TRS-80 DT-1 Refurb Pt2: Cleaning and Testing |  

USA: lots of cool vintage computers Other countries: $60 used 4:3 LCD

I just finished watching part 1 and part 2, and have not the slightest clue as to what I watched, but I did finish the video with tons of charged nostalgia, a better understanding of my father's generation, a deeper appreciation for coding, and feeling as if I've known this guy for years.

It's kinda amazing and crazy that modern day Linux can still support this ancient terminal.

Get yourself someone that looks at you like AkBKukU looks at his terminal.

#septandy is seriously the best thing ever, along with your channel.

Excellent way to watch ASCII Star Wars!!!

Wow that is awesome! The first computer that I used is the Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 Model III. It was a silver and black computer instead of beige and black like your TRS-80. It had two 5 1/4 floppy disk drives on the right side of the monitor, right where the black plastic cover and the Radio Shack logo is on your TRS-80. It used TRSDOS as it's operating system, and then for word processing, it used SCRIPSIT. I used that word processing software a lot to create documents, and print some of those using the Radio Shack dot matrix printer. I also used the TRS-80 Model III to create programs in BASIC. For the microprocessor, it had the original Z-80 that runs at 2 Mhz. The memory is so tiny at 48 Kilobytes. It came with the manual book and I still remember that in the introduction, it says that "just 20 years ago, (prior to 1980, so that is around 1960) the computer with the same power as the TRS-80 will fill the entire auditorium". That is so funny considering the level of technology that is available to us today. But I owe that old computer a lot because it opened my eyes to computers when I was just a kid and was able to learn and love the computers ever since.

14:50 wow, the reversing shows where any phosphor can actually hit and make a glow. It's amazing how little of the screen is actually even available, let alone in use at any one time

This is without doubt the best video about a TRS-80 DT-1 I have ever seen - other than the part 1 which accompanies it, of course.

Green text? This is begging for an ncurses Matrix "digital rain" demo!

She really is a beaute. Makes me want to finally get around to fixin' up a Model 4 I got at a charity auction for $1 back in 1999. It worked great for a while. But the keys are unresponsive due to the issue you mention in part 1. The foam is starting to deteriorate too and I don't think the conductive pads are hitting the contacts. Debating on the fabricated foam jobs I've seen other folks do. Regardless, for some reason I like the idea this sweet TRS-80-eske machine being a terminal more than an independent computer. Great job as always dude and very motivational!

vi(m) tip: to change a single character, position the cursor on what you intend to change press r to (r)eplace then the character you want to change it to. That d-l-i-{charcater}-Esc is a lot of extra typing.

"You like to see people clean old computers" -VWestlife. Yes, you cleanning that Tandy was totally satisfying!

In one sense, this keyboard layout is WRONG. The actual TRS-80 computers used a pretty conventional teletype-style layout, which is what you'd expect on a dedicated serial VDU like the DT-1, but instead it's using a Selectric-based layout (the easiest indicator is the position of the double-quote, on a teletype-derived layout, this is on SHIFT-2, but on a Selectric-based layout, it's down by the ENTER key). Teletype-derived keyboard layouts were pretty common on early personal computers, until IBM compatibles and their Selectric-derived keyboard pretty much took over the market. The most recent device I've seen that has a teletype-derived keyboard layout was a Nokia E75 prototype, although the production version dropped this for the layout Nokia was using for slide-out phone keyboards at the time. The greenscreen suggests this may be from 1984, as a chip-count-reduce (and much more easily RAM upgradable) version of the TRS-80 Model 4 released in 1984 with a greenscreen instead of the white screens used earlier. (Assuming this was using parts acquired through the same channels as the Model 4, which seems likely since the most unique thing about the line is the case, which is identical, that would make sense.) After much digging I finally located the manuals for this beast over on nightfallcrew.com and verified this actual came out the year before the Model IV, so you could consider the Model IV to be like DEC's PDT-11/110 and PDT-11/130, instances where a computer was installed into a terminal case(those two DEC machines are PDP-11s squeezed into DT-100 terminals). (The idea that this case was meant for a terminal rather than a computer would explain the awkward and difficult to disassemble internals of the Model III and Model 4.) Incidentally, from the description ran into, a green-screen Model 4 should be MUCH easier to disassemble without breaking anything. They have the riser board functions integrated into the main board (the chip count reduction from using the then relatively new programmable logic chips allowed a lot of logic chips to be replaced with a few larger chips, freeing up board space to move the riser board functions to the mainboard. This made it cheaper to manufacture, increased reliability by getting rid of board-to-board interconnects, and should make it much easier to get inside of.

I found an 80s WYSE terminal with amber screen in the ewaste of my uni department. That thing sells for $250 on ebay. It can even do graphics, got it to work with gnuplot.

Great work cleaning it up. Using it as a linux terminal through a serial adapter was really cool even if there are limitations.

This is so awesome. It's so cool to see a retro piece of hardware interacting with modern hardware and still have a practical use. Back in college during my undergrad in electrical engineering just a few years ago I did a lot of work through a linux terminal to access the schools software and I would have definitely been the coolest kid in town writing verilog on this retro beast of a machine.

Wow! put Rasbury pie +Linux board in your terminal and you have a modern computer. Too cool, thanks for posting this!

Regardless of the choice of tools used: Loved that cleaning montage / time lapse - really great with the sound being sped up 😁👍

Awesome video once again. Thank you for sharing and explaining how you go about it and telling technical details about the parts and/or background info about the terminal itself. Thank you!

The Televideo terminals (that this is emulating) didn't have per-character-cell attributes for bold/underline/reverse video etc, and just stored the escape codes to enter that mode in the screen memory; that's why you're seeing blank character cells when you go into, or out of, bold text. DEC VT220 series could have per-character cell attributes, so looks considerably nicer. Teletext / Viewdata displays (like the BBC micro video mode 7) also has the same issue.

Thanks for showing Tandy some love. I hope you and others do another #septandy

Great job dude! But I wanted to recommend toothbrushes for cleaning plastics as well as PCBs! A firm one gets into the textured plastic surfaces to really clean away grime in a way that paper towels never will , and a soft one is perfect for boards with even the smallest of SMD components. Not to mention the reduction of waste and implied cost savings.

Love restoration videos so much :D

That is SUPER COOL. It's been forever since I've seen a proper TRS-80 terminal like that. I think I was around 10 years old the last time. The fact that you got it working with modern linux just makes me geek out even more! I hope you do some more Tandy/Radio Shack stuff in the near future.

please use a tooth brush rather than paper towel.... so much more efficient and better results :D

A few years ago, I tossed hundreds of old VT-100 Dumb terminals into a giant industrial dumpster. I never imagined anyone would want one. We had upgraded to a windows networked system from a Unix many years before and they were sitting in storage.

Good on you for restoring this DT-1. Never saw one of these in the wild outside of the Radio Shack catalogs. I still have my original Model IV in storage, along with a spare, and these sorts of videos sure do help in giving me the courage to try to bring them back to life. I remember when buying the IV I made a point to make sure that I was getting one of the (then) new green phosphor models. Later I would replace it with a red CRT bought through an ad in 80-Micro(?). Quite a unique look. One of my first PC mods. LOL

Nice video, but your vim commands at 19:30 make me weep. :-) You hit "l" (char right) about 15 times to get to the edit point. would get you there in two keystrokes. Then you to delete one letter. does both in one step. Then you hit . All of that could have been done by

Looks like the termcap keyword for this thing is "tvi910" for the Televideo Model 910. You have looked into stty for rows, cols, and export TERM=xxx and such I hope. I do not miss the days of memorizing exact terminal capabilities then matching them with my host. Always wanted a real, amber vt100.

Love to see it hooked up to another trs 80

YES! That is super cool to see running!

love how this turned out, you've made terminals seem very appealing

Ideally you shouuuld be able to just change your TERM variable to screen instead of actually having to wrap your session in screen itself. I might be wrong about that though. Nice job cleaning this up and getting it working! It's awesome to see such a great piece of tech up and working great ^^

For the black plastic, I've found that Maguire's Interior Detailer spray works very well. Cleans and makes blacks more black, without a sheen. Masks some of the scuffing as well.

In 1982 you would either buy IBM if you had the money, or you would buy a TRS-80, which was the proletarian alternative. Unfortunately the device you bought shows its proletarian background. So incredibly dirty. Thanks for the cleanup and restoration.

Get that wifi serial dongle and connect it to a raspberry pi.

nice work! I recently brought my old Kaypro II computer back to life. Video on my channel, first thing I did was replace that RIFA CAP as well so good call there brother!

What a great project! You've got contagious enthusiasm.

You could try to play nethack or zangband, it can be apotheosic to see that in a TRS-80 xD

Glad you got it wokring and polished so well! What a trip

Fascinating. You make really interesting videos and are so enthusiastic. It's a breath if fresh air. Thank you. Really enjoyable. Ps: was the white screen display maybe in a black and white photo?

Another RU-vidr tried out a substance intended for rejuvenating black plastic on car interiors and exteriors. It restored bleached out computer case parts pretty nicely. And btw, awesome project. Who needs a terminal emulator if you have a fifteen kilo TERMINAL?

super jealous. the terminal i lust over the most is the HP 264X. i live my life in GNUscreen so with a bit of work a serial terminal would be as usable for me as my regular machine.

Life before VT100 is a little like trying to imagine Earth before water.

Green phosphor is a classic look but I prefer amber - easier on the eyes

great project! loved watching these two videos and looking forward to more. thanks!!

To unsweat your cleaning method: Use soap (dish-washer) and warm/hot water first (bucket and towel) and let it rest for a minute or so and wipe it off. This is to soften dirt. After this you can clean it with a toothbrush and alcohol, wait a while and wipe it off. Better is to take it apart and make it swim in the bathroom in soapy water for a while and rinse it with a warm shower bath. Dry it with a dry cloth. The inside is also cleaned, any corner, any part. To restore the plastics a bit, I use furniture oil (I use "pledge" for this), a thick layer and let it sit overnight. Next day, use a clean cloth to wipe of the residue (if is there is any left) and the result is amazing! Especially black or dark colored plastic revive completely to it's original glory. This is also very usable when plastic has some white spots or uneven coloring, it will disapear completely. "pledge" is awesome.

This is a good video for showing how the technology of today is build on the foundation that is the technology of yesterday. IE no modern computer without the coding that ran the computers of old. :)

Didn't you just show your password at 23:44 ?

Use lighter fluid to remove the glue. It won't damage the paint. Apply 303 to bring back the finish.

For using the command outside of screen try: user@host$ TERM=tv910; export TERM See also: alpine, calcurse, (e)links/Lynx, mc, kpcli3, weechat/irssi, newsboat to start. In general the fastest speed that the Tandy could do was 19.2Kbps. It was not super reliable at that speed. If you wanted faster you had to get a Televideo 920 or 950, Vt100, or other 'name brand' terminal. If you are having real trouble with 19.2 Kbps then it might be your usb to RS232 device. Those usually have a hard time going above 9600.

Good catch noticing that old style cap that needed to be replaced. One thing I would have tried would be to use a small piece of wire to bridge the broken bit of the PCB instead of relying solely on solder. At 19:34 you could have type "r0" to change the character instead of using delete then insert. I hope the password you typed in near the end isn't your normal real password. Nice ending for the video. I recognized you had ASCII Star Wars running.

You can now contact the operator for extraction.... Way to go!

Wow. I didn't even know Tandy made a terminal.

for improved reliability at higher baudrates, perhaps try using 2 stop bits instead of 1

Well it'd be awesome to see this in action, before #OcTandy rolls out :p

This was my first ever computer WOW have seen one in 30 odd year!! cool.

Hey I'm really enjoying your channel! Found via Mr Lurch and thanks to #SepTandy! 👍

silly question, why not make up a termcap for it so that you don't need all those terminal hacks :D

I usually use a little Comet or Ajax and a damp washcloth to clean really dirty textured cases like that

You could try using WD-40 to remove adhesive residue from plastics. I've found it works really well.

Use Armor All on that plastic part at the beginning of the video. It'll bring out a beautiful shine.

Small suggestion to make it more usable - if you dedicate an RPi or smilar SBC to it you should be able to do all the terminal wrapper config on one machine, once (the SBC obv), and turn it into an ethernet terminal you can connect to any machine with using SSH or telnet. You can probably get the SBC to fit inside the unit without modding the case, or it would be dead easy to hide/attach behind.

It cleaned up beautifully! Great work :-)

Trs-80's used Flat Ribbon Cable's for the 25-Pin socket, Made the RS-232 hook up for the Cable..

Sometimes with dirt it is best to maybe leave the cleaner to soak for a few minutes and let the cleaner actually do its work. Recently I cleaned a few old computers and just leaving the plastic parts to soak for a bit sometimes does wonders.

Just strip everything and wash it in the bath using a nail brush with warm water, dishwashing liquid and maybe a bit of vim scouring power. It's very quick with awesome results.

Awesome! Thanks a lot for sharing emotions as well :)

Scandinavian tip... tape, glue, residue, just use oil. Cocking oil. Rub it in and it will resolve any crap still on any surface. Fixed my 20 years old win Xp style touch computer.

Nice! I didn't know about that usages of the screen command. It does seem to help with some issues I've had with some apps on the wyse terminal I've been playing with.

Get a modem and start up an old fashioned bbs (or emulate one online).

To save yourself so much trouble cleaning, drop the tube out (face down on a towel so not to scratch the glass) and throw the chassis into a tub. Spray it with 409, casually work it around with a sponge and then rinse. Spot clean with the melamine sponges, then give a final pass with soapy water and rinse. It will be far less stressful on the plastics (and your poor arms), but you'll also be able to clean the interior!

Glue marks from scotch tape, price stickers and such may be washed off with sunflower oil. It doesn't work immediately, you have let it soak into the glue layer (e.g. press a piece of soft cloth soaked in oil to it), and you should wipe well after the glue softens, as otherwise you'll just smear it all over the place. I use refined oil for that, don't about how would unrefined oil work.

for the adheasive, wd-40 should work well, I've used it on A fair number of charity shop finds to remove price sticker residue, or where they've decided to tape the cables to electronics.

It's been a loooooong time since I've seen or used a terminal, but it's really cool. I'm surprised the software is _still_ compatible even today! Didn't catch it in the video, but what protocol did you use to connect? Most-likely not SSH, so I'm curious.

That video made me happy :)

AkBKukU, did you or do you watch Mindhunter on Netflix? There's a scene in a hotel in Atlanta, ostensibly in the early 1980s, all the terminals for the hotel employees at the front desk are Model-4's. They look gorgeous, too.

For higher baud rate, maybe you need hw flow control.

Awesome video. Could be completely wrong here but I wonder if the faster baud rates didn't work because flow control wasn't used? Could be the machine can't keep up at higher than 9600 speeds and might require flow control to allow it to hold the comms whilst it catches up. Just a thought. Very nice machine you got there.

Good video and he’s watching stars wars in ascii nice :-)

Put a Raspberry in this DT-1 will be super cool. An entire Linux system inside of it with an internet connection and anything else.

What is that "Wuff ---- Wuff!!" thing showing up on tab completion?

I think something that might be cool is to mount a Raspberry Pi inside. Run Linux/Raspbian on the Pi, and basically have the Pi do two things. One , find out of the four data terminals it emulates is the MOST versatile, then program the Pi to talk to the DT-1 in that format... Two, take step one even further, have the Pi know ALL the formats the DT-1 talks in, and be able to switch between them. The Pi can be a simple and easy to use computer to make the DT-1 into a very basic Linux computer, or even one with a GPIO port. However more importantly than using the DT-1 and a Pi as a computer system is to Teach the PI how to emulate ALL the various terminals to OTHER computers, and act as an interface so the terminal can connect VIA serial USB, RS-232, WiFi and Bluetooth. A Pi Zero would work fine for this, as it CAN it has WiFi and Bluetooth, and can has GPIO that can send and receive data in various formats, and various Pi Hats can add sound and other things. Mount the Pi where the SD card and USB is accessible (outside back cover). Add a USB hub and an external keyboard can also be attached AND echo to the screen VIA the Pi. Also a monitor attached to the Pi allows a separate graphics screen. Sorry... I just got a Raspberry Pi, and got it up and running without attaching a monitor, keyboard or mouse to it. It shows up on my network and I login VIA realVNC or SSH. This little thing is great and I am looking to interface it with a vintage computer. So...

he hits the space bar with his index finger like psychopaths do

This video was great. My first thought was "VIM can't handle 2-color monochrome? Sounds like a point for Emacs." But yeah I think you can also turn off context highlighting in VIM; then you wouldn't have to rely on screen to hide it. Not that you shouldn't use screen, you just might end up with other weird artifacts by not addressing the underlying issue.

Honestly that's brilliant.

Those orgasmic happiness noises lol

Take Raspberry Pi 0W/3/4, connect TTL-Serial adapter (like MAX232) to GPIO port, leave Pi inside and you have a very, very Pi workstation 😁

You could put a Pi3 and voila! SSH enabled terminal

Love that series!!

"Needs cleaned"... I'm guessing you're from the Pittsburgh region?

I like the style of the character set :)

That's honestly super cool. What do you plan on using this for as a more permanent solution? I'm interested to know. Also a side note apt-get may be friendlier for displaying things in this than apt, they actually have different text outputs.

more like switching to a text TTY instead of graphical. ;) on Ubuntu, CTRL-ALT-F2. Default graphical is on CTRL-ALT-F7 if you want to switch back. An x terminal has different idiosyncracies that don't really transfer as well. (and agreed, a lot you can do from terminal. whenever I update my system I use a terminal to do it)

A little late to the party but bonus for Telnet Star Wars!

Awesome Sauce!

I was expecting something unusual compact Tablet size PC from 80s 😂🍿

I wish someone would look at me the way you look at the TRS-80 at the end

Magic Eraser is Magic.