TRS-80 Model II

From: Lawrence Walker <lwalker_at_mail.interlog.com>
Date: Wed Feb 18 01:20:15 1998

On 19 Feb 98 at 21:16, Ward Donald Griffiths III wrote:

> Lawrence Walker wrote:
>
> > No, I didn't hook up the HDD s . There were 3 of them and no visible
> > numbering as to order of placement. I'll have to get under the hood
> > and see what I can see, and/or try the external floppy DD. I'll let
> > you know
>
> On the bottom of each drive box, is a circular plate or a hole where it
> used to be. One of the drives should have a blue DIP terminating
> resistor pack. That would be the last drive in the chain. The first
> drive in the chain will be the one with the power switch.
>
 There is a circular hole, but it accesses the drive locking
(parking) mechanism. It seems to be like SCSI with 2 50-pin
 A B Control sockets and 3 A B C 20 pin Data sockets . I have a
50-pin line terminator pack for it. The drives have a label saying "
this unit contains a line terminator " Haven't opened them up yet.
 On the front panel a lock-key turns power on or off. I' ve only one
key but it seems to work with all 3. It has 2 buttons one labelled
Protect and one labelled Active. Possibly illuminated (haven't fired
them up yet.)
 The II itself has a cage for 8 cards occupied by 5 cards, card 1 has
cables leading to 2 female DB25 "serial port A B' ,card 2 has a
cable to the int. fdd and one to a M 34-pin parallel printer port,
card 3 is for the ext. hdd , the like-new card 4 has no cables looks
like a memory card and card 5 is hard-wired to the CRT board.
Do you know whether it had some sort of fdd select jumpers ?
I'll switch cables and see if it will boot off the ext. fdd.

> >As well as the CP/M it also has an Exenix Install set.
> > Likely installed on one of the 5meg HDDs
>
> If so, this is no mere Model 2, but a Model II with a Model 16 upgrade
> kit installed. I would cheerfully take this system off your hands to
> sit between my early Model II and my Tandy 6000HD.
>
> Note to all: As you visit the swap meets, ham fests, thrift stores and
> whatnot, I am trying to acquire a bunch of software packages for the
> Tandy 8" product line, especially the documentation. As Lawrence
> mentioned in his first message, there is remarkably little information
> on the Web about this product line, primarily because they were never
> as popular with hobbyists as the 1/3/4 or Color Computer lines --
> they were designed, built and marketed as business machines, and when
> they were replaced by peecees years later, most business just tossed
> the machines and the software packages into the dumpsters.
>
The going price of $ 3500 wasn't an incentive either. I wonder how
many were sold ?
 If you want I can catalogue what I have and send you copies when I
get this thing going.

> These machines are truly dear to me -- while I may have started with a
> Model One (before it was called that), the Model II and its upgrades and
> successors are where I grew up. Xenix on the Model 16 is where my long
> relationship with Unix and its relatives began. And in my arrogant
> opinion, Scripsit 2.0 on the Model II is _still_ one of the best damned
> word processors ever if the object is to process words rather than make
> documents look pretty.
> --
> Ward Griffiths


ciao larry
lwalkerN0spaM_at_interlog.com
Received on Wed Feb 18 1998 - 01:20:15 GMT