1981 Radio Shack computer catalog (2015) | Hacker News Reader

1981 Radio Shack computer catalog (2015)

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148 pointswyclif142 comments

This made me realize how much money my parents had to save in order to buy us a computer for our home. They must have had to save up for months and months for it. My father was a loan officer at a small community bank and my mom was a homemaker (is that still PC?). Now I work in IT. Thanks for the investment, mom and dad. How humbling.

Exactly same situation. trying to give back a bit by financing reconstruction of house i bought from rest of family for them after grandparents died. Humble place, but much better compared to relatively crappy flat I grew up in crammed with 31 other flats in 1 concrete building. So for their retirement they have more privacy, calm and a tiny land around.

Ah, cool. Well good luck with the project I hope it turns out better than you imagined.

Similar experiences here, spoonman.

A computer in the 70s/80s was a serious expense, similar to buying a nice used car, or a year of state college.

My folks bought me an Apple ][ around 1980. $2500 bought : 1mhz, 48k of ram, 1 floppy drive, a 9" Sanyo monochrome monitor, and what seemed like an endless universe of possibilities. The next six years were a blur of Assembly (Lazer Systems Interactive Compiler), and Applesoft Basic, trying to unlock the secrets of that machine and write my own games. It was magic! I am 100% certain that $2500 investment by my folks is the reason I have had a career in software.

I remember riding a 10-speed bike downtown to Computerland to buy an individual floppy disc @ $5/each. The university bookstore only sold Gorilla brand, and they were around $7 each.

Imagine the joy when I learned to use a scissors (later, a nibbler tool) to cut a notch out of floppy case so I could use both sides. Like finding free money!

Now a RaspPi Zero is $5 and information is limitless. This is a gilded age.

> This is a gilded age.

That is quite possibly the biggest understatement in the history of humanity. And it's not just because computer hardware has become essentially free. When I was a kid, to get any kind of information meant waiting for the daily newspaper to be delivered, or a trip to the library, or, if you were lucky, pulling out a volume from the encyclopedia on the book shelf (another very pricey commodity in those days). It still boggles my mind that you can buy a full-featured Gnu/Linux server for the price of a hamburger, and Wikipedia is literally free. It's a freakin' miracle.

And your local library often didn't even have any books in whatever interest area you were looking for. Or maybe it had one from 1967 that was hopelessly out of date with the current state of the art.

My parents bought a Commodore 64 when I was a kid and I loved the thing, but I've come to realize over the years that I knew almost nothing about it as a kid. I had never even heard of PEEK/POKE and if it wasn't in the (admittedly pretty good) manual then there was basically no chance that I would. I remember the manual briefly touched on the sprite generator, but not in enough detail that a kid who only knows BASIC could use it. It never even mentioned the SID sound chip. The only "computer" books my library had were talking about CDC machines and IBM mainframes, or extremely general discussions about core memory and them fancy new transistor things. I think they might have had some programming language books too, but since I didn't have any compilers they were useless. This was in the 80s.

Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything, and have ways of talking with experts if they get stuck. I'm excited to see how they turn out.

Actually, the manual, at least the one I got with my C64, did mention many of those aspects and even gave examples of them.

This is the one: http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk/images/thumbnails/350/525/...

As a kid I didn't really understand much of it, I remember making a simple sprite move around the screen, and designing my own sprite using the grid example it gave.

However looking back at the manual now, it's amazing how much detail it goes into, from sprite positioning, sprite expansion, drawing multiple sprites ( all via POKE and PEEK) to programming the SID chip (one whole chapter on this).

It doesn't deal with handling sprite collision though, so you would struggle to make a game I suppose. But the manual is surprisingly in depth. It does mention that for more advanced topics you would need the "C64 programmers reference guide".

My father bought an Oric Atmos when I was a kid, and it came with a full documentation of the 6502 instruction set (or so I think, I don't know if it actually came with it or if my father bought it separately, but I tend to doubt the latter).

Edit: found it. Somehow different, but that's the closest to what I remember: http://www.defence-force.org/computing/oric/library/lib_manu... Chapter 10 and Appendixes were invaluable.

> Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything

OTOH, in the 80's, CPU instruction sets were tractable, and writing machine code was in the realm of possibilities for kids (I should know, I did it ; it was loads of fun).

It is amazing to me how we even learned anything advanced back then. It was almost like we were so "dumb" compared to today's kids. The library and the bookstore at the mall (WaldenBooks) was my main staple as a young pre-teen kid. I'd never pass up a chance to go with my mom to either the library or the mall.

I remember as a 16yo trying to buy my first car (used 1979 Camaro) and how I thought knowing about the NADA guide you could browse through at the library was secret knowledge and used the copied page as negotiations tool. Now that info and more is readily available in few clicks on your portable phone/computer you carry in you pocket when at the dealer.

I remember reading a book around 1970 or so where a kid gets a computer that would answer questions. The one I remember is:

   "What is the main export of Bolivia?"

and it answered "tin". I don't remember anything else about the story. I remember thinking that such a machine was an impossibility. Asking such questions of a computer now is trite.

Google even formats it along with some other relevant information.

Did that inspire you to write Zortech C++? Still have fond memories of that.

I was more interested in rockets at the time :-) Computers didn't exist for me outside of scifi.

My high school acquired a Business Basic 4 computer my senior year. The math teacher decided to teach a BASIC programming class, where we'd use a punch card machine to write our programs, give the card decks to him, and he'd run them. He wouldn't let any of us touch the computer, or even be in the same room with it.

My most advanced program was a quadratic equation solver, just a few lines of BASIC. (The class was more or less a joke.)

But when I got to Caltech a year later, they gave all students an account on a DECSystem 10 timesharing system, and everything went downhill for me after that. I'd go to class in the day, and spent all night in the computer center playing with it.

I had three different TRS-80s. There seemed to be a new computer every two weeks or so in the house. My fondest memories of the TRS-80 were on the Model III and I remember being discouraged by the lack of documentation, multiple operating systems, the quality of instruction I could get, and of course access time. I remember feeling lucky not having to use a tape cassette. Apparently, I also learned to swear and type simultaneously.

It was such a strange time because of all of the different form factors and sizes. I had a DOS computer that looked like a metal waste bin with a monitor embedded. The keyboard would clip onto the monitor: "Portable" The Apple II, Atari 1200XL, and Commie were all short lived, as they are not 'business computers'. There were also countless 'bubble pop' keyboard computers that I only remember because of the feeling of pressing on the keys. The standard IBM Personal Computer XT was my sole computer until the 486 era. The lack of EGA/VGA in that time meant that I increasingly wandered onto BBS systems until I found several that actually had Internet access by syncing with the University. I had two email address in 1986. It took me about a year to discover the difference between electronic mail on the bulletin board that I was used to and e-mail. As for modems, the jump from the TRS-80 Direct-Connect Modem on page 12 of the catalog that connected at 300bps to a 2400bps internal modem on the XT was mind blowing.

I also remember being disgusted by GW-BASIC and being on a programming bulletin board called McAffee's. It was so frustrating because I did not have access to a C compiler and was crushed to find out from the SysOp how much it cost back then. When I finally managed to get a pirated version of Borland Turbo C, I was ecstatic.

Ah, cassette tapes. I remember learning the hard way that leaving one on top of the microwave could make it unreadable to the TRS80...

I had a bunch of floppies in a box fail in a peculiar manner according to the Fibonacci sequence. Luckily the important stuff was clustered in the back.

Riding the bike to Computerland...brings back memories.

The median household income in the US in 1980 was $17,000 (compared to $53,000 today).

Spending $3000 on a computer in 1980 is the equivalent of spending $9,000 today.

Like you said, you could get a really nice used car for that.

That's about the same number as you get using CPI:

http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=3000&year1=1980...

"I asked for a car, I got a computer." Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)

Sums up the situation nicely.

I recall a new Datsun B-210 from the 1970s being around $3k. It's hardly an Eldo, but I thought they were pretty nice cars.

My grandparents always encouraged my interest in computers and I owned a lot of the toy computers (C64, tandy et. al.) but the first "real" computer as in over a grand was an Amiga they bought me, I think they put 4K into that thing with all the bells and whistles. That is a lot of coin for a citrus farmer, especially back then. My grandpa who was an engineer in the Air Force before retiring and going back to the family farm, was convinced that computers where going to change the world. He would always say one day these things are going to talk to each other all over the world and it's going to change everything. Anyways long story short, they always boasted about it being the best money they ever spent.

My wife calls herself a homemaker (she is a stay-at-home mom), I'm sure the term offends someone out there...oh well. That is just the inevitability of communicating these days.

Apparently, even discussing the issue is no longer permitted. We've flown way past offense, deep into taboo territory.

And yet, people complain about how expensive an Apple computer is- when they are cheaper than ever. A fully loaded Macbook Pro with every option is still less than the entry "business model" of any of these computers in 1980

The first computers were built like tanks and typically were in use for a decade or more before being deprecated.

That fully loaded Macbook Pro will be outdated before the ink of the advert is properly dried.

It's a huge difference if you can deprecate an investment over a large number of years or if you're expected to buy something new every one or two years.

Tablets and phones are even worse when it comes to aging.

I disagree. My father bought one of those TRS-80 Model IIIs in 1980, and I used it tons. By 1985, though, we had migrated over to a PC. Our Model III had been really decked out (even had a 5MB hard drive that we had gotten in a closeout deal). The difference between what you could do with a 1985 PC and a 1980 Model III was huge.

In contrast, we have a 2009 MacBook Pro. Still works just fine for web browsing, word processing and things of that nature. Mobile phone hardware is moving super fast as desktop computers were in the '80s, but I think that the improvements in desktop (well, laptop is the equivalent today) hardware are less important for most people.

When you migrate from one architecture to another it is kind of logical that you would get a new machine. The TRS-80 wasn't able to compete with the PC for very long (though in the beginning there was of course more software available for the TRS-80).

But if you had stuck with the CP/M world you would have been able to run that old hardware for many years more.

Note how you have relegated your 2009 MacBook Pro to 'web browsing, words processing and things of that nature', whereas as a developers machine it is likely quite underpowered.

We are also at the end of the easy pickings from Moore's law so this too means that machine replacement pace is now (fortunately) finally dropping off a bit.

But phones and tablets are basically an exercise in planned obsolescence and computers while they last a bit longer than in the past are still being replaced quite frequently. Your MacBook Pro is on it's 'second life', no longer in use for its primary purpose.

My point was in relation to your comment about these old machines being in use for a decade whereas "That fully loaded Macbook Pro will be outdated before the ink of the advert is properly dried."

I think that software developers and computer enthusiasts back then wanted to upgrade as often as they would now (though I might still argue that even for developers the pace is less today than it was back then). For your "average office worker" or "average home computer user", I'm guessing that their computer will serve them well for longer today with less clear incentive for upgrading.

I mentioned the web browser, word processing and such because those are things that many non-developers commonly do with computers. That 2009 MacBook Pro would likely continue to serve a non-developer just fine and the only reason they might consider upgrading is that Mac OS Sierra doesn't support it.

In short, I think desktop/laptop machine replacement pace started dropping off for most people years ago. In the 80s the performance and storage improvements were way more meaningful than they are for many people than any time recently.

> I think that software developers and computer enthusiasts back then wanted to upgrade as often as they would now

I was a software developer back then and the pace was measurably slower. Development tools would be static for years between upgrades too.

Eh, my 2010 MBP 15" spec-wise seems around as fast as some of the new ones (has a real GPU, was able to update the memory to 16GB and throw an SSD in there). I'm still using it for Protools and it's just as good now as it was then (I don't use plugins, all outboard)

But- I see your point. I have a 2013 MBP as my developer machine and it's being replaced the day the new one comes out.

Look back to the story a few days ago about the C64 still in use in a Polish garage more than 25 years later. And C64 were not anywhere near as expensive as Apples. Cheaper stuff could still go on and on for years too.

Biggest problem I see is that we're continuing the trend of specialized hardware and specialized software for that hardware. I can't run current ios software on an iphone 4 - it might be possible for people to write software for it, but they can't distribute it. Possibly similar for android - haven't done as much dev there.

When I wrote for c64, I didn't have to worry about what version of stuff people had - they had a c64, same in 1983 as it was in 1990 - an entire 7 years, and new code would work on old systems. We're increasingly moving away from that. :/

I used my first computer (8088) for years. Now what do I do with my Zork disks? ;)

I don't get using the word outdated, yes technology is always moving forward so things become "outdated" really quickly but they don't become obsolete quickly at all.

Simply not true. Average usage life of the Macs I've bought over the last 30 years has been around 10 years. My 2007 iMac is no longer my primary Mac, but it's still in use as a server. Most of them have been sold and continued to be used by future owners after I upgraded.

My Mac Pro has been running for over a decade with only the addition of an SSD... Assuming the PSU doesn't die on me, it should be able to run for at least 5 more years.

To be honest, the Apple ][ even back in its days was expensive compared to the other 8-bit machines. My parents could never afford an Apple, but we could afford an Atari 400[1]. The first Apples I saw were bought by my high school (IIe). For the price of just the IIe, I could get a machine with a floppy, printer, and monitor. Apple has always been more expensive than its competitors.

1) thanks to Jay Miner and company had better graphics and sound than the Apple ][

    > my mom was a homemaker (is that still PC?)

I don't know if it's considered PC (can't honestly see why not, if anything other than neutral it's actually offering more respect) but it's certainly US-centric. I've never heard it outside of US TV/films.

I remember when my dad bought us a Mac IIci, it was awesome. But I'm pretty sure it was about $2000 back then.

Same here. Pre-teen kid fascinated by this new tech. Looking back I have no idea how my mom/dad afforded it. In fact, my mom went behind my dad's back to buy it for me as he said they could not afford it. I remember the exact location of the store we went to at the time still. I actually got a genuine IBM (only the best mom.. THANKS!). Something like $3000+ at the time. Later added a $300 modem after seeing War Games.

I attribute a large part to my mom, basically no questions asked, in getting me that first PC to my whole career in IT. As well as a tinkerer of tech stuff and still prefer fixing electronic stuff and building my own PC from parts than buying name brand ones. I'm 43.

I need to tell her thanks again next time I see her for basically taking a $9k loan out (in today's $$) for her 10yo son for this gadget computer stuff that was starting to take off that no one else in our circle of friends really even knew much about.

In the late 70's my friend's dad bought a Poly-88 (http://www.polymorphic-computers.com/poly88.html) for engineering work. I think that cost about $2k. I believe the Apple IIe that my parents bought me in the early-mid 80s was around 2k. The Commodore 64 that I had before the Apple IIe was much priced much more reasonably, but that thing conked out on me within a week.

Also consider that those dollars in 1981 are worth maybe 3 and a half of our dollars today. So for a $249 pocket computer, which I have fond memories of. Assume that 16 K memory device would cost about, let's say, $800 today.

That makes a much stronger impression of how much cheaper hardware has become, as well as more capable.

The TRS-80 is still alive! Everyone come listen to our TRS-80 focused podcast TRS-80 Trash Talk

http://www.trs80trashtalk.com

Original source seems to be

https://archive.org/details/radio-shack-catalog-rsc-04-compu...

Theres a lot more to see at archive.org of course.

That is a wonderful site, so much information, they even had full emulators for favorite old programs and games that run in the browser. (Curse JavaScript for working so well.)

I played with this a while back -- brought back memories. Takes a few steps to set it up. https://github.com/lkesteloot/trs80

One of the links I visit, when I want to relax is: https://archive.org/details/computermagazines

So happy when I discovered they had a few DAK Catalogs. So many pleasant memories and a few orders too! That guy could really put a catalog together back in the day: https://archive.org/search.php?query=dak%20catalog

So many gray haired models are in the photos. You don't see that anymore, and certainly not in computer ads!

Marketing has become more biased in some areas, but at least we can say it's definitely become less so in others. The only black person appearing in any of the photos in the entire thing was shown as an example of a user for the 'starter' (lowest end) system.

They tried to be inclusive in those days, I wonder how that stopped despite the constant lip-service to diversity you hear today. In print ads it looks like we've regressed.

I graduated High School that year, I'd done some BASIC programming on an Atari 2600 with a BASIC cartridge. I imagined a consumer computer like the ones on that cover but with several tape machines and a loader top program so the user wouldn't have to load tapes manually for common programs. Little did I know the hard disk had been invented by IBM in the 1950's.

Today kids learn Java in High School and carry powerful computers in their pockets and on their wrists. I'll probably be pushed out of the Java industry before I even retire by one of them.

I had a 2600 back in the late 70s, but never knew that they had a BASIC cartridge. That must've been one helluva limited programming experience considering how limited the 2600 was for game programmers writing in Assembly.

It is. Here's a picture of what it looks like (http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/14.1) and I even wrote about my experience in using it: http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/16.1

The executive summary: it's both incredible (it has features I've never seen elsewhere) and horrifying (wait until you see the keyboard, and you only have 64 BYTES for everything).

That's cool; thanks for posting. Brings back memories.

We had several Model 2 (gray) and 3 (white) in our school (mid 80's), but only a few had floppy drives. The ones that didn't were connected to the instructors machine (had had dual drives; oooohh) connected via that network controller (box with big knob). It hooked to the cassette port of the client machine so a program could be dumped to multiple machine simultaneously, or the knob could be switched to receive from a particular client machine.

Used to play Telengard, and use the hex editor to insert foul words into certain programs.

Computing back then just seemed so much more exciting; Tandy, Commodore, Atari, Apple, original PC. It's ubiquitous and drab now, or maybe it's my middle agedness.

I feel the 'drab' aspect of what you're saying, although I also see that we focus more on what we can do, vs 'how' it might get done (different versions of software for Commodore, Atari, PC, Apple, IBM, etc).

I wrote agricultural software for both the Pocket Computer and the Mod II working my way through college. The PC was actually a very nice piece of kit. We wrote some of the first software that farmers could use while carrying it in the fields - IPM (integrated pest management).

Ah, backing up to cassette.

Yeah, the local Farm Bureau Co-Op sold TRS-80's to the farmers around where I grew up. I had a Apple //e but bought many Elephant Memory Systems 5.25" floppy disks from the Co-Op.

Ah, the Pocket Computer. I had one of those in early 90's when I was a student pilot. I programmed it to do flight calculations and learned valuable lessons in UX. Trying to operate those tiny keys and read the display while trying to fly a hot, noisy, vibrating Cessna 152 was an exercise in frustration.

By 1982 there was the second-generation Pocket Computer, with the optional 4-color printer/plotter and the RS-232 ("COM Port") interface so I could also connect to an acoustic coupler telephone modem, then use any dial or touch-tone telephone to connect to time-sharing services.

This all fit into a carrying case not much smaller than a regular laptop these days.

The Standard API Petroleum Measurement Tables had been recently reapproved in 1980, for the first time as a computer routine rather than hardcopy handbooks of 83,000 entries each. This was a specific standard computer program, about 2K of Fortran77 32-bit mainframe floating-point code which had been jointly adopted by API & ASTM complete consensus. That much text would not fit into the Pocket Computer anyway. To get the 4-bit Pocket computer functional as a replacement for the handbook, I had to ditch the floating point, not use the exact algorithms the table was based on in any recognizable way, and come up with a bit-saving scheme not unlike the UNUMs of Gustafson[0] which have been discussed here. Each byte of memory was economized.

Carrying it while boarding tankers and barges back then, I would guess that pretty much turns out to be the first laptop on the Ship Channel.

Now everybody's got a laptop and it's no big deal.

[0] http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029

My friend has a TRS-80 Model II. I translated some games for him from other computer magazines. It was a fun experience. I can't remember much about it other than I did it and was quite proud of myself (being only 12 at the time).

Yeah, back before my friends and I had computers, we would pour over the program listings in various magazines. We even started writing our own adventure game, modeled after one we saw the source for... even though we weren't able to even run it.

Crazy computer kids, we were...

I remember some magazine came out with BASIC programs translated into bar codes, and with their special scanner, you'd scan in your program instead of typing it. Damn how I wanted that thing, of course you would not learn as you did from typing it in and finding your errors.

I learned to code by transcribing code for the Acorn Electron (which I didn't own or have access to) from teletext onto paper !

What I didn't know at the time was that some of it was encoded so that say "#" would mean "print", I didn't find out until the internet came along and I read stuff like the link [1] for nostalgia.

I still have a BBC computer and Cub RGB monitor - I have an SD card adapter for it nowadays. I have a BBC Forth ROM chip in it and so I have a Forth Machine at the flick on a switch with a built in A/D convertor, Speech Synthesis also in ROM and a 1Mhz interface bus. Pretty cool gadget still.

[1] http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/aab/revs/morley/Teletext...

I have a C64 with many bells and whistles (modern interface adapters), an Apple II, and a Briel Computers Altair clone kit (blinken lights). Also have a C64-SX portable, and Tandy 100.

https://rfpoweramp.com

"telephone interface - $199". That's roughly $500 today.

And the $299 8K ram expansion gives a bit of context to "640k should be enough" comment.

Though that seems high for 1981. I recall that my Apple II from 1979 came with 32K, and a 48K model was another $200. Later, I was able to get the 16K upgrade for $15--and that was probably around 1981 or 1982. I had a 300 baud modem to go with that.

Back around that time in the UK I brought 5 modems 4 answer 1 answer originate. I think they where around £350 for the answer and £600 for the answer originate one.

I wish I had had the nerve to get our electronics shop to build the $20/$30 modem design that was published in BYTE

I was a 6502 man at the time - still looking down on all the Z80s. I eventually put a Z80 card in my Apple ][ to run CP/M but it felt dirty.

Well if you don't like the Z80 models, there's a 6809 one too! That should be more to 6502 programmer tastes.

The weird thing about the range is how none of them is compatible with any of the others.

I think the TRS-80 model III has generated more love / hate relationships than any other computer. My Dad had them for teaching college classes, and they definitely took folks on a love to hate to love ride in the space of 15 minutes. They were pretty damn useful though. I miss the old daisy wheel printers sometimes. Documents seemed more formal being pounded out.

My cousin had the pocket computer, I always coveted a model III, but my school installed 8 (eventually 16) Apple //e computers networked to a corvus constelation 10MB hard drive. So I ended up with a Apple //e at home.

10 GB?

10MB, fixed

Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corvus_Systems#Disk_drives_and...

Kids these days :-)

Check out the add https://habrastorage.org/getpro/habr/post_images/5b6/a0b/e6d...

Makes me feel better about the 2 grand I dropped after I graduated from college on a 1G hard drive.

I think the GP's post originally said 10 GB.

Yes, I corrected after realizing, and having it pointed out.

Look at the asterisk too; that's a bare refurbished drive. It's an additional $1500 for the disk controller.

That was the first computer I really owned too. I still have it and it still works, even so many years later.

I saved money from lawn mowing and paper delivering to buy a trs-80 model 1 level 1. I remember it being around $525 which was a really tough goal to reach. It was awesome though to finally reach it and bring the trs-80 home.

$525? Coincidentally that is the exact amount I paid for my first computer (in NZD though). That was two years of saving up money from delivering newspapers.

It was the TRS80 model II and model III from my fathers work that made me want a computer. My the time I had saved up a chunk of money, the ZX Spectrum was released and I could finally afford one (I waited a bit longer so I could get the 48k one). The C64 was far too expensive for me at the time.

Wow this takes me back. I think my parents had one of the cheaper models. All I ever did was play games on it. It's sad my dad eventually gave it away or threw it out. I would love to play with it now.

Same here. Our first home computer was a TRS-80 when I was a little kid, maybe 7 or 8. I'm not sure how my parents afforded it, but I think by the time we got one it was already deeply discounted. We had to use a tape drive to load programs and I'd ride my bike to Radio Shack to buy little games on tape. I mostly used it to program simple things in Basic. It came with this wonderful manual narrated by a cartoon TRS-80 robot that was very kid friendly.

Then shortly after the Apple //e came into our lives. It was like night and day, especially considering we had a modem and I could dial into these strange things called BBS's. It even had color! Wow, what a game changer that was. Computer camp was little more than my classmates and I copying videos games. There was almost no DRM back then, maybe a question asking you to check something in the manual to make sure you at least had the manual that shipped with the floppy.

Its crazy to think how the Mac and Windows 1.0 came out shortly after. The innovation from 1981 to 1985 was incredible. In four years you went from using a TRS-80-like monstrosity to sitting there using a mouse and keyboard running a refined and user-friendly GUI interface. I remember the first time I used a mac. I just used paint for hours on end. It was magical to me.

Hacking in those days was a rather strightforward affair.

Walk into RS store.

Type

10 print "some profanity"

20 goto 10

Leave store before RS dude sees you.

I did that.

The local RS is what got me into computing in 1981. They let me sit down and type in BASIC programs as long as I wanted, and they didn't need it to show customers. Spent hours there. My first programming "ah hah!" was: let T = T + 1, to count how many times that section of code had been hit.

I've been a software developer professionally since not long after that.

I have a remarkably similar story! My local RS let me plug away at a CoCo for hours on end. I remember when an older boy showed my friends and I how to use if..then..else. Wow! My head almost exploded. Good times...

This is the only thing I ever used a Tandy for.

My mother was a HS teacher who worked nights/weekends in a RS store in sales, and also taught Basic. I can tell you that people did that kind of stuff in stores all the time, at least in suburban NJ.

As an obnoxious note from the past, it's way better if you do:

    10 PRINT "SOME PROFANITY ";
    20 GOTO 10

The trailing ; makes the PRINT not move the cursor to the next line, so you end up with your string plastering the entire screen in a cool (at least to early-teen me) way.

Also, of course computers of that day didn't use lower case (it seems that was an add-on for the TRS-80) quite as often as we do today. :)

And yes, I checked the BASIC manual for the TRS-80: http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-info-level2.htm#IO to make sure this was supported, I never had a TRS-80.

The pro-level trick was to make that string exactly 13 characters long.

Since the screen was 40 characters wide (at least on the Apple ][ it was), the print would happen 3 times and then the next one would wrap around and be offset by 1 character on the next line.

This had the effect of making the words appear to smoothly scroll horizontally across the screen as the text rolled vertically.

I used to do something similar to Apple ][ computers. I'd go into the monitor (CALL -151) and type a short machine language program that looped infinitely, printing random characters and clicking the speaker. So the screen would fill with scrolling garbage while the machine emitted a buzzing noise. Good times. Atari rules!

I have a better story: I know someone who constructed a TRS-80 model 1 clone. He walked into the RS store to copy the OS ROMs. Maybe on tape? I'm not really sure.

Geez, I thought I was so clever and original when I did that!

My ex-boss used to sell Tandy computers (offered under collaboration with a domestic computer company here in India, called DCM Data Products) in the 1980s and I think he still has a few TRS-80 Model IV (running CP/M) and Tandy 1000 (their first IBM PC clone, 8088/4.77Mhz) stashed away somewhere.

There's probably a Youtube channel there, of getting old software running and doing a video review of it.

People kind of know that we had spreadsheets and word processors and payroll systems back then, but they don't know what they were like.

Any idea what the profit margin was on computers back then? That's what I'd really like to know.

I don't know about desktop computers, but in the late 80's-early 90's I worked for a peripheral company that made laboratory/light industrial I/O boards for TRS-80's, PC, etc.. Our rule of thumb was that selling price was roughly 5x Bill Of Materials cost. So a $100 relay board cost us around $20 in parts (and probably $5-10 in labor) to build.

Most of the non-parts cost was probably marketing expense.

These days I can buy a similar piece of hardware on Alibaba for $15!

I wouldn't be surprised if the same rule about BOM and labour cost still applies.

It does when the volumes are low due to overhead and non reoccurring engineering. Back in the 80's took an engineer and draftsman a 2-3 months to design and layout a PCB with tape. Might spend $100k on engineering, overhead, and sales and sell ~500 units/yr. ($200/unit)

Ugh! Tape layout! I did that a few times in high school the cheap way (scotch tape/duct tape and a Sharpie). By the time I graduated and got a job as an EE, at least we had (crappy) PCB software so I never had to do it again except for a few hobby projects.

And now I can get OSS tools for free that totally blows away the state of the art at that time. Amazing!

I acquired a Heathkit H11 around 1981. Sadly, it's the one computer I later got rid of, and the only one (of probably dozens) I've ever owned that was worth a damn a few years later.

I never knew that RS did a videotext system as well as its computer line.

Wow that power controller is pretty cool. I'm curious how that works...

It sends a signal through the power socket, but do you have to have special light bulbs?

Standard X10 protocol, unchanged since the mid 70s. 4 bits of house address (usually a letter) plus 4 bits of unit address (usually a number) gives 256 theoretical devices.

As far as long lived protocols go, X10 is up there... 1975 to 2016 and counting...

And still useful. I use it to control a water pump to push water to sprinklers on my roof for the hot Atlanta summer months. 1 Gal of water evap from the roof is ~8000BTU's (I'm told - someone correct me if that's wrong).

8000 BTU is about right. It's impressive that you actually got that water to evaporate from the roof in a decent amount of time in Atlanta though, since it's so humid. I'm not sure that it does much, since either your roof or your attic floor is insulated.

A gallon over a big enough area, with a roof that's dark, in 90+degree ambient temperature and direct sun... evaporates within a few minutes. Sometimes < 1 minute by visual inspection, anyway.

re: "doing any good", yes, that's hard to say. The ROI may not be for years, if ever. It was as much a "I have an idea,let's see it through" project as a real money saver.

The attic is insulated, and with a radiant barrier, to boot.

Yeah, a dark asphalt roof and direct sun would do it, as I've observe in my parents' house in Houston. You're also right the the ROI is probably zero or negative since your attic is insulated and has a radiant barrier so the temperature of the roof itself is close to irrelevant.

> dark asphalt roof and direct sun would do it

But if you were going for cooling, you wouldn't go for a dark asphalt roof.

HOA. Not much choice. We got the lightest we were allowed.

Yes. It was a fun project though.

The controller app is a bash shell script. :-)

I work on the AFB about 2 hours south of you. It was a scorcher this year.

Thank you! I had no idea what protocol was so old. I thought it was from the 90s.

I didn't see that. What page?

It sounds like X10 (was developed in the 1970s).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X10_(industry_standard)

You needed to add a receiver near the load. They had a couple of variations of a box with prongs on one side and an outlet on the other to switch plug-in devices and a replacement wall switch for other lights.

In '91 I started HS and the one my parents wanted me to go to had a lab of Model IIs with the huge floppy discs. I guess they were well made.

The old 8" floppies like in WarGames http://www.itworld.com/article/2823486/security/106464-The-t...

My middle school had about 6 Model III's in the library around 1986. One of the science teachers taught a programming class during study hall on those things, so it was one of the first computers I ever programmed on. A year or two later my parents bought a Tandy 1000 and I was hooked.

I still have the flatbed plotter. I don't see it in that catalog; maybe it came out a little later.

This takes me back. I just built a new home server and realized it has over one million times as much ram as the first computer I used (A Kaypro II).

Fun fact about the Kaypro II: it was the first Kaypro model, but they added the roman numeral II to borrow some of the Apple II's popularity.

I've been telling people for years that my optical mouse has more compute power than my first computer. It's crazy how far we've come.

It's also unfortunate that we're seeing the end of Moore's Law, and the easy gains in compute power through the use of a process shrink. Here's hoping people get really serious about molecular nanotechnology research.

I bought a model 3 a few months ago from a guy cleaning out his basement. Love it. TRS80s were a fantastic computers. Reminds me of walking into RS playing with the display computers, wishing I could take them home.

Was hoping to see a Dungeons of Daggorath game cartridge.

This ad made me remember how much text "bulged out" at you on the screen in early computers (because they were CRT technology) and how it looked "sunk in" when the first flat screens came out. Good memories!

More nostalgia -- old calculators:

http://www.mrmartinweb.com/calculator.html

This is great. Thanks for sharing.

Really brings back some memories. My father ran his own business and had a few TRS-80s. The first programming I did was on these machines when I was in the second grade.

On page 7, it seems that for twice the price, the "Business" system bested the "Engineer" system by including a set of curtains and a bad toupee.

Those people needed to learn about ergonomics.

But seriously, my first computer was the handheld TRS-80 and I fondly remember programming Pascal on the TRS-80 Model III in H.S.

This brings back my memories. Many nights of my elementary school years were spent up late hacking on basic programs on our Tandy Color Computer 3.

I love how detailed and wordy the descriptions are.

There's nothing quite like looking at old computer ads that takes me right back to my childhood.

Yep, reminds me of Byte

I love the "TRS-80 Certified Cassettes" on page 14.

Note that it shows a lot of women using the computer. So much for "advertising drove women away".

It shows lots of secretaries using the computer. It's clearly something the boss bought to get fancy graphics on his reports that the secretary is typing up.

"Bosses" back then couldn't even type.

I can type with two fingers; does that count? I blame that on having a C64 as my first computer, with it's horrible keyboard.

That C64 keyboard was heavy, IIRC.

The best (worst) part is that you couldn't even swap the keyboard out for a different one, because the keyboard was the computer.

I do miss having all of those drawing characters on the front of the keys though. C64 character art was the best. It's kind of a shame that the IBM-PC character set won out with its all international and business friendly characters instead of the cool art characters.

Right - because if they are women, they have to be secretaries, whereas the men are technicians? What about the teen girls that are also shown in the catalogue - training to be secretaries at an early age?

You are aware this catalog is from 1981 right?

That's the point - there is this meme going around that supposedly women lost interest in computing because of advertising in the 80ies.

Never mind that the whole field of computing changed with the advent of home computers and PCs.

This was a year or two before the "computers are for young geeky white boys" (whizkids2) meme got started. Note the grey hairs as well.

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