Planet Geek

Retrocomputing

Geekitude

I admit I spent a lot of time working with older computers. But there was a time when there were no 'older computers' that I could get my hands on, and I was working with state of the art machinery.

Like Tandy / Radio Shack TRS-80's.

Yes, that's what I learned on. BASIC, Z80 assembler, the whole schlamiel back in high school. Occasionally I get a hankering to go back and noodle with these fossils. Fortunately, some folks have written some cute little apps that let me go back and tinker, just like it were 1982.

Mocha is a dead on copy of the original COCO, aka the Color Computer. Radio Shacks first real foray into 'color' 'home' systems (this was built in direct competition with the Commodore VIC-20 and the Apple II). I never really got into the Coco - it came out after I had moved on to different machines.

However, the TRS-80's, starting with the Model 1 and through to the Model III - these were my bread and butter. I owned a Mod I and a Mod III at different times, and took ribbing from the Apple crew all the time. But the machine was solid, fast, and even though it had abysmal black and white graphics, those graphics were _FAST_. The best TRS80 emulatir I could find is this one on Jeff Vavasours site. It's a re-creation of the Model I BASIC environment which, quite frankly, sucked, but it was nice noodling around on the READY prompt again.

Posted by dbs at October 3, 2005 12:03 AM