Well, the return address on the catalog (which you may be able to read
in the scanned image on my web page) is "Tandy Computers, 1500 One
Tandy Center, Fort Worth, Texas 76102". Somebody at Tandy must have
thought they sold these systems! There's an order blank included, and
you could order by phone or by mail. Inside the back cover is a
complete TRS-80 system. The catalog also includes the (then standard)
array of electronic parts and books carried by Radio Shack. I bought
my TRS-80 in the Radio Shack in North Platte, Nebraska; as I recall,
certain regular stores (i.e. not "Computer Centers") also got the
TRS-80 early on. Take a look at the catalog
(www.inetnebr.com/~bill_r), and then tell me I'm crazy. My primary
purpose was not and is not to prove whether or not any machines were
actually shipped (although I would be interested to know for sure),
but to find out if anyone else has ever seen this catalog. This is
the only copy I've ever seen.
So you were involved in the RS repair centers, huh? I about drove
them nuts because I bought one of the very early "Expansion
Interfaces" with disk drives and memory in it, and it ended up going
back to the repair center in (if I remember correctly) Des Moines at
_least_ ten times because of problems with bus noise crashing it.
When it started out, it had just a plain ribbon cable between the EI
and the CPU. Then they added the "buffered EI cable", and finally,
the little DIN connector hack along side the buffered cable, which
seemed to actually fix the thing. They had the thing more than I did
for the first year; they always kept it for like 3 weeks, then sent it
back and it still didn't work. After the first round of that, I
started having the store manager help me unbox it and set it up right
in the store to see if it was fixed. If not, back it went. I ended
up on a first-name basis with a couple people at the repair center
(when I wasn't calling them worse things ;-). Finally, out of total
frustration, I called Tandy's home office, and after fighting my way
through many layers of assistants, receptionists, etc, I found myself
talking to (I swear it's true) Charles Tandy! I told him the whole
sad story, explained that I loved the machine, but I was at the end of
my rope on the whole deal, and wondered what he thought I should do.
He said he would look into it and see what was going on. I thought
"Yeah - right", but later that day I got a call from the repair center
manager who apologized profusely for all the trouble, told me that
they had gotten a new fix for the problem, and that my computer would
be back and working right within a couple of days. I later got a
letter of apology for the experience signed by Mr. Tandy; I wish I
knew where it was - it might be in my old TRS-80 boxes. (I was 14 at
the time, and you don't think about hanging on to things like that at
that age.) And in a bit of Twilight Zone, I got a call from the
former manager of the Radio Shack store a couple of days ago; he had
moved to Lincoln, Nebraska several years ago as I did, and knowing I
work a lot with computers, he thought I might be able to help him with
a Windows 95 problem he was having. <*argh *thud>
I have the old TRS-80 voice synthesizer (the case is a particle-board
box, spray-painted "TRS-80 silver"! Wonder how many of those they
sold?), the voice recognition unit (with the CB-style "push-to-talk"
microphone), the X-10/Plug-n-power interface, and the original modem.
I once met a man at the University of Rolla, Missouri, where I was
taking a summer class, who showed me how he had reverse-engineered the
TRS-80 system ROMs and discovered a multi-tasking kernel built in. I
took the information home and tried it out, and it was true! All you
had to do was load a machine language routine into memory, and then
call the "start task" address with the address of your routine and its
priority in the correct registers. There were also "suspend task" and
"kill task" functions. A friend and I wrote all kinds of weird little
things, like an on-screen clock that was always displayed, no matter
what else was running, subliminal message programs, etc. Do you know
if anyone else has ever published this feature?
Yikes - sorry - got a little long-winded...
On Sun, 8 Mar 1998 22:59:34 -0500, you wrote:
>Now it's possible that one of the independently owned dealer stores held
>and advertized other machines. Even the Radio Shack computer centers
>didn't start opening until the beginning of 78. The trs-80 was mid '77
>and Tandy did nothing in computers before that.
>
>Allison
-Bill Richman
bill_r_at_inetnebr.com
http://incolor.inetnebr.com/bill_r
(Home of the COSMAC Elf Simulator!)
Received on Sun Mar 08 1998 - 22:45:50 GMT