On 2000-12-16 [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>Oh wow this brings back memories. I used one as my only PC for 8
>years, I even published a scanner frequency guide for my area that
>I sold publically all done on the TRS 80 Model 100. Mine had an
>original Tandy cassette tape drive.
That's interesting... I noticed from one of the manuals how a bar
scanner can be connected to one of the TRS-80 ports (which looks
like a 9-pin serial port). I wonder whether that port could be used
for other devices? It appears as though one can still get the cables
and peripherals from Tandy; it's hard to believe. If I can't get
the external floppy drive to work, I just might try the tape option --
that would be sort of fun. The floppy drive used 3.5" diskettes that
were only formatted to about 100k, single-sided, and the manual that
comes with it is dated 1985.
>Mine had an internal 300 baud modem, that worked great, the biggest
>problem was the tiny screen when calling into BBS' in broke the text
>lines up so bad it was almost impossible to read. If I remember I
>had to change a switch on my printer to get it to do a carriage
>return, but my printer wasn't the same on you have so I don't know
>if that will work for you or not.
With an external modem, the TRS-80 is apparently able to handle up to
19.2 kbps transfers -- but, as you've mentioned, the internal modem is
only 300 baud. It sounds as though even the most primitive terminal use
is a far stretch for its capabilities. Yet that would appear to be the
only means for exchanging messages. Too bad there isn't a way to add
a different monitor to it...
If the floppy format wasn't so odd, it would be simpler to just transfer
files to another machine and print them from there. I suppose, though,
that my printer can be switched over to work with it -- but that wouldn't
be very convenient. I should check that out, anyway...
The priority system built into the TRS-80 is interesting in itself. It
is from Microsoft and includes a special version of BASIC. The utilities
are a fascinating study in frugality: TEXT, a tiny editor with a key
system somewhat like WordStar, along with schedule and address tools that
merely use a special file, much like a batch program, to store data that
the user codes to his liking for word searches. And then there's the
terminal program. All of this is built into the machine that uses (as is
the case with my TRS-80) only 32k memory and a 2.4 MHz CPU! When it is
running, it reports about 29k free memory.
Jerry [o:--] "The" IBM AT/5170 model 339 [--^~---] 9600kbps/30M HD
*1986 ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| [ =====_] 512k RAM - 8MHz
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