1 Feb
2007
1 Feb
'07
10:12 a.m.
Well, the TRS-80 Model 1 was the first commercially viable home computer.
Whether it is interesting NPW or not is immaterial. It was the first! Yes
there were others such as the North Star that were earlier but they were not
mass marketed. Only the geeks knew of their existence. I bought my TRS-80
model 1 as soon as they were available in 1978. They came with a tape deck
and 4K of memory. You could upgrade to 16K. I thought at the time, "Who
needs any more than 4K?" Thats a lot of memory. Later they added a floppy
drive that was less than 100K and I thought "wow, I will never fill up one
of those $5 diskettes." Yep the diskettes were $5!!! Then I bought a 5
MBYTE Hard drive for $400 and by then I had upgraded to 32K memory. Wow I
was in high cotton. You say nothing interesting? Hell it was the only game
on the block for a while!!!
I remember going into "The Book Stop" and asking where the books on
computers and programming were. The reply was "Whats a computer?" There
were no books on the subject yet!!! I tried to explain it to the sales
person and they said I was making it up, that there were no such machines.
On 2/1/07, Roger Merchberger <zmerch-cctalk at 30below.com> wrote:
Rumor has it that Tony Duell may have mentioned these words:
I dunno... Wasn't the Model 1 the first commercial microcomputer with
voice
recognition abilities? [1]
I remember working (read: tinkering ;-) on a Model 1 in High school (as it
was abandoned by everyone once we'd gotten 6 shiny new Model 4 machines)
and it had a TRS-80 branded peripheral called the "Vox-Box." It had a
Citizens-Band microphone hooked into (I'm guessing) an A-D converter that
hooked onto the expansion buss. I actually got it "working" but noticed
that the recognition wasn't the best, and IIRC you got maybe 20 words max.
The included program let you "teach" the computer digits 0-9 & a few other
commands (Save/Load/etc.)
This was in '83-'84 when I tinkered with it, dunno how old the
"Vox-Box"
actually was, tho.
Did anything exist (commercially) like that previously to the Model 1?
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
[1] Yes, I know it's almost a lie to call it that... but what the heck can
ya expect in 48K??? ;-)
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger -- SysAdmin, Iceberg Computers
_??_ zmerch at 30below.com
((c)||(r)) If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
_)(_ disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
--
Jim Isbell
"If you are not living on the edge, well then,
you are just taking up too much space."
(...or
"artless" computers. TRS-80 model 1?)
You know, for all I have a soft spot for the Model 1 (it was my first
real computer), I am inclined to agree with you. There's nothing
interesting about the design, neither electroically or mechanically.
There's nothing particularly bad about it either (at least not compared
to one of its contemporaries), but it's just not interesting...