Happy Birthday, TRS-80

On August 3, 2012 we should have paid some homage to the 35th anniversary of the TRS-80 computer from Radio Shack. At one time during the history of the personal computer the TRS-80 dominated the stage. Sold exclusively through the 3000 Radio Shack stores these were the progenitor of the Apple store idea--in 1977!

The machine was an early three-piece computer with processing box, monitor and keyboard. At first it employed a cassette player for data storage and to load programs. The machine sold for $599.

The cassette evolved into a floppy disk quickly then the whole machine evolved into the all-in-one style machine, the TRS-80 Model III. This version had dual floppies. In the mix was a Model II business machine that got little attention, and a Model 16 using a 16-bit processor, the Motorola 68000, also used by the Macintosh in the 1980's. The popular machines (Model 1 and III) were powered by a Z-80 which dominated the scene until the IBM PC came along in 1981.

Although I was a user of the SOL-20 running the Electric Pencil on a Northstar OS, I owned both the Model I TRS-80 and the Model III. I thought I'd share some of my observations about them.

First of all everyone knew that Tandy Corporation had a tiger by the tail with the TRS-80 and didn't quite know what to do about it. You could tell by the release of the various ancillary machines, such as the Color Computer designed to take on Apple, and the Model 16 which was a third architecture to take on who-knows-who. It was dumb.

The company was like every big company during this early era. They had no vision. They bought into the idea that desktop computers were toys and not to be taken too seriously. This underlying belief was present in the business from 1975 until the release of the IBM PC-AT in 1984. This was coincidental with the release of the first Macintosh. And in 1984 the tide had only begun to shift.

Much of the eventual bungling of the marketing and development was because the corporate HQ was in Fort Worth Texas. If the company was centered in Silicon Valley--where the ethos and enthusiasm was different--the machines would have taken over the scene and still be in charge. But no. A negative attitude about these toy computers shaded the opinions of the Texas executives. By the late 1980's all these machines were dead in the water and people began to huddle around Wintel clones and the Macintosh. The TRS-80 phenomenon ended with a serious whimper, not a bang.

There were a number of endearing characteristics about the computers. First of all the nickname was great. The computer was called the TRASH-80, especially by the people who used the S-100 machines (named for the backplane computer bus invented, more or less, by the Altair machine).

There was one TRS-80 characteristic that has never been fully reflected in the modern era. A number of people deconstructed the TRS-DOS (Tandy Radio Shack - Disk Operating System) and brought out a complete-but-souped-up code base. LDOS (Logical Disk Operating System) and other systems did this. Today lawsuits would fly. But again since these were toys nobody was too concerned.

TRS-80 machines worked better than you'd think. One problem, though, was its main competitor at the time was not Apple or Commodore who also sold closed systems. The fight was with the more open environment of CP/M machines, itself an OS for the mass market. The CP/M machines would morph into MS-DOS machines and the developers who wrote the programs gravitated to the open platform.

It's interesting to me that when you read the history of computers or the history of desktop computing the TRS-80 is never given its proper tribute. As popular as it was (Isaac Asimov was a spokesperson in advertisements), these machines are now seldom discussed.

Well, Happy birthday TRS-80 wherever you are.

You can Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter @therealdvorak.

More John C. Dvorak:

Go off-topic with John C. Dvorak.