26 May
2020
26 May
'20
9:25 a.m.
On Tue, May 26, 2020 at 12:44 PM Liam Proven via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
Yes we did!. The only TRS-80 that I know not to have been officially
sold in the UK was the Color Computer 3 (the one with the MMU, up to
512K RAM, 80 column screen etc). I had to have mine sent from a dealer
in the States. The Model 1, Model 3, Model 4 family were all sold over
here in Tandy shops. So were the 'business' machines with 8" drives --
the Model 2, Model 12 and Model 16. And the laptops, Model 100 and
Model 200 at least. I _think_ the Tandy 2000 IBM-incompatible was sold
over here too. The Tandy 1000 series and later PC compatibles were
certainly sold in Tandy shops (but I wasn't interested in those).
Hitachi certainly made 3" drives (I have some), they may well have
been the originators of that disk. I don't think the Amstrad drives
were Hitachi though, the ones I saw were nowhere near as well made as
the Hitachi drives I have
-tony
And whereas it's easy to forget now, I think the roles of colour and
sound in gaining the attention of children is underestimated.
I look at the specs and capabilities of something like the Acorn Atom
in 1980 -- _way_ ahead of a ZX80 or ZX81, and to me now, looking back,
far more desirable (and far more expensive, of course). But to me at
12? Black and white, silent? REPEAT...UNTIL loops? *BOOOORING!*
Err, the Acorn Atom could do colour at least in some graphics modes.
It used the 6847 video chip that turned up in the Tandy Color
Computer/Dragon. Maybe the base machine was monochrome video only, but
there was a PAL encoder board available (offically from Acorn) that
fitted inside.
> ham radio shack was slang for wherever a amateur radio hobbyist set up.
> Other than that, "shack" referred to an improvised/impromptu dwelling,
FWIW, 'Shack' is a commonly used in the UK in the amateur radio sense.
When I was at university (late 1980s) the amateur radio club had a
litteral wooden shed on a nearby farm containing the transmitters and
receivers. It was always called the 'shack'
such as ones
made of tar paper, so it had similar negative connotations to
everybody but amateur radio. When they wanted to move upscale, they set
up "Tandy Computer Centers/Stores" to start to get away from the "Radio
Shack name. It was ABOUT 1983 that they discontinued using the "Radio
Shack" name. Transition is apparent betwen models of the Model 100 and
the "Color Computer".
Aha!
Bear in mind, as I said, we didn't have most TRS-80 models here. The CoCo was the 6809 one, right? The underlying reference
design was put
in a different case and sold as the Dragon 32 here.
There were a few changes (the most annoying one being that the basic
tokens were in a different order so a tokenised program saved on a
Dragon would not load into a Color Computer or vice versa). But yes,
both based on the Motorola application notes for the 6883 SAM chip.
Was OS-9 ever officially sold for the Dragon? It was for the Color
Computer range (and was sold in the UK in Tandy shops, along with
BASIC-09, Pascal, C compiler, etc)
I never got an
Amstrad, but I was impressed with the 3" disk design, and
had some 3" drives.
Hitachi designed I believe.