The History of the TRS-80 (2012)

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25 points·Red_Tarsius··6 comments

The history of one of the software companies mentioned, Big Five Software, can be found here:

http://www.bigfivesoftware.com/

They produced some excellent arcade games. They also sold adapted Atari joysticks which could be used with their games.

The Living Computer Museum in Seattle has one of these set up if you want to play some of the old classics.

http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/

One of the first computers I used was a TRS-80 Model 4P.... wow that thing was great... I mean.. you could actually carry it around! (potential back problems notwithstanding...)

Got my start on a Model III. Upgraded it to 48k and floppies running LDOS.

Model I here. Started out with the base 4k and cassette storage. Over time, my dad invested in the expansion interface, 48k, the lowercase character-generator, and eventually four floppy drives, and LDOS (which I remember loving). He really sacrificed to give me a head start. Miss you, dad.

I used to drool over pictures of the Model 4 in the catalogs.

In the late 1990's, I briefly worked with one of the founders of Galactic Software, the firm that created LDOS. I commented to him that after nearly 20 years LDOS still felt more powerful than MS-DOS.

He agreed with me, and explained how many Unix type features such as pipes and a real shell they had implemented.

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