>Mouse counts the number of bytes available and divides by seven, assuming that the average word a reporter might use is seven letters long.
Isn't that six letters followed by a space?
This TRS-80
21–30 of 56 posts
Re: This TRS-80
#22https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/dungeons-of-daggorath/9nbl...
DoD actually didn't run on the Model 100/200 series, which was purely a writing machine. You're probably thinking of the TRS-80 Color Computer 2, aka the CoCo 2 or Trash-80. Dungeons of Daggorath was (in my opinion) the best game for the CoCo 2 and one of the earliest dungeon crawler games.
It's a real shame Dungeons of Daggorath was replaced in the movie version of Ready Player One. Adventure, with its Easter egg, wasn't a bad replacement but the CoCo got so little mainstream love in its day that it would have been nice to see it on the big screen.
Re: This TRS-80
#23My roommate in 1990 was a journalist and he had one of these.
There's an emulator here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualt/
Re: This TRS-80
#24In the '90s I worked in a warehouse where some of the guys had bought old model 100s for cheap and had programmed an inventory system. The 100 was the perfect size to sit on the console of the forklift and you would record where you were placing or retrieving pallets of inventory. At the end of the day you could sync the updates from one machine to the next over serial ports. For being so computationally limited they are surprisingly capable machines.
The extra long battery life made this application possible.
In spite of being warehouse workers they were a very smart bunch. There were several other things they had automated as well. I was young at the time and was only interested in video game, so never picked up programming until later.
Re: This TRS-80
#25Not that particular TRS-80, but I fondly remember cutting my first lines of BASIC code on a TRS-80 back in 1980. It is THE computer that was responsible for me becoming a coder.
Oh, the fun of watching those two asterisk's blinking in the top corner of the screen while it loaded your latest creation from the cassette drive...
Re: This TRS-80
#26In the '90s I worked in a warehouse where some of the guys had bought old model 100s for cheap and had programmed an inventory system. The 100 was the perfect size to sit on the console of the forklift and you would record where you were placing or retrieving pallets of inventory. At the end of the day you could sync the updates from one machine to the next over serial ports. For being so computationally limited they…
In the 80s I worked with Industrial Apple IIs - which I’ve only ever heard about at that job!
They were networked though, as they were not attached to forklifts
By the end of the 80s, the floppy disks with the code were running a bit thin!
That company made non-prescription drugs
Re: This TRS-80
#27I own one of these as well because I started my career in journalism for a couple years before becoming a developer. Additionally, my first computer ever was a TRS-80 CoCo, so it seemed like a perfect nostalgia item to own.
Fun fact: The Model 100 has a year 2000 bug - the dates in the main menu are hard coded to 19XX.
Re: This TRS-80
#28Apparently, there are a lot of alive TRS-80 calculators around, but many of them have a defective LCD (due to moisture getting inside). Someone took the challenge and recently (February-May 2019) produced a batch of custom LCDs to fix all TRS-80 calculators in the world. Part 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8-HfGTCcCk Part 2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8Vagc0FJK8 Part 3 (final): https://www.youtube.com/watc…
I have 3x working TRS-80 PC-2’s and one TRS-80 PC-3. If anyone is interested I will post my email.
Re: This TRS-80
#29This is my favorite line, at least so far:
There were microphones at each typewriter, and at the computer. When the on-air talent tossed to the newsroom for a live report, the journalism factory noises in the background were real.
This is a great story. It helps that it is told by a professional writer, but it's also a special time in the history of tech. I remember lusting after this gadget when I was a kid. I remember that there was a time when a local Radio Shack in Akron listed the price incorrectly very low and there was a run on the model 100 when people found out. When I showed up they were sold out.
Re: This TRS-80
#30My TRS-80 Model 100 computer on a table at Starbucks, as I wrote this story.
Closes the page instantly.