Running the classic Tandy TRS-80
Credit: http://48k.ca/trs80gp.html
Looking back, 1977 was a pretty good year. We had the space shuttle Enterprise being put through its paces, a plucky farm boy single-handedly destroyed a moon-shaped space station and learnt about space wizards, and we had a trio of excellent home computers.
We’ve already covered the first two machines in that trio – the Commodore PET and Apple II – in previous issues of Linux Format, but the final machine, the Tandy TRS-80 isn’t a machine that most UK readers will have had the chance to use. Nonetheless the Tandy TRS-80 was a big deal in its native US market. It was released on 3 August 1977 and it was sold via Radio Shack (TRS actually refers to Tandy Radio Shack) for approximately $399. In 2021 the price would be a hefty $1,799 adjusted for inflation! For your money you got a Zilog Z80 CPU running at 1.774MHz, 4KB of RAM and a comfortable QWERTY keyboard. A bundled cassette drive was your gateway to a wondrous world of eight-bit gaming.
The base system was enough for home users and hobbyists to cut their teeth with the burgeoning home computer scene, but Tandy also had a series of upgrades to keep your TRS-80 updated and to add to its annual profits. You could purchase aftermarket RAM
