TRS-80 Collection and Easter Eggs (1980-1983)  

My most vivid memory of the Model III is when I was with my older brother in the store and he was working on his high school Computer Science assignment. I was SUPER bored, and after watching him and the Radio Shack guy work on his program for a long time I became fascinated by the orange square thing to the right of the number pad. Eventually, curiosity won out, and I reached over and gingerly touched the orange square thing. It's a reset button. He lost everything. There are several lessons he could've learned that day (among them, "save often"), but instead he learned not to take his younger brother anywhere important. :(

Those damn RIFAs!!!!! ;-)

I guess Rikki did lose that number!

Wow that unique key clicking sound and the bright orange shift key of the Sharp PC-1211 bring back childhood memories. With 12, when all my friends already had a C64 and I could still only dream of one, my stepdad actually bought himself a PC-1211. I wrote my first basic programs on it. And as far as I remember, there were basic game examples in the manual like i.e. simple racing game. This thing is actually the device that started my dev career ;-)

Nice one Hoser! ;) TRS-80 was one of the first computers I learned to program on and I loved them. My favourite looking model was TRS-80 model 2. We had a high school in Kingston, Ontario whose computer room was nothing but TRS-80s (mostly model 2s). We even had one with a model attached and one of the students ran a BBS we could connect to. I still have a yellowed printout of my first BASIC program I wrote on one.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane. As a child, the first computer I was exposed to was the TRS-80 Model III in grade school. I later owned the Pocket Computer PC-1. It was a hit in high school. It was such a new technology that the teachers didn't quit understand that during math exams I could actually preprogram into BASIC all the written explanations and textbook notes to help me pass. LOL! They thought it was only a fancy calculator. Regarding the COCO, there was a small town rivalry between my friends with COCOs (due to the local Radio Shack) and myself and a few others with C-64s. It was a great time to be a teen.

6:50 I remember amorously looking through the Radio Shack Christmas catalogs at the Pocket PC and Portable Computer.

As soon as TRS-80 Model 100 was released to the market, one of my classmates in high school bought it and used it for typing notes during the lectures and writing reports. That was the equivalent of driving Lamborghini Countach or Porsche 928 to the school in the middle class neighbourhood. My father did consider one of TRS-80 variations for home use, but his company gave him IBM PC in 1982. I was one of the earliest teenage adopters who used the PC to type the book reports, thesis, etc. in 1982. However, some of my teachers hated the "unsophisticated" look of dot matrix print and refused to accept them. My father's office had a daisy wheel printer with interchangeable fonts and often printed out my reports for me. We used 5.25-inch floppy disk the same way we use USB thumb drive today.

Any vintage computer videos are a okay. It sure is a cool thing "SepTandy" that inspires and lets us explore the older machines maybe some of us haven't got much experience with.

You're right, that Model 100/102/200 keyboard is still the very best I've ever used. The Model 100 was very cool, the 200 was everything cool about the 100 with a MUCH more usable screen. I still have a 100 and a couple of 200's, with a compatible printer and multiple custom Tandy branded carrying cases.

Can we just go back? I miss the 80s so much. The best movies, music and 8bits.

Great to see those old computers in use! Sometime we'll figure out how to get you the Rainbow magazines. :)

The first computer I programmed was a TRS-80 Model I. I learned FORTRAN, COBOL, and Z-80 assembly language on a TRS-80 Model II. Finding my old TRS-80 PC-2 in a closet sparked my current interest in retro computing. Thanks for sharing!

Man, those Radio Shack shiny red tapes are what my grandparents used and I remember them well. Eventually they all became mine and I recorded over all them in middle school, I really liked them because you could peel the labels off fairly easily and then you had a nice cream shell you could draw on. I remember specifically a tape of "space" themed songs, Starman, Life on Mars, the Star Wars disco theme, etc, that I filled in most of the shell in with Sharpie and left out stars and a moon in the original color.

Used that same model TRS 80 in Computer Science class in 10th grade. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.

Yay! Yeah we were that odd family in town with a CoCo 2 when everyone else either had no computer or had a Commodore 64 or a PC.

Man, this is such a great other-than-Commodore collection. I always wanted a Model 100 - I thought (and still do) thing they were a very cool form factor. I used to have a Sharp PC-1261 Pocket Computer with two-line LCD display. I sold it at a garage sale about 20 years ago for like $5 - makes be sick to think I did that. Great stuff, Robin!

Ah, memories! My employer bought a TRS-80 model 1 for our (small) inventory control. It came with 16 K memory and ROM Basic. Also, it came with the tape "mass storage". Very soon it became evident that a memory expansion and a floppy drive were necessary before it could be really put into use. So it got a 180 kB single sided 5.25" floppy unit and a maxed out RAM. Great! I knew Dartmouth Basic that I had very sparingly used via a teletype at a time share mainframe somewhere far away. Now, Microsoft Basic was not much different, except there were some rudimentary graphics and PEEK and POKE, as far as I remember. Anyway, at the same time we had another company developing some microcomputer based controller for us and they did it using a FORTH metacompiler. I got interested in that language and when a FORTH programming application was published for the TRS-80, I bought that on a floppy. I never did anything truly productive with it, but it was an exciting learning experience. Later on, I assembled myself a single board computer with a Z180 chip and ran it with ZCPR operating system and another version of FORTH. I also got a 65F11 based single board computer. The "F" stood for ROM FORTH from Rockwell. I still have it somewhere, but have not fired it up in decades. Anyway, the TRS-80 was the first computer that I had "after hours" personal access and have since then spent a scary amount of money for ever more powerful computers (and programs).

I bought a Sharp EL-5200 when it came out. I still have it today in working condition.

The infamous Rifa cap strikes again. The first on-video bang that I remember was from Dave's EEvblog channel, in a Tek scope. Cheers,

Love the episode. I had a M100 in the college dorm, setup to open the com port periodically. I used the DTR signal to turn on a transistor to a squirt gun motor to shake my pet mouse''s water bottle because air bubbles would block the flow.

Trs-80 first computer experience in the early 80's kindergarten I'm 37 years old.. brings back memories from the golden age of computers that shaped me into the I T Pro I am today

Man, there's something so relaxing about the way you type. I don't know what it is exactly, but keep it up.

I love your enthusiasm for computers

Great episode. 🤗👍🏻 My heart is with Commodore too, but it is always interesting to watch your videos Robin. Thanks 😊

Loved this ‼ I have a few computers and consoles from the 80's onwards, so I enjoyed this very much 👍👍👍

Thank you sir! Looking forward to the next one.

Awesome vídeo. Loved the easter eggs.

"Take off eh" 😂😂 Fantastic. Edit: I really enjoyed this. Obviously you're very knowledgeable about the Commodore systems, but this was fun too!

My first computer was a Tandy MC10, followed by a COCO2. So nostalgic! Thank you. Yes, please, I don't mind you doing other viceos outside of commodore.

I still have mine ! I kept it all this time, I remember driving my grandparents nuts to get it. I had to cut a ton lawns that summer

I'd almost forgotten about that TRS-80 Model III. Glad to see you've taken such good care of it!

Love those easter eggs! Well found!

So we both grew up in Northern Ontario. We both worked at RS in the 90s. 😁 That Pocket Computer appears to have been from store 5161 and was received by the store December 12, 1980. If memory serves (and it definitely may not after all these years), store 5161 was in Thunder Bay. The EL-545 was an old, faithful friend after my Commodore RPN calculator died. It always sat next to me while programming or hardware developing as previously did my RPN.

Loved every minute of this. Used to visit local Tandy store in 1983 in the UK. Woukd love TRS 80. I was only able to buy programing books which included cobalt! Mad. I did the first Computer exam called an O'level exam here in the UK. We programed the Commodore Pet despite Microsoft BBC being around for a while. I loved the PET. I like the pc with the screen and disc drive integrated. Been following for a good while. Keep doing this. I realise how much I love BASIC.

I look forward to your videos regardless of content, I just like learning about old tech, though I have learned a lot about the C64 in your videos and can't wait for my maxi. You have such a calm voice. It's funny to see how many youtubers watch each other's content. A couple of those larger channels I didn't know existed till after watching yours like adrian's basement, which was recommended to me durring my maxi C64 content binge watch lol

Thanks for making this video. My first own computer was the MC-10 (that I got for my 13th birthday in 1984). In 2015 I bought a 2nd hand model 102 that I still use once in a while. And I also have a nice TRS-80 model 4p (I had the capacitors replaced on the power supply board after I also had the "magic smoke" surprise....)

Awesome!

I've just retrieved my Sharp PC-1425 with 8K memory card from my parent's basement and it still works great. The first page in German manual says batteries replaced in March 1991. It had these CR 2032 batteries until recently when i took them out.

4:47: His "memory" lives on... Nice

Ricky comes up on my model 100. Thanks for posting. That was cool to try.

I love coverage of all sorts of stuff

Yeah I have a trs80 m3 too. Just did the rifas too. Thx for the content.

Very cool. Keep it up.

While my heart will always be with Commodore, it’s good to see other 8-bit computers, too. The channel is 8-Bit Show And Tell, of course. So this gets a big thumbs up from me.👍

Great Job! One boat anchor to the next! The funny thing is you probably just demonstrated what 99% of TRS-80 owners did when they bought the unit on the first day, immediately after that they packed it away never to be used again until they sold them for $5 at Dollar Mart! One last tip: next time you’re at target buy a box of swiffers. They work great for video because they get the dust off in two Seconds.

I can't get over how cheap adobe people can find these old computers for at thrift stores! My own Value Village never has any old computers. Lol! Keep up the great work, I love learning about these old computers as I want able to have them myself other than a VIC 20 and an IBM XT.

I used the TRS in the 80's, but never in the casing, my dad would get the components and kluge them together. I really want that handheld computer!

Well... I think I can deal with it. ;) I do find these fascinating so keep up all the fantastic work you do!

I enjoy all of @8-Bit Show And Tell videos. It's content i cant find anywhere else. Some of that C= content is extraordinary. My advice to Robin is keep doing what you enjoy. Your decisions have been right so far. I even enjoyed this TRS-80 video.

Not enough features if there”s room for that many spaces at the end of your ROM on an 8bit machine! Sophie Wilson only managed just enough space for “Roger” at the end of the BBC BASIC II ROM. And the BBC A/B copyright message is in the OS ROM for FC00 to FEFF. Those locations are memory mapped IO, so those ROM locations are not readable at runtime. An experiment when I was at school in the 80s was to pull the OS ROM from a machine and read it, because I was sure they would have put something in that unused 3/4K ;)

I like the captions for the ads. Classic.

Yes please do episodes about other computers. I liked the introduction of the solar panel on desktop calculators. I had a Casio credit card size calculator and my girlfriend at the time had a Sharp scientific calculator for college. Thanks.

One of my first computers was a Coco 1 with 4KB! I eventually upgraded it to 16KB for only $150 (USD) but never had extended BASIC. I still have a Model 100 and I love the keyboard.

So cool! I used a TRS-80 in high school and I think I had that model of sharp calculator 🙂

Thanks for this quick retrospective with Easter eggs! I had a CoCo 1 shortly after it was released and enjoyed it a lot although it was not as well supported by books and magazines at the time. I moved on to C64 and my family sold the CoCo after a bit. I still have my Sharp EL-509H scientific calculator, similar to yours but simpler. Mine is not working properly now, unfortunately.

My eyes instantly locked onto that capacitor. Every Apple II user eventually becomes familiar with it.

Keep up doing work with all old computers :)

I never had access to one at home, but our high school had a few of the TRS-80 Model III (the first one you showed) in computer class. I was so disappointed when I got to class the first day and saw these. I had been using a C-64 for several years and had hoped they would have those. A lot of my friends had referred to these by the derogatory name "Trash-80's" but it didn't take long for me to get used to them. Still prefer the C-64 however.

I had a TRS80 PC1. Sold it to help pay for a PC2, which I still have. Neat machines, I learned to program on them.

Great video! Not being particularly anchored in Commodore history I appreciate the variety. I think Tandy rebadged pocket computers from a few different manufacturers over time for its pocket computer range. I had a Sharp PC-1246 back in the day, and a PC-1248 now with a sadly non-functional F key, but never had a Tandy badged one.

I remember fondly both the TRS80 Model 3 and the CoCo that my family owned.

the trs-80 coco 2 was my very first computer. man i miss them day's. alot of good time's playing on the coco2. i do recall the rainbow mag's as a kid. my dad subscribed to the rainbow mag's as a kid me and my dad used to fight to get to the mail fist to get the mag's

I love the space age design of the Model I & III

Love the content. Feel free to cover what moves you!

Aw man, the pocket and portable computers are awesome. As a kid (late 80s) I was dreaming of a pocket-able, basic programmable computer. Those would certainly have made me happy.

My first computer was a Pocket Computer which taught me Basic. I later worked at Radio Shack when the Mod 1 came out. I learned "machine language" on it. Later I installed a lower-case character set [piggy-back chip], I was so nervous when I had to cut two of the traces. My last was a Model 4 which had a graphics card upgrade. It felt so Hi-Res, lol.

I used a Radio Shack pocket computer in my college electronics in the mid 80's. They weren't aware of the programmability of it, so it was allowed in exams. Let's just say some formulas which were painfully slow to do by hand, could be solved rather rapidly with it. :)

7:15 speaking of Adrian's Digital Basement, he did a recent video about those BASIC pocket computers talking about the clones were all manufactured in Japan by Sharp; luckily yours has the display intact because there's a known issue with those liquid crystal units going dull after decades, even if you don't use and keep them inside their boxes

I had a coco1 in the late 90s I played with, grandparents gave it to me. I wrote a crap ton of basic stuff on it and even had a printer working with it. My mom had a coco2 when I was younger but I was too young to do anything useful with it until it died.

I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the battleship gray Model III. My middle school had one which had survived a hurricane tearing the roof off; if you held your tongue at just the right angle, it would boot and play a handful of game disks available for it. I was briefly a hero for being able to get it to run Galaxy Invasion, so we could play games instead of studying.

Although I had plenty of Radio Shack stores around me, I somehow ended up with a complete setup for a Dragon 64, complete with cassette, monitor and printer. My mom and I would send news letters in three columns to my brother in the Navy

I love these "other computer" vids as well. The C-64 will most likely always be my favorite, but I enjoy learning about the other systems, too, when you have the time. Speaking of other systems, do you have any plans to do any vids on the Commander X16?

Memory lane! Thanks :)

SepTANDY! love the idea! Will there be a DeCBMer?

Thank you for sharing this cool sheet pg13 adults can translate phrase...

About that pocket computer... the punctuation above the QWERTY line are in the same order as on a normal keyboard, only that normally they are on the number keys starting with 1... the Yen sign, thus, should be on the "6" which normally is an ampersand (at least on European keyboards). The ampersand itself seems to be absent on that computer though... although the Sharp model you show afterwards does have the ampersand on the Y (where it should be in the row) and the yen symbol on the 6 (where the ampersand would be on normal keyboards). I think that's quite funny... because actually, it would be a bit more logically the other way round since the ampersand looks similar to a 6 and the Yen symbol looks similar to a Y.

oh, the family name was Foster lol. I thought you were talking about a family that provided foster care for children

11:34: and it does complex numbers, too. Not many calculators did this in this time; I owned an TI 54 with this feature.

The Coco 3 easter egg was the best, but wasn't included in this video. CTRL+ALT+RESET showed a picture of the developers from MicroWare that worked on the Coco 3 basic and the company logo.

10:55 I've just looked at my Sharp PC-1245. Mine was sold in the UK, it does NOT have the Yen symbol marked above number 6, but shift-6 does display it. I did a ROM dump of this years ago, and there are about a dozen undocumented commands in the BASIC, some of which seem to work and other crash it. I built my own cassette interface for the side socket, and will demonstrate that on RU-vid when I find it again!

I worked at RS as well!

lol: "dad let me sit in front of the TV so I can see." The Model III is what most students, who took a computer class, used in my high school (in the states), in some sort of daisy chained network, c. 1984. (Also some Apple II machines)

If this keeps up, we'll need to get you a Radio Shack Security patch! ;) 11:09 - I have a Sharp EL-531GH which I used through high school and university (bought from Consumer's Distributing!). Looks like it is plastic version of the EL-545 with a couple of different functions. Sadly, I wasn't allowed to use it on mathematics examinations in university -- all calculators were routinely prohibited due to the rising popularity of graphing and programmable calculators of the time.

Growing up on the prairies, everyone I knew owned Tandy with a couple of Apples in the mix. I didn't know anyone that owned a Commodore! Probably was because Radio Shack was the only electronics store in most areas around me.

That Model 100 looks like it'd have been useful for 1983. Small yet functional keyboard.

I have the same blown on an amiga PSU i think! Good to know that’s a filter capacitor. With what part did you replace it? I dont think they are still available...

Wow, your Pocket Computer has a pristine screen...that's rare.

I have the Model 200, it is very slow! It is neat to have a portable basic machine though!

The second I saw that pocket computer, I was saying to myself "Those sure look like Sharp keys." I think having a 1-line "porthole" thru which to view BASIC code would have driven me crazy, but the multi-line display on the portable would be capable of real work. You could up a quickie program to keep track of your 80s era gas guzzler's fuel economy and run it right there in the car! At least that's what I would've done if I'd had one.

The TRS-80 Pocket Computer was a re-badged Sharp PC-1500 which I actually owned in 1980 as my first computer ever. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_PC-1500

Those prices man I wish I was collecting old computers back in 90ties and 00s

I remember finding the string "RUMMY BUZZARD" in the TRSDOS code on the Model III ... never did figure out what that was about all these years later.

I found your part 2 first - so then went looking for part one - and still I'm not getting what I came for - the earlier models !

The funny thing is Sharp got bids to make authorized "clones" of all sorts of japanese computers. They even had a line of there own computers i.e. The Shapr x6XXXX series.

Same 545 calculator! 🇨🇦

I have a few old TRS-80 computers. A Model 3, Model 4 and a Model 4P, but I have zero software to run on the things. Wish I could find at least some of the old DOS disks.

RIFA capacitors were the original "Easter Eggs" of the 80s era of both electronics & computing

Nice hiss

Ah yes the good old RIFA caps... first thing I replaced in the 2 model 4 machines I salvaged.