22 Apr
2004
22 Apr
'04
1:57 p.m.
My first diskette of software for the IBM PC was a bootable diskette my father brought
home from work. He was an IBM employee for 27 years and bought one of the very first IBM
PCs on the employee purchase plan. It had a 'disk copy' program on it, 'IBM
Internal Use Only' that was known as a 'pizza copier' as the joke was that it
would 'copy any diskette perfectly, even if the diskette was a pizza. Obviously it
wasn't that powerful and I am sure most 'modern' copy protection schemes (i.e.
schemes from the PC-DOS 2.0 era or newer) would defeat it. I'm not sure it even
supported Double Sided Diskettes, it was that old.
He gave me his TRS-80 Model 1 when he got that PC.
On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 20:51:19 -0400
"David V. Corbin" <dvcorbin(a)optonline.net> wrote:
It was right after the Model I came out, the expansion
chassis (16K!) was
announced but not shipping. Audio cassette recording was the only storage.
My first "commercial" product was a universal tape duplicator [the only one
that could "make backups" of the popular Sargon Chess Game]! Of course it
contained code to prevent
It duplicating itself!!!!
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: cctalk-bounces(a)classiccmp.org
>> [mailto:cctalk-bounces@classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell
>> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 7:02 PM
>> To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org
>> Subject: Re: Selectric Terminal
>>
>> >
>> > Cira 1976 I developed a custom (wirewrap) interface between a
>> > Selectric 731 and the original TRS-80 model I.
>>
>> Doesn't that pre-date the model 1 ? :-)
>>
>> >
>> > Could only get 9.5 chars per sec out of it though....
>>
>> Yes, but it sure beat copying down listings by hand. My
>> first printer was the CGP115 -- one of those little
>> 4-ballpoint-pen plotters using the Alps mechanism (the one
>> used in the CBM 1520, one of the Atari printers, etc).
>> It did 12 cps if you were lucky on 4" paper. But I could
>> set it listing out my BASIC or assembler programs and come
>> back when it had finished. It was a lot better than writing
>> them down from the screen!
>>
>> -tony