MHaensel

As part of my ongoing experimentation with an emulated TRS-80 model II, I've found some nice features. The floppy disk expansion system was very well-integrated. You got 2 megabytes of data storage several years before that was easy. And there was a whole series of business-oriented programs written specifically to use all those drives. The following work with no effort, no matter which disk the file is on: * Run a program from TRSDOS * LOAD "PROGNAME/BAS" from BASIC * The business graphics analysis pack has setup programs to configure it for different printers. Those programs find the TRSCHART program on any disk. The included hex debugger is a blast! It's nice to be able to access any area of memory and easily change it. You can also dump areas of memory to a file and load them back. After being limited to PEEKs and POKEs on my Commodore, this level of access is wonderful. Y2K compliance before it was a thing! The following all support a 4-digit year: * TRSDOS 2.0 * TRSDOS II * SCRIPSIT 2.1 I'm sure there are others I'm missing. According to the Radio Shack computer catalogs, several of the business programs could share related data: * Profile + SCRIPSIT = form letters * Order entry + accounts receivable = automated billing * Order enter/Inventory control + sales analysis = sales figures based on actual order/stock levels Overall, this is a really nice system. $1250 in software would set you up for general use: Visicalc SCRIPSIT Business Graphics Analysis Pack Profile In terms of business software, you'd spend much of your time looking over at IBM compatibles and saying, "I already DO that!"

Another Model II, roughly $565 shipped.

The tension breaker displays random characters in random patterns on-screen. Watch a screen saver on your Level II Model I! M1L2 Tension Breaker.txt

The 3-disk expansion system is a really nice touch! Too bad the Model II is local pickup only. I hope it goes to a good home.

More type-ins from TRS-80 Microcomputer News! M1-4 Sub-hunt.txt M1L2 Graphics to Line Printer with Random Graphics Test.bas.txt M1L2 Pattern Fun.txt M1L2 Sub-hunt.txt

Today I learned! In BASIC, and possibly other programs, you're correct. Model I SCRIPSIT used CTRL-D as backspace. Another program (whose name escapes me) used F1.

The Model 2 Archive is a convenient place to download basically everything for the TRS-80 Model II. (Thank you, pski!) For the Model I/III/IV, there are several sites with lots of stuff: https://www.willus.com/trs80/ http://cpmarchives.classiccmp.org/trs80.php http://cpmarchives.classiccmp.org/trs80/mirrors/www.discover-net.net/~dmkeil/trssoft.htm A (mostly documents) torrent linked at http://akhara.com/trs-80/docs/ But is there a comprehensive archive for easy download? Would there be interest in one if it was created?

The Commodore 1540/1541 disk drives were supposed to feed a hardware shift register. Several problems kept this from working and that made things slow. Incompatibility with the first few thousand units - or a recall - could have solved the problem for the next 20 million C= 64s. TRS-80 Model I, III, and IV: no backspace key.

Despite my enthusiasm, I no longer think this is correct. Other XENIX software updates the screen quickly. It's not just a virtualization thing. @GeorgePhillips likely has the right answer. Thanks all!

Heh. It's mostly just making a few fancy text files for my own amusement. CBM .prg studio looks very promising! Thanks for the links.

The clear screen key was occasionally useful for me, when the C=64 screen editor was cluttered up with broken/wrapped lines, partial program output, and lines of user input. It was nice being able to clear that all away. My laptop keyboard doesn't have a pause/break key. My desktop does, as @carlsson notes! But I don't recall the pause key actually pausing programs any more, and the break key . . . does it do anything? I'll have to test later. Shift-Home does different things in different programs! In a Firefox text input box, it selects all text. In Notepad, it apparently does nothing. I may need a better operating system because CTRL-L sounds useful too. I think @carlsson's point hits home: modern computers don't quite work that way any more. The need for "clear screen" is much reduced when you can just close a window to get rid of old data, or open a whole new document with CTRL-N. Likewise changing colors: How often do we really want to change text colors anyway? Rainbow text was great fun when I was 8. But I'm not sure it would add much impact in 2020

I miss the sweet spot that Commodore text-based stuff gave me. 40 columns (80 or 132 would be better) of fixed-spaced text with character graphics and colors would be fantastic. Is there an editor/file format that works like that? It seems like 2020-era file formats are mostly: Plain text - saves anywhere, reads anywhere, the opposite of "fancy" .docx or similar - big, complex file formats with overlapping styles, foreign-language fonts, page layout, and a whole pile of stuff that's not "typing words onto a screen"

The discussion started on reddit, but I'd like to pick up here also. Modern keyboards feel like they're missing a bunch of functionality. On older computers, pressing one key (or a pair of keys) let you: Clear the text entry area (CLR, CLEAR, CLR SCRN or similar) Pause program operation (PAUSE, HOLD) Stop program operation (STOP, BREAK) Draw line/boxes on-screen using ASCII art Type open- and closed-circle for bullet lists Change text color Those things would still be handy today! You can do some of this using Unicode, but even how-to instructions say it's easier to find the character somewhere else and copy-and-paste. What else is missing on modern keyboards?

Very nice!

I have a reverse story! I moved from an older system I loved to one that did much less for me. I had a Commodore 64 from roughly 1984-1990. I learned to program in BASIC, COMAL, and a little machine language. The GEOS word processor had bitmapped fonts and graphics and worked with my printer. I had games for days. Listening to SID music . . . I loved to watch that little band play. The system was small, but I understood it and knew how to make it sing. Looking back, I could have gotten a few more years out of it with a REU and a 3.5" floppy disk drive . . . 🤔 The next computer was an IBM-compatible 386DX-25. The hardware was fantastic. Sharp graphics and text, 101-key keyboard, a printer that hammered out a dot matrix like nobody's business . . . but I had no source of pirated software. That made the machine much less useful. No more free games! (In fact, almost no games that I recall.) Word 1.0 for Windows came with the computer. It didn't work. My assignments came out in teeny tiny type and I was never able to fix it. For that and other reasons, I had to use a cheap text-based DOS word processor. That was a big step back from GEOS! An expensive machine-language assembler package didn't work for what I needed. I was glad to be rid of the 386 when the time came. But the Commodore 64 will always have a special place in my memories.