• Today in History - 1977

    From Dave Drum@1:18/200 to All on Thu Aug 3 05:23:00 2023
    CROSSPOSTED FROM NATIONAL COOKING ECHO

    03 August 1977 - RADIO SHACK UNVEILS THE TRS-80 COMPUTER: Tandy
    announces one of the first mass-market home computers, the TRS-80, to be
    sold in its Radio Shack stores. It features 4K of RAM and sells for $399
    (or $599 with a monitor and tape recorder for storage). Upgrades will
    keep various TRS-80 models on the market until 1991.

    The TRS-80 had a full-stroke QWERTY keyboard, the Zilog Z80 processor, 4
    KB dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) standard memory, small size and
    desk area, floating-point Level I BASIC language interpreter in
    read-only memory (ROM), 64-character per line video monitor, and a
    starting price of US$600 (equivalent to US$2,900 in 2022). A cassette
    tape drive for program storage was included in the original package.

    MMMMM----- Recipe via Meal-Master (tm) v8.06

    Title: Trash
    Categories: Desserts, Fruits, Chocolate, Grains, Nuts
    Yield: 24 Servings

    1/2 c Butter; melted
    6 oz Pkg chocolate chips
    1 c Creamy peanut butter
    18 oz Box Kix cereal
    16 oz Box raisins
    1 c Unsalted peanuts
    Confectioner's sugar

    Mix butter, chocolate chips and peanut butter together
    over low heat and stir until all are melted.

    Mix Kix, raisins, and peanuts together.

    Pour wet mixture over dry. Mix thoroughly.

    Toss with confectioner's sugar.

    Start with 1 cup and add more if mixture doesn't look
    like it is coated well.

    Store in airtight container.

    From: http://www.recipelink.com

    Uncle Dirty Dave's Archives

    MMMMM

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  • From Sean Dennis@1:18/200 to Dave Drum on Thu Aug 3 10:51:10 2023
    Hello, Dave!

    Replying to a message of Dave Drum to All:

    03 August 1977 - RADIO SHACK UNVEILS THE TRS-80 COMPUTER: Tandy
    announces one of the first mass-market home computers, the TRS-80, to
    be sold in its Radio Shack stores. It features 4K of RAM and sells
    for $399 (or $599 with a monitor and tape recorder for storage).
    Upgrades will keep various TRS-80 models on the market until 1991.

    A TRS-80 CoCo 2 was my first "real" computer and what I taught myself BASIC on. Still miss that computer (it was stolen decades ago).

    -- Sean

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  • From Dave Drum@1:261/38 to Sean Dennis on Fri Aug 4 06:35:08 2023
    Sean Dennis wrote to Dave Drum <=-

    03 August 1977 - RADIO SHACK UNVEILS THE TRS-80 COMPUTER: Tandy
    announces one of the first mass-market home computers, the TRS-80, to
    be sold in its Radio Shack stores. It features 4K of RAM and sells
    for $399 (or $599 with a monitor and tape recorder for storage).
    Upgrades will keep various TRS-80 models on the market until 1991.

    A TRS-80 CoCo 2 was my first "real" computer and what I taught myself BASIC on.
    Still miss that computer (it was stolen decades ago).

    My first "store-bought" confuser was the TraSh-80 Model I - with the level 2 roms/basic. At the time Radio Shaft offered a 33% discount on purchases over U$100 if you were a shareholder. So, I trudged down to Shearson/ American Express and bought 10 shares of Tandy for under U$200. Saved more than that on my purchase and held onto the stock for about 15 years.

    It never paid a dividend but would split (sometimes 3 for i) when a price hit a certain point. When I sold out I got U$3300 for my holdings. Bv)=

    ... If fruit rots, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do

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  • From Ross Branham@1:267/159 to Dave Drum on Sat Aug 5 12:37:30 2023
    Believe it or not, we still use a TRS-80 model4 where I work. It run a proprietary enraving machine. Still runs strong. We do have some non working ones for spare parts.

    It was the first computer I ever used.

    |02-=|10Cozmo|02=-

    ... I think I am, therefore, I am... I think.

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  • From Dave Drum@1:229/452 to Ross Branham on Sun Aug 6 05:51:14 2023
    Ross Branham wrote to Dave Drum <=-

    Believe it or not, we still use a TRS-80 model4 where I work. It run a proprietary enraving machine. Still runs strong. We do have some non working ones for spare parts.

    It was the first computer I ever used.

    I moved on to the Commode Door 64 after the TRaSh-80. A number of those
    are still in service (the motherboards anyweay) with NOAA reporting on
    tides and monitoring costal oceanographic data.

    And one of the last remaining video rental companies in USA (Family
    Video) ran their whole company on a Tandy 1000 using home brewed Linux
    software until their demise last year. It was head-quartered just a mile
    or so from my house.

    ... MS-DOS=Christianity; Mac=Bhuddism; Amiga=Pagan sex magick

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  • From Ross Branham@1:267/159 to Dave Drum on Sun Aug 6 09:14:11 2023
    I moved on to the Commode Door 64 after the TRaSh-80. A number of those are still in service (the motherboards anyweay) with NOAA reporting on tides and monitoring costal oceanographic data.
    And one of the last remaining video rental companies in USA (Family
    Video) ran their whole company on a Tandy 1000 using home brewed Linux software until their demise last year. It was head-quartered just a mile or so from my house

    I would like to know what other old computers are being used for daily business use. It's amazing to me that they're still in use as old as they are.

    |02-=|10Cozmo|02=-

    ... Redundant book title: DOS For Dummies

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  • From Richard Falken@1:135/115 to Ross Branham on Tue Aug 8 09:38:44 2023
    Re: Re: Today in History - 1977
    By: Ross Branham to Dave Drum on Sun Aug 06 2023 09:14 am

    I would like to know what other old computers are being used for daily busin

    PDP-11 reported in use in a nuclear power plant. They don't plan to decomission the machinery until 2050.

    --
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  • From Kurt Weiske@1:218/700 to Richard Falken on Wed Aug 9 07:15:00 2023
    Richard Falken wrote to Ross Branham <=-

    PDP-11 reported in use in a nuclear power plant. They don't plan to decomission the machinery until 2050.

    I'd assume there's a 2038 event possible with the OS. Might be easier to emulate the OS with modern hardware?



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  • From Richard Falken@1:135/115 to Kurt Weiske on Thu Aug 10 04:00:57 2023
    Re: Re: Today in History - 1977
    By: Kurt Weiske to Richard Falken on Wed Aug 09 2023 07:15 am

    I'd assume there's a 2038 event possible with the OS. Might be easier to emulate the OS with modern hardware?

    Real sysadmins dial the system calendar back another 20 years and work with a fake date.

    --
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  • From Ed Vance@1:2320/105 to Dave Drum on Fri Feb 2 15:04:12 2024
    Howdy Dave,
    A friend I met at Church got a TRS-80 Model 1.
    Earlier he played with an 1802 ELF (believe that's the name).
    When the COMMODORE C=64 came out, he bought one.
    One day he told me it wasn't much fun typing BASIC Code in, running it and when he finished with that PRG he would type NEW and all the time and energy it took to type that PRG in was gone as he typed in some other code he wanted to try out.
    I told him about the circuit I saw in Popular Electronics that used a 7414 IC, in between a Cassette Recorder and the C=64's Cassette Port to Save his Code, and to CLoad it back into his PC when he wished to use that program again.
    That Circuit worked very well for him...UNTIL I got my own C=64, VIC Modem 300 and 1541Floppy Disk Drive.
    The Modem had a program on a cassette tape and I wanted to put that program on a Disk.
    I asked him to bring the Circuit he built and his cassette recorder to my home so I could Load the program from the tape to Save it on a floppy disk (I bought a 2-pack of SSSD 5-1/4" disks for $2.00 when I got the Disk Drive at K-Mart). When my friend saw how quickly the File was Saved on the disk, compared to the much longer time it took to Load it to my COMMODORE 64, his jaw dropped and he bought a disk drive the next day.
    BTW, He let me play with his 1802 ELF board some time later to type in the Star Trek program on the HEX Keypad it had.
    Good Days back then.
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  • From Dave Drum@1:3634/12 to Ed Vance on Sat Feb 3 05:28:00 2024
    Ed Vance wrote to Dave Drum <=-


    Howdy Dave,
    A friend I met at Church got a TRS-80 Model 1.
    Earlier he played with an 1802 ELF (believe that's the name).
    When the COMMODORE C=64 came out, he bought one.

    The TRS-80 was my first "store bought" computer. It surely was a leap up
    from the SWTP kit I bought from the back pages of Mechanix Illustrated.
    That arrived as a circuit board and loose parts in a plastic baggie. The assembly instructions were mimeographed on a single sheet of rough paper.
    No KBD and certainly no storage. When it powered down there went what
    had been so laboriously entered via the DIP switches.

    One day he told me it wasn't much fun typing BASIC Code in, running it
    and when he finished with that PRG he would type NEW and all the time
    and energy it took to type that PRG in was gone as he typed in some
    other code he wanted to try out.

    When Radio Shack introduced the TRS-80 there was a substantial discount offered to Tandy stockholders. So, off I went to Shearson-Lehman to buy
    10 shares. I saved the price of those shares with the discount. They
    never paid a dividend but the company would split the stock when its
    price hit a certain point. And when Tandy startede a new company I got
    some shares in that. By the time I sold out I had over 200 shares of
    Tandy and holdings in two start-ups. Part of that money bought my
    first Amiga 2000.

    I told him about the circuit I saw in Popular Electronics that used a
    7414 IC, in between a Cassette Recorder and the C=64's Cassette Port to Save his Code, and to CLoad it back into his PC when he wished to use
    that program again. That Circuit worked very well for him...UNTIL I got
    my own C=64, VIC Modem 300 and 1541Floppy Disk Drive.
    The Modem had a program on a cassette tape and I wanted to put that program on a Disk.
    I asked him to bring the Circuit he built and his cassette recorder to
    my home so I could Load the program from the tape to Save it on a
    floppy disk (I bought a 2-pack of SSSD 5-1/4" disks for $2.00 when I
    got the Disk Drive at K-Mart). When my friend saw how quickly the File

    I bought my C=64 after seeing a friend's VIC-20 with colour display. WOW!
    And the 1541 drive was only U$395.00. Later I picked up a Commodore PET
    8032 with dual floppies and a printer - that looked like it might have
    been the model for the H.A.L. computers from 2001 A Space Odyssey.

    was Saved on the disk, compared to the much longer time it took to Load
    it to my COMMODORE 64, his jaw dropped and he bought a disk drive the
    next day. BTW, He let me play with his 1802 ELF board some time later
    to type in the Star Trek program on the HEX Keypad it had.
    Good Days back then.

    The best thing about the good old days is that they're gone. Bv)=

    ... MS-DOS=suit & tie, Macintosh=cool shades, Amiga=high heels & leather
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