The TRS-80 Model 1

Performa

Member
I recently picked up this TRS-80 Model 1 from a collector, and it cannot be overstated how cool it is to have a classic like this in the shop. One of the "originals" from the beginning of the microcomputer revolution, it's historically quite a significant piece- as well as something I feel a lot of the public will have had experience with as they were prolific in business settings around here at least.



Can't wait to see what the future holds for this one!
 

Performa

Member
The next step I believe is to give this machine and it's monitor a very deep cleaning. They're not really "that" dirty (I've definitely seen worse), but I feel something like this warrants the extra attention.

I need to speak with a couple members before we settle on what the future of this machine is for sure. Likewise, I'd love to hear feedback from you about this machine, and how we can present it to the public. I am pleased to say we have a cassette player that we should be able to adapt over to it so we can load some software to it.

At present we're exploring the possibility of a case swap with another dysfunctional unit, or if this should be restored- either with some of the "weathering" intact, or with a complete cosmetic restoration. There are a multitude of possibilities to explore! 😁
 

MattPilz

Member
I am really glad you were able to pick it up in person. I have had several shipped to me over the years with an almost 0% success rate even just within Wisconsin. Most sellers do not understand the fragility of the plastic and tend to ship the heavy power supply right next to it and with plenty of space to tumble around, so in transit it gets busted to pieces.

Based on the screenshot it is on Level II ROM 1.0-1.2. The final cassette ROM was 1.3 which fixed annoying key bounce issues and improved cassette reliability without being so fussy about volume.

Funny thing about these sets is they shipped without one final RAM bit, so even though the default character generator supports lowercase there was no way to actually utilize it. Radio Shack and others sold upgrade mods that basically piggyback another RAM chip to enable that final bit for lower case selection, but even then it's a bit tedious (e.g., you have to load a custom lowercase driver via cassette every time you boot, to support typing in lower case in BASIC).
 

zorlof

Member
Very cool! One of the two computers we had in our house when I was pretty young was a TRS-80 Model 4D. It's neat that you've got it's grandpappy. (The other computer was a TRS-80 CoCo 2. You'd think the CoCo might appeal to a kid more but I had a lot more fun messing around with the 4D).
 

Performa

Member
The TRS-80 1 is all cleaned up. Well, mostly- I haven't disassembled the monitor yet to clean out the inside, but I should have that done yet this week.

We do have a TRS-80 cassette player (no sure which model it was for originally, I found it at Goodwill some time ago) but I haven't managed to track down a cable to connect the two yet. I suspect I have one that will work around here somewhere, but I need to do a bit more digging. Once that's done though, we should (in theory at least) be able to run games or other software on it via the cassette interface. If I can get something working on it, I hope to have this one at the show!
 

Performa

Member
Hiccup with the TRS-80, sort of.

I ordered a cheap 5-pin DIN cable to chop and "Frankenstein" into a connector cable to hook the computer up to the cassette player. However, I haven't been able to track down the pin out for it. There are plenty of pin out diagrams online for the power supply and video connector, but I haven't found any for the audio/data lines. I'll keep looking, but I figured I'd ask here if anyone knows what the pinout is, or where I might go looking for it.
 

Performa

Member
I've got a cable, a cassette drive, and now a "modern" data transfer device. I'm excited to show you all what this cool old contraption can do!
 
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