• JReasons68 (unregistered) in reply to Nodody

    The last one may be a TRaSh 80, but it's also a COlorCOmputer 2. This was like the most awesome home computer made in the 80s. And it used the very cool 6809 Motorola chip with the neat sign-extended instruction - SEX.

  • The One on the Left (unregistered)

    But the one on the left has a sandwich! Let's see you eat that fancy computer, Mr. Right!

  • (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Morry:
    Hotdogs? Hotdogs? Is this some hitherto unknown imperial measurement? Like Drachm?

    Yes, but be warned the the Imperial Standard Hotdog (ISD) weighs slightly more than the metric Hotdog (D). 1 ISD is approx. 1044 mD IIRC. Also, there is no metric equivalent to the "foot long".

    You, my friend, have never obviously never had the Meter-Long. Also known as the "Ow, My Colon! (with ketchup)"

  • (cs) in reply to Nodody
    Nodody:
    The real WTF is that this is also the TRS-80: and so is this: and this:

    Couldn't they think of more than one name?

    IIRC, they were all made for/by Tandy / Radio Shack, and used a Z-80 cpu. They did label one of them "Model II" and another "Color" (because yanks can't spell "colour"). We had that top "other" one at school, with a "stringy floppy drive". It was a kind of tape drive, but rather different to the audio tape drives typically seen on computers then. The school also had a TRS-80 Pocket Computer, and an Osborne. Then we got an Apple ][+ and everything changed.

  • (cs)

    My dad still has two of those little TRS machines and one of the printers that went with them.

    It's tempting to get one from him and see if I can still program on it like I did back in the late 70s.

    I won't get the cool graphics the 'desktop' version had but hey, who doesn't like programming in Basic?

  • Bill (unregistered)

    I also had one of those TRS-80 Pocket Computer-2. I bought it just before college (EE) and had a lot of fun with it, I even expanded the memory (an additional 128kb if my memory serves me right). The local Radio Shack store had magazines with how to program in assembly language. Being a EE major, this was icing on the cake... I still have it along with the printer, safely stored in a box in the garage along with my rubics cube.

  • FatherStorm (unregistered)

    I still have the Panasonic version of htat TRS-80, the Panasonic HHC http://oldcomputers.net/Panasonic_HHC.html The battery's toast, I have to keep it plugged in to run it, but it still works. Got the printer toobut haven't tried that in some years.

  • Clark Kent (unregistered)

    Also in the TRS-80 line was the TRS-80 Model 100, a pretty capable portable (with a multi-line screen). I found one at a flea market, but could never get it to work.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100_line

  • Walleye (unregistered) in reply to ML
    ML:
    JonC:
    One of the standard type in this BASIC code programs that was the manual was a hore racing game where you could bet on a horse.... It was actually surprisingly fun and was a good way of wasting time during boring school lessons.
    Betting on and racing a (w)hore would be a lot more surprising and, I imagine, a lot more fun and a good way to waste time.

    (sings) Back in the saddle again...

  • Zerbs (unregistered) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    Zerbs:
    DaveK:
    Some people might consider it a failing of the bland yellow stuff that is mislabelled and sold as "mustard" in the USA, that it could not even overpower the "taste" of a boiled processed-meat sausage.

    I guess you've never had Bertman's mustard then!

    Nope, I must admit I've never even heard of it. Is it proper hot then? The amazon page describes it as "mildly spicy".... I prefer mine to be described as "eye-wateringly" hot...
    Well it's not like the mustard they have at Chinese restaraunts that will clear your sinuses across the room, it's more of a flavorful spice. I'd say it's spicier than Gulden's Spicy Brown, but in a slightly different way.

  • (cs) in reply to halcyon1234
    halcyon1234:
    Anon:
    Morry:
    Hotdogs? Hotdogs? Is this some hitherto unknown imperial measurement? Like Drachm?

    Yes, but be warned the the Imperial Standard Hotdog (ISD) weighs slightly more than the metric Hotdog (D). 1 ISD is approx. 1044 mD IIRC. Also, there is no metric equivalent to the "foot long".

    You, my friend, have never obviously never had the Meter-Long. Also known as the "Ow, My Colon! (with ketchup)"

    It took me a while before I realised that this is supposed to be the effect when you eat the thing.

    As for American mustard, well, what do you expect when something like "French's mustard" (not to be confused with Budweiser's beer, which although equally inauthentic was not created by a Mr Budweiser, whereas at least the eponymous French didn't try to copyright the name) was initially marketed as "cream salad mustard."

    Whatever that is.

    Still, at least it's not "tangy" or "zesty." Good, wholesome, honest, old-fashioned tastelessness, that's the way I like it.

    I'm always slightly bemused by "grey poupon." Since when was "grey" the new ... er ... yellow? And why is the second 'u' in "poupon" upside-down?

    Still, ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα, as they say.

    Pompous? Moi?

  • Edward Royce (unregistered) in reply to DaveAronson
    DaveAronson:
    Some guy:
    Displays full 64-character ASCII set
    Wow, they even scaled down the ASCII set without making it less full!
    And it tasted great too!

    And was less filling!

  • (cs) in reply to Bill
    Bill:
    I also had one of those TRS-80 Pocket Computer-2. I bought it just before college (EE) and had a lot of fun with it, I even expanded the memory (an additional 128kb if my memory serves me right). The local Radio Shack store had magazines with how to program in assembly language. Being a EE major, this was icing on the cake... I still have it along with the printer, safely stored in a box in the garage along with my rubics cube.
    Sounds fun. I was only an E# minor, so all I got was this lousy Osborne...
  • KonAitor (unregistered) in reply to Chemical Ali
    Chemical Ali:
    The guy with the Osbourne would get beaten to a pulp by the guy with the SX-64 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_SX-64 ).

    Mobile computing nowadays just isn't as fun. Easier on the spine, though.

    I would reconsider this statement... Try carrying around a 20" laptop with an extra battery(you gotta have one) and a power adapter...

    Your back will not be very pleased.

    I don't know if I should feel all nostalgic about the old machines, or amazed at what we have now. I mean take any Win Mobile phone, they could do everything that Osborne could, without the requirement of being a professional weight lifter to easily carry around.

  • Bill Wallace (unregistered)

    I had the Casio FX-720P in the mid 80s. Like the Sharp it was 2K memory and a bloody useful bit of kit.

    Not a toy at all. A place I ended up working in used 4K versions to perform vital business calculations and produce prints (1987-88).

    Silly, but it worked

  • (cs)

    I salute Mark Bowytz for putting exactly 122 hots dogs in the image. Try and count it yourself.

  • RangerGordon (unregistered)

    A friend of mine had one of those Osbournes. Lugging around that heavy thing would have given "the guy on the right" a hernia and a slipped disk in about two weeks.

  • GrandmasterB (unregistered)

    I had one of those programmable calculators back in the 80s. I dont know if it was a trs-80 per se, but it came from radio shack. It looked like a calculator, but had a fold out keyboard on the flap (the flap was a pressure sensitive keyboard) and was programmable in basic. As others have said, prof's at the time were clueless that it wasnt just a calculator, so it was extremely valuable during tests. Really, a very useful tool.

  • BillyBob (unregistered) in reply to Frost
    Frost:
    Anon:
    the weight of a single Osborne 1 is equivalent to 122 hot dogs (buns + ketchup included)

    You know some hot dog purist is going to complain that you should never put ketchup on a hot dog. It's mustard or nothing.

    Right, like Wikipedia says, that could overpower the taste of the 'dog.

    Ummm, isn't that the very reason to use ketchup?

  • (cs) in reply to FrenchAnon
    FrenchAnon:
    Adblock plus blocks those old ads from the 1980's! WTF?
    That's the point. https://thedailywtf.com/images/ads/osborne1-full.png https://thedailywtf.com/images/ads/hotdog_vs_osborne.png https://thedailywtf.com/images/ads/TRS-80-full.png https://thedailywtf.com/images/ads/pocket_ascii.jpg

    Also, the guy on the right doesn't have a sandwich!

  • St Mary's Hospital for the Grimly Reaping (unregistered) in reply to blindman
    The real WTF is that the images are not visible in FireFox.

    Huh, I see them. I have Firefox 3.0.4.

  • (cs) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    OSBORNE 1:
    ...IEEE 488 and RS232 interfaces for printers and other things that get connected to computers...

    I love this line. Advertising at its finest.

    It's up to you to guide Cube around the things that Cube can't go through!

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Nodody

    Um, the TRS stood for Tandy Radio Shack, and the 80 stood for the Z80 inside.

    Except that the bottom computer you show is the Color Computer, which ran a very sweet (for the time) 6809. (You could buy the best introduction to assembly language book I ever saw for it.) So, should it have been the TRS-68? TRS-09? TRS-90?

    (There was also the Model 16, which featured a Motorola 68000, and you could buy Microsoft's version of Unix for it.)

    So, apparently they could only think of one name.

  • Kevin (unregistered)

    I think thedailywtf should be reserved for behavior contemporarily deemed stupid and not just the now-quaint idiosyncracies of yesteryear.

    I mean today we have tons of monitors. Is it fair for someone 20 years from now to decide we were all "stupid" for not having eyepiece virtual displays? Do you feel stupid for it now?

    My only point: judging another era by modern benchmarks is a lazy laugh.

  • jim steichen (unregistered) in reply to Kevin

    What a Killjoy! Sure, it's a lot like shooting puppies in a barrel: Easy to do, but what makes it fun is listening to the howls of pain until they bleed out.

  • curtmack (unregistered)

    My Grandpa still has one of these computers. Well, not an Osborne, but a similar make - briefcase shaped computer with a tiny screen (a bit bigger than the Os), a disk drive (two, one used for user disks, the other housed inside the case holding a DOS boot diskette), and a (gasp) 20 MB hard drive. (It's corrupt, but most of the diskettes, amazingly, still work.) He has three other computers, a laptop (hooked up to an old monitor for Grandma's desk work), a new Dell computer with Vista, and the old XP which he's holding onto until Vista is updated to an acceptable quality.

    The computer came from when he was selling software to airports, after he was discharged from the Army...'s marching band. When the company folded, he asked about the computer, and they said, "You kidding? Keep it." And thus it still exists, in a corner of a closet in a corner of a bedroom, waiting until the final link in its chain rusts away...

    Not that anyone cares.

  • N Morrison (unregistered)

    "... what kind of sadomasochist would program assembly on this thing ..."

    No kind. The PC-1 shown (it didn't actually have a number as the first Radio Shack Pocket Computer) did not have assembly capability / could not run binary programs. The PC-2 (a much bigger model) could. It could also act as a terminal with the optional RS-232 box. I logged on to a Unix system once to prove it could be done. A couple of later models appeared to have assembler, but it was actually a simulator built in to the ROM. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PocketComp/

  • Me (unregistered) in reply to Lars Vargas
    Lars Vargas:
    The noise sounded exactly like the ballast on a fluorescent light that was about to go. You know, that annoying buzz.

    I had no idea fluorecents even needed ballast! Do they need to throw some ballast overboard to surface??

  • N Morrison (unregistered)

    Re: What the Ad? • by Clark Kent

    "Also in the TRS-80 line was the TRS-80 Model 100, a pretty capable portable (with a multi-line screen). I found one at a flea market, but could never get it to work".

    http://club100.org/ has all sorts of support for these plus a mail list for owners.

  • Whoey (unregistered) in reply to Nodody

    I actually had the third one when I was a kid... it had 4k memory, and I had a whopping 16k expansion module that plugged into the back giving me the astounding total of 20k! It also had an external cassette deck for saving/loading programs... ahhh the good ole days...

  • noname (unregistered) in reply to JonC
    JonC:
    I used to own one of those TRS-80s. One of the standard type in this BASIC code programs that was the manual was a hore racing game [...]

    Sounds... interesting.

  • (cs) in reply to JReasons68
    JReasons68:
    And it used the very cool 6809 Motorola chip with the neat sign-extended instruction - SEX.

    Ooh, zee 6809.

    I have one of the coolest implementation of one of those - a rare experimentation kit made by a local engineering school and used for themselves and the others who wanted it (click images for full size).

    [image]

    [image]

    The kit has a 6809, 2 HP PIO chips, 2 SRAM and 1 EEPROM socket, 1 EPROM with a tiny "OS" providing basic helper functions like dec 2 hex, serial interface to download programs from a PC, debugger (with dedicated hardware), and simple ways to edit memory contents and start program execution at any address, as well as giving access to its own functions for example to display stuff on the 1x16 LCD or read the neat hex keyboard with some function keys - Breakpoint, step, run, memory, exit, enter, view registers, function, reset, a fast IRQ key, and hardware RAM write enable/disable to prevent your buggy program from happily overwriting all the memory with garbage. The holes at the top are the PIO lines for you to connect wires, and those are duplicated on headers on the back to connect external modules like more PIOs, analog<->digital converters etc. That particular one is one of the few that were "upgraded" with a daughter board carrying the CPU and buffers to allow connecting a logic analyzer to any of the CPU pins to see what's going on. It must be the best tool I've seen so far when it comes to learning/teaching the basic inner workings of a computer. Yes today's microcontrollers enclose all of that in one chip, but being able to poke at the lines, and see the real schematic of the circuit, how addressing is dealt with when it comes to throwing a number of different things onto a bus, even the waveforms... I found a cupboard full of those once at my school when looking for something else, of course they hadn't been used for years, I asked what they were and borrowed one for a few weeks to take home and play with. Really fun "back to the roots" to write your assembly program on a sheet of paper using the instruction set reference, then translating it into machine code using the same instruction set chart, addressing the code and data, typing each byte one after the other on the keyboard, and finally type a "G <start address>" and watch your lowest level ever program run :D

    When leaving the school I asked if I could buy one of them and left with it for a symbolic $15. unfortunately they didn't want to give me any expansion modules, but nevermind ;)

    There seems to have been several revisions, the doc dates from 1985, and my board is dated 10.88. The 3.6V lithium RAM backup battery dated 10.87 is still going strong at 3.68V after 21 years.

  • (cs) in reply to Nodody
  • Nobody (unregistered)

    I'm impressed that the Pocket Ascii Terminal managed to squeeze in the word 'Valise' as part of the advertisement!

  • IByte (unregistered) in reply to halcyon1234
    halcyon1234:
    evil-voiced ad:
    IT'S INEVITABLE
    "Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson?"

    (Captcha: damnum, and damn the horse they rode in on.)

  • John Garrison (unregistered) in reply to Nodody

    They sort of had different names. The first one is a Model I (which I first learned to program on BTW). Second is the Model III and third is the "coco" color computer.

    Here's one you missed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_100_line

  • CiH (unregistered)

    So he built a portable computer and wrote Crazy Train?

  • (cs) in reply to Matt.C
    I think the guy on the left is going to win.

    Because he's clearly got one of these or one of these.

    The guy to his left doesn't stand a chance. ;->

  • Sean Fullerton (unregistered) in reply to Nodody

    The second one was considered the Model II and it had a much more powerful brother called the Model III which I cut my teeth on originally, the bottom one is actually a CoCo, but still a TRS-80

  • Per Alexanderson (unregistered)

    Ah, the first platform I startet to program on (Basic) was a Texas 74, http://www.datamath.org/Graphing/TI-74.htm

  • pecus (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    the weight of a single Osborne 1 is equivalent to 122 hot dogs (buns + ketchup included)

    You know some hot dog purist is going to complain that you should never put ketchup on a hot dog. It's mustard or nothing.

    I always found it annoying that people get upset about what condiment should go on a "food" item which consists mostly of ground up cartilage and anuses.

  • jondr (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:

    And there's no accounting for pompous people who need to post Latin phrases.

    As Caligula said, "Oderint dum metuant."

    (Hey, isn't that "those stupid freaks stink!" ?

  • (cs)

    My father bought an Osborne back in the day - he says it was $1795 because most people's credit card limits were about $2000.

    It fit on your lap in the same sense that a golden retriever will.

  • (cs) in reply to pink_fairy
    pink_fairy:
    Still, ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα, as they say.
    Really? But how does he smell?
  • el (unregistered) in reply to Gumpy Gus
    Gumpy Gus:
    Ah yes, The Osborne. Tiny screen and tinier diskettes. A useless GPIB interface.

    The main selling point was not the hardware, but the excellent software package (for that era). Somehow Osborne got a great deal on WordStar and DBase II. Once that package deal ended the Os was a whole lot less interesting.

    I think this was the machine that blew air OUT of the case, which sucked dusty air in through the only open apertures-- the floppy disk slots. Made for very dusty 100k diskettes.

    I had one.

    Tiny screen, yes. Bought a CRT monitor and it worked very well.

    5 inch floppies, much more convenient than the punch cards at the University. And with a small hardware update you could get enourmous 200K on each of the two drives.

    GPIB Interface? No idea what that was.

    It came with WordStar and SuperCalc. One quickly figured out a way to patch Wordstar's delays out of the way and it was quite nice.

    You had to buy dBASE II. And you could buy TurboPascal. And I managed to find a kermit version for the sucker so I could work on the University mainframe with 300 Baud. Later with 1200 Baud I even managed to use EDT on the VAX/VMS. And access BITNET.

    I bought it in 1981 if I am not mistaken, and had never any dust issues. It's still standing in my mum's attic and and it still fires up (!).

    So, I reckon for an almost 40 year old machine the guy one the left had no chance.

  • (cs) in reply to DaveK
    DaveK:
    pink_fairy:
    Still, ἓν οἶδα ὅτι οὐδὲν οἶδα, as they say.
    Really? But how does he smell?
    Like parsnips, apparently; at least at the very end of his life. If I ever acquire a dog, I think I'm going to name him Socrates.

    I'm sort of with you and jondt on this defending common Latin tags thing (my use of Greek being clearly for the purposes of exaggeration), although I think the latter's use of a tag much favoured by Caligula is possibly in bad taste.

    Thing is, you see far too many ignorant yahoos (presumably American, and presumably non-Southern) bandying terms like "pompous" about in response to -- generally -- a quite mild and inoffensive interjection of a perfectly legitimate quotation. What, it has to be in Ozark before it hits the spot?

    I mean, what is this? Some sort of contorted linguistic equivalent of penis envy?

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to blindman

    Yeah, I don't see them either. FireFox 3.0.4 with AdBlock Plus and NoScript; looks like one of the AdBlock Plus filters is blocking it. Strange; it doesn't even seem like the filter should match the url.

  • Quadeddie (unregistered)

    ... Because the guy on the right is carrying a suitcase nuke.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Frost

    You say that like it's a bad thing.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Charles
    Charles:
    After the company folded, Adam Osborne admitted that he had no idea what it cost him to make the computers on a per-unit basis. It turns out he was selling them below cost the whole time.

    It works for XBox, PS3 and iPhones...

Leave a comment on “What the Ad? - Portability, 1980's Style”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

Log Out

« Return to Article