flashback friday TRS-80 Model III

Fri Jun 08, 2018

time for flashback friday

host image isn't working

in elementary school i was exposed and saw for the first time a personal computer, the apple 2c. i saw no pc anywhere else in school or library before this.

in junior high we were set in front of the computer to learn.

we had an actual computer lab.

the computer lab had this computer



Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 model III



specs

Model III

TRS-80 Model III

In July 1980, Tandy released the TRS-80 Model III. The improvements of the Model III over the Model I included:[66] built-in lowercase, a better keyboard with repeating keys, an enhanced character set, a real-time clock, 1500-baud cassette interface, a faster (2.03 MHz) Z-80 processor, and elimination of the cable spaghetti (due to its all-in-one enclosure). Furthermore, a Model III with two floppy drives required the use of only one electrical outlet (a two-drive Model I required five outlets: one each for the CPU/keyboard, Expansion Interface, Video Monitor, and the drives). Shortly after the Model III's introduction, Model I production was discontinued as it did not comply with new FCC regulations as of January 1, 1981 regarding electromagnetic interference.[20][35][67][6]

iirc it had 16 kilobytes of ram and it was extremely slow

it was black and white

there was one simple game where an object moves across a screen, and you had to time shooting it by pressing the space bar.

it got boring quickly.

we were shown for the first type we can type on the screen then print it on a dot matrix printer. it was amazing. crude and primitive but seemingly magical at the time

the school taught us how to touch type,
i learned how to touch type from TRS-80 Model III with just 16 kilobytes of memory

there was a typing tudor type program where it would flash letters and we had to type it out.

these TRS-80 Model III were all wired to a main computer by the teacher and would download this program to ours, and it took about 10 minutes to do it

it first introduced letters like jkjkjkjk then jujuju jmjmjm jkljkl asdfasdf aqaqswsw

so we do this for 40 minutes a day every day for a year and yeah i learned.

i know touch typing solely from TRS-80 Model III

the capabilities of this pc were very limited and it was very slow. it just wasn't that much fun.

hard for me to see how anyone would buy this. i asked the teacher how much these things cost and it was like $3000 in 1980 dollars.

its possible tandy radio shack gave schools an educational discount

hard to see why anyone would buy them and why anyone would make a career out of this

but from then to now i'd never imagine computers being what they are now.



the apple 2c i did want to buy but sadly my parents didn't see the purpose for it

Computers have come a long way. They were so big and bulky then.