Looking back the Trash-80 (an affectionate term) seems so very simple=20
and crude. Although many of us were working night & day on mainframes we=20
just had to have one of these things at home. BASIC was easy to grasp=20
for those already familiar with other programing languages. The lack of=20
an affordable printer inspired many to develop interfaces to what ever=20
was available. My path was first a Model 15 teletype machine, an IBM=20
Selectric typewriter and finally a console printer from an IBM=20
Mainframe. The Visicalc spreadsheet made it a real business machine. We=20
quickly learned to extend the floppy disk limits well beyond factory specs.
The Z80 CPU was never really exploited to its fullest. It had two=20
complete sets of identical registers that seemed to permit a immediate=20
context change with zero overhead. Unfortunately, the absence of=20
interrupts left little need to make a context switch. Radio Shack as a=20
business never embraced their lead in technology but always relied on=20
their short term business plan as a retailer. Their innovators found=20
enterprises that better met their needs.

On 4/10/2014 7:03 AM, RussellMc wrote:
> I had a friend who time share converted a TRS80 so that N of his students
> could use it at once.
> They came out in 1977 I see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80

--=20
John Ferrell W8CCW
"Kindness is the language the blind can see and the
deaf can hear." - Mark Twain


--=20
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