say hi.
So, we'll put links to all of that in the show notes. So, if you're in Berlin or the Berlin area, just drop by or drop by the VCF, which is a year from now, I guess. Just a long... Quite a long time till the next VCF, I reckon.
But all the other stuff is happening, and if you want to read anything about retro media in general, it is probably a good idea to look at Golem.de. I'm not even sure where this podcast is going to fit in the whole podcast thing that I'm doing, but we'll find out together.
Thank you so much for listening. Thank you, Richard, and see you next time.