I miss my Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 2 (page 4)

Black Sheep

here's a question.. how many of you used BBS's back in the days? dial in with DOS, a terminal program, and a 2400 baud modem...eh?

I found my old modem last year and threw it out. Used it for for trading.

Jim_TX

"some say the "good old days" the rest of us know better"

Actually - they WERE the 'good old days' for me. If I didn't have my computer - I may have gone nuts. It felt good to be learning something new.

Regards,

Jim TX

P.S. Seeing the acoustic modem above reminded me of when I bought just the acoustic coupler - and built my own modem - which only worked at 300 baud - but it allowed me to log on to the main frame at work with my VIC-20 from home.

drwtsn32

My first was the Timex Sinclair 1000 (ZX81). Nice, McDonald's register-style keyboard.

Then I upgraded to a Commodore VIC-20 w/ tape drive. I still have that in the garage somewhere. I hooked it up to my 60" HDTV for kicks a few years back. 3583 bytes free for BASIC programs when you booted it up. Insane.

Midget-Sasquatch

My curiosity wasn't really stoked by the Apple IIe and the PET that we had in school (just those 2 for the whole school!) but I got hooked by my first computer system. I had the light beige and slimmer commodore C64c and then quickly added on the 1541ii floppy disk drive.

But that was a gate way drug to my harder addiction...the commodore Amiga. I had the 1000, the 500 and also a decently expanded 3000.

I've gotten nostalgic alot of times but the asking prices for a good condition 4000 are too ludicrously high. It's cheaper to get a mac.

garyneal

I held on to my TRaSh 80 machine until 1994 when I saved up enough money to purchase my old 486 machine.

It was leaps and bounds better than my old Tandy machine but I miss the simplicity of both machines actually. I never had a disk drive for my old Tandy and had to save everything to cassette tape, boy was that cumbersome. However, it wasn't until at least 3 months or so after I got the computer before I rigged up some kind of jig to make a regular household cassette player work with it. I never bought the official Tandy CCR cassette tape and cable for it.

I occassionally emulate it now with MESS but I screwed up my disk image containing all my written games I made for it. I suppose now that old code is somewhere in digital oblivion.

under the radar

I am surprised so many of us had computers "way back when." My first was a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1, which I bought in '80 or '81. It had the Expansion Interface, which allowed you to bring the memory all the way up to a whopping 48K (yes, that's right kids, "K") and connect floppy drives. I started out with 2 of the official Radio Shack TRS-80 35-track single-sided drives (5.25" floppies) and later upgraded to two 80-track double-sided floppy drives (I don't remember the manufacturer, maybe Siemens). Back then, disks came in single- and double-sided AND single- and double-density. A double-sided, double-density drive was a good as it got.

My first game cost me about $10 (and I still have it!). It was a "shoot down the aliens" kind of thing, but it could simulate a human voice and say, "Die, Human!" Remember, that was before there was any such thing as a sound card. TRS-DOS (the operating system) had its limitations, and I upgraded to something called DOS Plus when it first came out. I think I even have the old disk and manual for it up in my attic somewhere.

I learned how to write in BASIC using Dr. David McLean's book. Never was much good at it, but I did write a passable work scheduling program for myself and a very elementary computer version of the MasterMind game I already had. That was a cool game. You can still buy the real MasterMind game, both the electronic and the physical versions) in stores today.

Don't remember if I still had the Model 1 by then or had upgraded to the Model 4P, but I got a 300 (!) baud Hayes modem as soon as I could and signed up for CompuServe. Kind of an early internet. Later got a 1200 and then a 2400 baud Hayes modem. Still have them, mint condition. Bids, anyone? Anyway, I joined and experimented with several BBS's those first few years, but CompuServe was by far the best and most user friendly. Wonder if they're even still around? I think my UserID was something like 71143,54. Weird...

Anyway, thanks for the memories. I haven't thought of that old first computer of mine in years. I eventually sold it, and I'm sure it's in somebody's attic even as I type this. Model 1's still show up on eBay once in a while, and I know the Smithsonian has one.

I miss my Tandy TRS-80 Color Computer 2