Selectric Terminal

From: Scott Stevens <sastevens_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Thu Apr 22 20:57:15 2004

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_at_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_at_classiccmp.org
> >>> [mailto:cctalk-bounces_at_classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Tony Duell
> >>> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2004 7:02 PM
> >>> To: cctalk_at_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
>
Received on Thu Apr 22 2004 - 20:57:15 BST