The 1970s saw a veritable goldrush to corner the home computer market, with Tandy’s Z80-powered TRS-80 probably one of the most (in)famous entries. Designed from the ground up to be as cheap as possible, the original (Model I) TRS-80 cut all corners management could get away with. The story of the TRS-80 Model I is the subject of a recent video by the [Little Car] YouTube channel.
Having the TRS-80 sold as an assembled computer was not a given, as kits were rather common back then, especially since Tandy’s Radio Shack stores had their roots in selling radio kits and the like, not computer systems. Ultimately the system was built around the lower-end 1.78 MHz Z80 MPU with the rudimentary Level I BASIC (later updated to Level II), though with a memory layout that made running the likes of CP/M impossible. The Model II would be sold later as a dedicated business machine, with the Model III being the actual upgrade to the Model I. You could also absolutely access online services like those of Compuserve on your TRS-80.
While it was appreciated that the TRS-80 (lovingly called the ‘Trash-80’ by some) had a real keyboard instead of a cheap membrane keyboard, the rest of the Model I hardware had plenty of issues, and new FCC regulations meant that the Model III was required as the Model I produced enough EMI to drown out nearby radios. Despite this, the Model I put Tandy on the map of home computers, opened the world of computing to many children and adults, with subsequent Tandy TRS-80 computers being released until 1991 with the Model 4.
Trash-80 indeed. One look from me across the room and it rebooted, losing work.
That infernal card-edge connector to the EI.
I hacked mine a bit, and painted the cases because I thought the ‘battleship grey’ was so boring.
Eventually I broke it to the point I couldn’t figure out and had to take it in. Henceforth the clerks called me “the boy with the green computer”.
Well the only problem I ever had from mine was the “T” key quit working. Got it fixed and it worked great until I switched to a Commodore 64.
“Dear Sir, I wish o make a complain. The ” key on my RS-80 has sopped working. Is i possible o repair i? Yours faihfully, im.”
Bwahahaha excellen
I once had a keyboard on a laptop fail in such a way that it would insert the number 9 randomly while typing, to include quite often when I hit the backspace key.
The text it produced was quite unhinged.
Did it sulk?
“Got it fixed and it worked great until I switched to a Commodore 64.”
You mean: as soon as you bought the C64, the TRS-80 broke down? It must have loved you and died from heartbreak. ;)
Ah, the TRS-80 Model I! I always enjoy telling people how it was my family’s first computer when we got it in 1987.
Yeah, it was then 10 years old. My first adventure in retrocomputing, you could say. (The next year we got an Apple IIgs, which remained the family computer until I built a 80386 machine in ’94.)
I really had no problems with mine. Having the schematics, it was obvious how to extend the RAM, add lowercase chars, abuse the cassette IO bits as serial interface, add some more frequencies to the CPU clock, … and when the disk drives were attached, heaven broke loose with available other languages, even CP/M if you cared for getting 64k instead of stopping with 48k RAM. The only thing I did not add was a better video circuit. 64×16 did not fit CP/M well. Basically that still is my main reason to feel nostalgia mainly for CP/M (which I later preferred to run on systems with 80 CpL) instead of the TRS-80. But it would have been doable.
Later I got a C64 because my father got infected by those and expected support. The C64 was far less fun for me. Unbearable keyboard, even less CpL than the M1, not really a serious palette of languages, but at least later the C128 again had a Z80 inside… ;-P
YMMV, mine surely does, so … PEACE!
After having read about the coming microcomputer revolution in electronics magazines for years, I got my first taste of programming at 14. Every afternoon after school, I rode my bicycle to the local Tandy store, and spent countless hours tapping on a TRS-80 4K Level 1 display computer, before a bemused audience of shoppers. It was a dream escape from a wretchedly dysfunctional school and home life.
I remember when these first came out and they had one at a local store. I had just begun my computing adventure the school year before, writing BASIC using a model 33 Teletype that was modem-connected to an HP 9000 minicomputer run by the school district. My school had only 3 terminals, and I would arrive an hour before classes started to use one. The idea of having a computer that was mine alone and always available was quite thrilling! That didn’t happen until about 5 years later when I was able to get a Commodore PET 4016 with an employee discount; US $577 (about 2k in today’s money)!
P.S. I worked at a dealership and upgraded it to an 8032 with the hour of it being delivered to us ;^)
Similar, in that my career start was in high school that I learned Basic on Teletypes hooked to a Vax. However didn’t get my ‘own’ computer until college which was a DEC Rainbow. By then Basic was long gone, and Pascal was in. On subject, at high school there was a couple of Trash 80s in the lab along with the teletypes which we poked at a few times.
A DEC rainbow is a pretty sweet “first computer”
HP 9000? They came out mid-80s (HP-UX 🤮)
And getting a new PET after 1980+ is nuts!
You’re right! I think it was in fact an HP 2000; the fact that I did support on the 9000’s later clouded my memory! After that, they replaced it with an IBM of some sort; it was very unreliable. Finally by high school, it was replace by something called a Magnasyn (sp?)
Also should have mentioned I got the PET somewhere between ’79 and ’80. It was great because I had all the schematics and parts from work, and was fun to hack on. I even tried to add an Atari POKEY chip (we serviced Atari, Compaq, Apple, etc.) once, but to no avail.
The TRS-80 is my retrocomputer of choice. I found one at a garage sale some years ago, and got deep into the hardware both to repair it, and build up some of the peripherals it didn’t come with. More than anything else, it taught me about how computers really work at the low level (fetch–execute cycle, address decoding, assembly, etc.).
Being raised on Arduino lets you do some cool stuff, but you don’t have to know how it works.
Sure, but “don’t have to” and “can’t in any practical sense” are different, don’t knock the tools kids have these days for having an easy mode when the rest is still there. Being able to teach a 8 year old how to independently build their own i/o systems more or less from the ground up is pretty gratifying.
That was my 1st computer too. I still have it & another model 1. I also have a number of CoCo’s too.
One of my best friends in high school got one. It was cool, but outside my budget (largely because I wanted a ’75 Firebird). I told him I’d get a home computer when they were under $100 and within two years the ZX81 was available as a kit!
I cut my teeth on the Model I in 1980, and have not stopped writing code. I spent my entire summer’s earnings from bussing tables on a 16K system. My mother was appalled, and my step-father urged me to consider the $99 Timex-Sinclair. If I had to use that ‘keyboard’ I might have quit.
I soon shifted to assembler since I was more electronics-oriented. I wrote a cassette tape ‘merge’ utility for managing libraries of subroutines. (The theory is that you would ‘merge’ your various pre-existing routines from a library tape into a new project to jump start work). Excruciatingly slow, of course, but I published it in a magazine unbeknownst to my parents. My biological dad started getting calls from all over the country inquiring about the program since we share the same name, and was initially confused but then realized saying “oh, you are trying to reach my son”. Folks asking me to port it to other systems. It was a bit awkward.
It’s a pity I had absolutely no business sense or interest — I thought code was just something you wrote to make the hardware go. Who would pay for such a thing?
I do remember the graphic used in the headline for this article and being a little bit annoyed because that system had nowhere nearly the resolution needed to produce the image depicted.
Of all images you could have used for the header, that stupid Compuserve ad was the worst you could have picked, because TRS-80 graphics were NEVER that good! With 128 x 48 fat and not-at-all-square white pixels on black, it had the “world’s worst graphics” of the 80s machines. Game writers like Big 5 did what they could, but compared to the Apple at school and the Commodores in other people’s homes, TRS-80 kids just had to be embarrassed. I mean, just look at the official TRS-80 versions of Frogger, Zaxxon, or Donkey Kong. Owners knew that ad was false advertising.
Ironically, the funny little hot chassis television with the TRS80 badge over the holes where the channel knobs were missing, actually had to display a 512×192 dot raster just to show those clunky ‘pixels’.
I had forgotten about this, the “why” of the whole arrangement was very confusing to me as a kid.
I had a Model I. Terrible keyboard bounce but fixable with a hardware modification.
I honestly don’t understand the hate from some commentators here.
I had a TRS-80 Mod I that I earned as a kid, piece-by-piece, through hard work (primarily mowing lawns) and later through trade and acquisition of broken stuff other people didn’t want.
The cabinet screws were removed the day after the warranty ran out, and by the time my “trash 80” days were through, I’d max’d the RAM, added floppy drives, com port, modem, added a numeric keypad, lower-case, reverse video, the rare speech recognition accessory, and the rare Votrax speech synth box, (though I eventually added an SC-O1 internal to the keyboard). I used a modified DEC LA36 as a printer. I even connected a TRS-80 to an IBM keypunch. An article about that appears on my website.
Yes, the expansion edge connector was less than perfect. If you kept it clean it was fine and I never lost any work. By modern standards, the “graphics” capabilities were stone-age. But I can tell you I was never “embarrassed” because my system didn’t play some stupid video game.
Tandy did what all manufacturers do (some better than others): Design a product that successfully balanced the mutually exclusive goals of high performance/feature-rich with cost. Were there better computers available at the time? Yes. I’d have installed a VAX 11/780 in my bedroom if there was any way to procure one by cutting grass. But that wasn’t going to happen. In the end, a computer you have is worth infinitely more than one you don’t
In the end, while I won’t say this computer is THE reason I later became an EE, the skills I learned on that machine enhanced my skills and capabilities. My boyhood investment in the machine ( that some here claim sucks) ultimately fed me, clothed me, and paid my bills for years.
is it hate, or fond recollection of shared suffering? the Model II was much more ‘seriously’ designed, but largely failed — I assume for cost.
the simplicity of the system, the openness in providing schematics, and the abundance of reverse-engineered details in “the alternate source”, “xxx & Other Mysteries”, and myriad Dennis Bathory Kitsz articles made it ripe for hackers with a self-funded budget and no fear of a soldering iron.
But that’s my point… I didn’t “suffer” anything. For what it was, the Mod I was a fantastic machine.
Since you mentioned the Model II, I’d add this:
The owner of a local medical business purchased a Mod II system, and then realized he had no earthly idea how to make it work. He called the Radio Shack he’d purchased it from and asked if they could recommend anyone to help him. The manager thumbed through his address list (remember how Radio Shack always asked for your address when they wrote up a receipt?) and pulled up my name. He told the business owner, “go call this kid.” That kid was me. So I’d add to my accolades for the Mod I, that it was directly responsible for me landing my first real job with a printed paycheck, and I didn’t even have to show up to an interview.
I worked for that business 3 or 4 years, until they were bought out by another operation. I helped them with spreadsheets, database stuff, and custom programs I wrote to provide data extraction ( for data the stock programs couldn’t provide.) The Mod II had 8″ floppies and a really nice Daisywheel printer on it, but I didn’t like it as much as my Model I, to be honest.
At the time, I discovered a nuance to the 8-inch drives you might find interesting. We had the occasional power-outage . If that happened while a floppy was in the drive (whether reading, writing, or doing nothing) the odds were better than 4:1 that the floppy would be corrupted.
Through some epiphany, I determined that this corruption did NOT occur when the power dropped, but rather, when it came back on! This inspired me to create box with a cord, a couple of duplex outlets, and a relay set up in a latching configuration. You plugged it in, pressed a “reset” button, the relay would latch “on,” and the outlets would go live. If the power subsequently dropped, the relay would drop out, and even if the power returned, the outlets would remain dead until you purposefully reset them. That would give you the opportunity to remove any disks in the drive before resetting my contraption.
If they’d been available at the time, I’d have specified a small UPS, but with our Model II’s plugged into my gizmo, I never experienced another power-induced corruption on the floppy disk, again.
I later helped them set up a Tandy 16B running Xenix (Unix)… we had four “dumb” terminals attached to that system. It even had a <gasp!> 8 MEG hard drive! The 16B featured both a Z80 and a Motorola 68000, if I remember correctly. You could boot to TRSDOS (and even CPM) to run on the Z80, but when Xenix was up, it ran on the 68000, while the Z80 performed I/O. I’d LOVE to have a working example of that system, even now. It was pretty cool.
The Model II did not fail; it was hugely successful. It wasn’t a replacement for the Model I but intended for the small business market. It was competing more with minicomputers where it was considerably less expensive.
It was followed by the Model 12 and then the Model 16 and 6000 which featured a 68000 processor and could run Xenix.
I suppose that is true now that you mention the continuity of the line to the other models.
I had forgotten about the Model 12…. Never had opportunity to mess with that one, though.
Many years ago, I bought an Atari joystick that connected to the I/O port on the Model I or Model III. As I remember, it was somewhat pricey. When it arrived, I found that it was simply one small IC and an edge connector on a PCB, wired to the joystick. The part number was sanded off the IC. I was angry at the price, so I reverse engineered it. Turns out it was only a quad NAND gate. I don’t remember how it was wired.
teehee; the lowercase mod sold for $100 but you could buy the 2112 1kx1 sram from radio shack themselves for something like 2-3 bucks and do it yourself! (OK earlier units also needed a new chargen rom, but later ones did not)
Ah, yes. The Model I was my first computer while working at my local Radio Shack as a high-schooler. Taught myself interpreted BASIC. Wrote some simple games on the CoCo. Then, bought the Model 4 with the high-rez upgrade and kept going. Took a funny, regressive semester back at school, programming with an acoustic-coupled terminal to a mainframe using punch-tape for code storage. What a joke! :-)
Added the IBM-PC clone with the RF monitor that showed color with some black-and-white phase trickery. Went on to a career as a programmer/analyst with dBase III+, Pic Basic on a mini-computer, and beyond.
Loved my Trash-80 days.
“Added the IBM-PC clone with the RF monitor that showed color with some black-and-white phase trickery.”
These are NTSC artifact colors, I think. Also works via composite.
In retro computing, the term “Composite CGA” also is sometimes used.
The Apple II used a similiar trick, I think. Games used it to get around color limitation.
It’s a curiosity that US Patent 4,564,902 for the Model I was issued Jan 14, 1986, five years after the product’s discontinuation.
I remember wondering at the time (82?) how it was that machines like the LNW-80 could exist, while in the Apple world, things like the Franklin were hounded into oblivion.
We had TRS 80 computers in high school for computer lab. My best friend had one at home and I decided to go above and beyond for my homework and worked days at his house perfecting my program. I saved the work to cassette tape and then threw my books and programs behind the back seat of my 63 Volkswagen bug. They have a generator not an alternator. My tapes were right on top of it and it erased all my hard work!
You forget that it also defined the ‘keyboard and computer in a wedge-shaped box” (kaciawsb) format, which became the inspiration for the next generation of home computers like the VIC20, Commodore C64 and Atari 600/800 XL. :)
Even Apple’s Lisa held onto some of that “works & keyboard in shared box” design ethos… at least Apple eventually learned how to design a sweet keyboard somewhere around 2007… still screwing up pretty bad for being the ones who commercialized the Mouse, tho…
And then for the Model III, R.S. went for the PET style, everything in one big piece. Too bad it didn’t open up as easily as the PET though.
I wrote my first lines of code on my neighbours VIC20 (typed them in from the manual). But learned to program on a TRS-80. The computer lab of my high school had like 8 TRS-80’s and 2 Apple II’s. Programming lessons were given with the TRS-80’s, and I learned to program. A few months after, my dad bought our neighbour’s old Nascom 1 (which he had replaced with the VIC20). And by then I was able to write programs myself. And I’ve been a ‘programmer’ ever since. :)
I have fond memories of the TRS-80’s. I finally got my hands on one that wasn’t working, somewhere around 2018. Fixed it up, but well, found out that it was history past. It wasn’t quite so amazing as I remembered. So I sold it again, and hopefully made someone else happy with it.
I remember reading a review of the TRS-80 model 1 in Byte (I think), where the writer was lyrical about the TRS-80 being one of the first “turnkey” computers. You bought it, unpacked it, set it up, switched it on, and you could immediately start working. Quite an improvement over the Altair 8800, which was the other affordable computer at the time. Or for that matter, the Nascom 1, which you even had to solder together before you could even start thinking of using it.
I worked at Mostek around that timeframe. Folks in the memory (RAM) groups readily said that Tandy bought barrels of rejected memory ICs for the TRS-80. That’s how it got the name TRASH 80.
I had a Video Genie from EACA. I loved it. It was my second computer, after getting a ZX80 about a year previously. The Video Genie was 100% compatible with the TRS80, and had an integral cassette deck, and faux wooden end cheeks.
It was my pride and joy, and that, and my ZX80, were the start of a long and happy career. I still have the ZX80. Sadly I got rid of the Video Genie about 30 years ago. At the same time that I threw away an Apple II, that had been given to me by a friend, and I had never even unpacked. That was an error!