18:27 reach out to Adrian Black. I'm sure he'd LOVE to look at these units, he's fixed MANY 1980s PCs and has an entire basement full of rare and dedicated parts to many machines.
Same here. lol. I have many Tandy's. They're the first computers I ever had. I have the Altier, the first IBM PC Compatible, Commodore 64, Amiga, etc. I even have an original Macintosh Plus with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, etc., signatures etched into the inside of the case. I have many old 8086 computers and 8088 computers from IBM, TARGUS, TANGENT, etc.
I'm commenting as soon as it came up in the video so that I don't forget (so I don't know if you figure out later): when the battery is soldered on like that, you can get a replacement that you solder in which can take a coin battery. Definitely worth it even if the battery still works, because those are prone to leakage!
About 15 years ago, I had a business meeting with IT folks at the St. Petersburg (Florida) PD and they had literal STACKS AND STACKS of these that they were finally retiring. I guess they had them in the police cars.
@@BigPicture-s5qYes you can program in basic and then run the basic programs. I’ve never heard of the floppy drive for it but I have different rom chips you can put in it and even modern SD card mods that people make check out club 100
I still have my Tandy 200. It needs a new power switch, The 200 was one of the reasons that Radio Shack was in operation as long as it was. It was the first clamshell computer on the market, and Tandy Patented the concept. For the next 17 years, any laptop computer that was sold in a clamshell format, payed a royalty to Tandy to be able to sell that device. It wasn't the only thing they did right, but moving to selling cell phones pretty much killed the stores.
Yeah I still joke that you could go into Radio Shack and the teenage manager wouldn't know what anything was outside the phone counter. It was a cool store once you got into the back half!
The local radio shacks in Corvallis and Eugene Oregon hung on until about 2015... I hit a total of 4 of them looking for a specific adapter. Eagle River Alaska had one until about 2008... It's just not cost effective to have small local electronic parts stores... and many of the RS stores doubled down on gimmicks and toys with uncompetitive pricing, rather than the thing most serious techs needed it to be: An electronic parts supply.
Grid Compass was the first clam shell laptop released in 1982 ..Grid collected royalties for the Tandy 200 (1985) until 1988 when Tandy bought Grid... in 1993 Tandy sold off their computer division (including Grid) to AST Research.. Tandy went from the late 1970's as largest personal computer company (most years they were ahead of Apple in sales) ..by mid 1980's they were the largest computer company in the world and largest consumer electronic supplier..they were one of the first companies to sell the Motorola brick cell phone in 1989 Model CT-300 ...by early 1990s they were no longer manufacturing their own computers ...Tiger Direct and Egghead were killing the electronics side...they tried selling other companies computers and other companies cell phones. ..like Fry's Electronics and Radio Shack were slow to move to online..and that is what killed both companies among hundreds others..Tandy sold their Computer City stores off in 1998 to CompUSA.. I worked for Tandy at a Tandy Computer Service Center in the 1980s basically at Tandy's peak ..they had a weird business strategy...the Radio Shack retail stores lost money for 10 months a year and November and December made up for it..this worked for at least 20 years..but could not work in the post internet days...the Tandy Computer stores (which in the 1990s became Computer City) made profit every month through the 1980s but died by late 1990s... Radio Shack lasted for 80 years starting in 1921 by 2000 they were pretty much dead...
@MickeyMousePark Thank you for the correction. I was not aware of either the grid compass, nor that Tandy had purchased them. I suspect that where I had learned the erroneous information was also unaware of those factors, just knew that Tandy was earning royalties on the Clamshell design, and thought it was related to th 299.
I've heard a lot of retail stores operated that way, it's where the term "Black Friday" came from. That post-Thanksgiving shopping rush was the first time of the year stores would be "In the black" and making a profit for the year.
Work pest control, that is exactly what you're looking at. It may not necessarily be roach, though. That could also be a few species of fairly common fly.
Thank you Gabe for this wild ride bro. My contact with oldest tech was with an Apple II C that my father smuggled past the dictatorship blockade that was in course here in Brazil. Important tip: some "standard" keys to enter the BIOS: del f2 f10 f12 . Try all of them.
I have a couple of these and there's a pretty decent multi-ROM floating around that expands the usability of them. There's quite a few games and the serial to WiFi adapter even works on them as well. Awesome video as always and this is somehow reminding me I need to order a fresh OSHA shirt soon!
I have a Model 100 and I'm the original purchaser. Still all original and mint condition. I've got the casette, RS-232 cable, and all the other accessories.
For me, the issue is that it lacks a fold-up screen, to make the ergonomics work; 5° detents to 30° would have been REAL nice.. but added fragility. Many forget just how narrow that viewing angle for the LCD really is.
Wow, that's awesome! Bubble memory is effectively, permanent, as in , ReWritable RWCDROM, of FLASH RAM memory stick, etc. he he he, how many people picked up on the "banned in Texas" joke. 😆🙄 Great find with the TRS-100's. Lovely presentation.
DB-9 was for Light pens and other things. I had a 100 with the case you have. 3 1/2" drive Acoustic Couplers and a Disk Video Interface for home. Thanks for the memories! never saw the Bubble memory before.
I think you mean barcode scanner. HP made a nice barcode scanner pen that worked just fine with this system. There was some software that you had to load to get the pen to work.
One of the major US news agencies used 100's for field reporters. I personally have a connection to bubble memory. They were supposed to be the next big thing for personal computers ... but they had thermal issues which killed them.
Thank you for this TRIP down memory lane I remember my dad bringing this home. He was proud of his model 100 computer. I was not allowed to touch it a whole lot but it is the first device I got to see work on the world scale with compuserve and he showed me a few games on there. Regrettedly it got tossed out a couple years back and I'm so wishing it had not been thrown out. It was 1 of 3 vintage computers Thrown out the other 2 was a Texas Instruments 99 a and atari ST520. But thanks again for the trip back to the 80s.
Oh dang! Sad when old stuff gets thrown out, but there always seems to be a time period where stuff is too old to be useful and not old enough to be antique...
@@saveitforparts At this point I do think it's an antique my dad was also proud that this was the last computer that Bill Gates actually worked on directly another reason I really wish I had kept track of it
@@saveitforparts I found something deep in the depths of my garage basement I'd like to share a picture of what I found that I will not be saving for parts do you have a way I can send you this picture of my TRS 80 model 100
I have this same exact computer with the bubble memory expansion! I got it in jacksonvillve IL at the steam festival so I wonder if it was something more available in the midwest since I've never seen the bubble memory module in california.
Love it I owned 4 of them over the years, the first one when it was brand new, I did a trade for it. Bought another one around 1987 , loved it. Than around 2007 I bought a couple and sold them, they were mint ! If I recall this was a personal project of Bill Gates. Cheers.
Most of these caps are from an era before China tried to steel the recipe Japan had developed for electrolytic capacitors, and got the wrong recipe. A lot of companies saw the low price on the new caps out of China, and saved a bunch of money by not buying the proven Japanese caps. Only to learn 5-10 years later that the caps would fail and take the board they are soldered to along for that ride. These caps are going to be good until the electrolytic in the batteries dries out. That will present a more observable problem w/o having to look for damage on the circuit board. (usually)
@@u0000-u2x Ah. joke went over my head. I'm not likely to have reached up to grab it in that case. ;-) I do know that there are a lot of vintage radios that do get their caps replaced, not because of the breakdown, but because of the drying out. Some of them can be restored by feeding power to the radios through a variac and slowly bringing the voltage up until it's at whatever voltage the power supply is expecting. But I think that's more for power supply capacitors. I do kind of like the idea of it being an effective torture test of Cockroaches though. 🙂
Banned in texas joke was perfect, great video on a piece of obscure and unusual tech. More like this would be awesome! Save it for parts, or save it for fun? Videos on the backwoods Alaska tech nerd origin story would also be very welcome.
This is a pretty cool retrospective. I wasn't fortunate enough to have access to computers until the i486sx. A friend of mine had a TRS-80 at his house, though, but his father wouldn't let him "play" with it. Heh Those resistors are probably causing you issues... making it look like you have a flow control/checksum problem. I feel you on the hesitation to desolder more on the main board. Even though I have been soldering all my life and even do surface mount soldering this retro repair stuff makes me nervous because mistakes happen. And ruining an antique is painful!
@28:03 sometimes it doesnt work with usb keyboards unless you change it in the bios (i think its called USB Legacy) so try keyboard with DIN-plug maybe? also its not always F12, some use (depending on brand/version) F1, F2, F10, Esc or Del also be sure the Fn is or isnt active depending on what is required. And i think sometimes pressing spacebar (or was it another key) makes bootscreen visible (maybe also showing key you are looking for).
@@dmacpher not only that, but now I feel it's a company, focused solely on the x16 and the petscii robots and such games. it's fine, I don't see anything wrong (besides the 🔫), but it's not why I subbed to that guy. I was a translator of his videos back in the day, I'm not a hater. Just not what I expected. adrian seems to be a more down to earth man, with overall good intentions and I always get hooked on his videos.
@@cocusarDavid isn't really making much money off the X16 and such, just enough to keep it afloat. He's an enthusiast trying to bring the old days back, same reason he's opening the arcade so cheap. Seems every bit as genuine as Adrian.
I had one of those! A hand me down from my wealthy doctor uncle. He bought it for on the go work as a roving pathologist working at hospitals in the Vancouver lower mainland. It was already a curiosity by the time I got it in the early 90’s and had fun fooling around with Basic coding. Sadly it was cast out during one of many moves.
From what little I remember about it, "bubble" memory was serially accessed memory which used "magnetic bubbles" which were "pushed" through whatever the storage medium was. For its day, it was quite storage-dense when compared to most other kinds of storage. I believe that it used a destructive read, which meant that the bits needed to be written once again after reading in order to keep the data. Its main problem was speed. The serial access scheme slowed down access times quite significantly. Along with improvements in storage density of other media, this led to bubble memory being dropped as a data storage method. Edit: It's "jumps", not "jumped", otherwise you don't hit the letter S and the whole idea of using the phrase is to use every letter of the alphabet. 😄 Edit2: The serial connection issue looks very much as though one end is misconfigured compared to the other. Maybe the Tandy is trying to use 7 bits and parity, or maybe it can't actually use 9600bps and both ends need to be configured for a lower speed, or maybe it can't use xon/xoff for flow control and needs to use CTS/RTS. But the fact that the resistors are wrong is also a possible reason for the problem. If you can get the RAM chips out, you may be able to test them using something like the TL866 programmer and chip tester. Edit3: I presume your telephone was one of the old "party line" magneto telephones? I had a couple of those fitted into my old home at one time, not as proper telephones but as an intercom. It was a very old house with a separate bathroom/laundry/toilet building, so the magneto phones were a good way of getting attention if you'd forgotten something you needed for your bath and didn't want to dry yourself, dress yourself, toddle back inside to get what you'd forgotten, toddle back out to the bathroom, undress again and get back in the bath again (by which time the water would be significantly colder, and we didn't have piped hot water, so you had to bathe and get out before the water got cold).
Yep, we had some old army field telephones with the AC ring crank and a bunch of D batteries for voice amplification. Occasionally had to go fix the wires that squirrels would chew on!
@@saveitforparts Cool. Mine were proper Post Office telephones, designed to run off of 3V from two 1.5V cells. Originally, the cells were supposed to be huge things around 1.5 times the height of a coke can and a bit thicker around. I just used a couple of D cells, though. They worked just as well, since the only reason for using the huge cells was to make them last longer.
Try moving the USB connection of your Linux desktop keyboard to a different port. Motherboards turn on the port groupings one at a time and keyboards have a small boot time. I had to move mine to the port group next to the onboard devices to catch F12!
I used to work tech support for PCSG. I was issued a model 100 with a Chipmunk floppy, the memory bank (256k) the battery bank b and a rom bank and of course the SuperRom.
I remember these from high school. They had them in the computer lab. I tried taking the computer class and back then, most people were skeptical that they were going anywhere. I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in the lab so I asked the kid “Mike” running the lab to help me. He was a year behind me and kinda squirrelly looking, but seemed like he knew what he was doing… I was really impatient and I think I transferred out of the class the next week. I think Mike Dell went on to work with computers after high school. I probably should have kept up with him. 🤦🏻
I have a pair of Model 102s which are very similar… I believe the 100s are notorious for faulty capacitors. In addition to changing the memory batteries, I’d recommend a recap service and see if that helps. Cheers!
@@saveitforparts Indeed the keyboard sucked. I ended up hard wiring a real tactile keyboard I sourced from a local eletronics parts store back in the '80's and kludged it into the 400. Worked great.
My stepdad’s boss owned an Osborne back in the early to mid 80s. My stepdad was an electrician for a small audio company. it was technically considered a portable computer. I guess, it seem to weigh about as much as a neutron star.
A few years ago, I was given an Atari 800 (sadly now has a dead keyboard) from a family member. More recently, I just added a TI-99/4a, and a C64 to my “roster”. Hadn’t ever seen a Commodore of any kind in person before I got my 64. I will say, I like the 99 more than either. It looks nice, without being massive like the 800, and has a surprisingly decent keyboard. My favorite thing is that it has easier to remember (for me) BASIC commands for graphics and sound. The POKE command just always seemed like an afterthought to me, and makes the Commodore have a slight “prototype-y” feel. “CALL SOUND” just feels more “right”. The three computers still on my “wanted list”, are a 100 like yours, a bare bones 98 era machine (Think a Packard Bell would be a cheap way to fill that void) and a Compaq Portable (or an SX-64, either would be cool.) I’ve also got a 486, but something’s wrong with it right now, and I don’t have an AT keyboard for it.
I still got my Olivetti M10, originally purchased in the 80s. It's nearly same as the Model 100 but has a tilt screen. Also got the Memory expansion. And oh yes .. a Dataphon S-21d acoustic coupler since it was all portable and battery operated. Good old days of dialup Mailboxes and DATEX-P :)
Bubble memory was non-volatile, like core memory. I think it was also power hungry when in use. The chip had to warm up in order to work, and had a built in resistive heater.
The CMOS chip on the bottom is to add an embedded operating system. They were all the rage in the early 80s with Tandy computers. Only computer store I've even been to that not only sold computers but also leather and leather tools. They were also sold inside Radio Shack stores. I also had a Tandy 1000 RLX back in the day.
Back in 1976, I picked up a old mechanical adding machine. add, subtract, divide and multiply but I could never get it to work so I just took it apart and found a small clear plastic square( Bublbe memory ) and after looking with a magnifying glass, I could see tiny tiny donut magnets with super thin wires running verticaly and hortizontaly through each magnet. I still have that thing but it is packed away deep somewhere. I am getting closer to having my new garage insulated, walls and wired for a lab and maybe UA-cam later. So, I will be going through everything I have stored and should come across it. It looks so delicate.
20:50 Gabe, try reseating and socketed chips… the corrosion on the pins over time will act like an insulator, giving you problems with digital components. Reseating the chips will freshen up the connections.
I think the memory power is a rechargeable NiCd battery that gets charged up when the AA batteries are installed or when powered with the 6 volt adapter
I don't know if it was already said but to enter dell bios its F2 just spam it at boot, if it gives you trouble trying spamming F2 from a fully powered off state. I have a ton of dell systems they last FOREVER
My first computer was a used COCO I got for working afternoons at Radio Shack in the fall semester of '85. Rigged up an old portable cassette recorder for mass storage. I had the 4K RAM upgrade.
I built my first computer in 1977 got my trash 80 shortly after, worked with Steve Jobs at Atari before he started apple did final testing on the 400 and 800's sucks to be old though but wise!!
@lutomson3496 middle 1970s one of my scout leaders worked at the University of Akron computer lab. Learned fortran & cobol programming from him there. After my dad saw I was actually good at something he had me start doing stuff for the family business.
Very cool, I still have the NEC PC-8201 version of The Tandy from back when I was a kid, we bought it new. Mine worked last time I turned it on. I do have some of the manuals, do you think they would have what you need?
In my TRS80 100 schematic transcription (on github) I annotated the relevant resistors mentioned in the bulletin. Soldering required unfortunately. If you want to avoid desoldering the old ones, you can probably get away with parallel soldering 390 Ohm resistors in parallel (on the back of the board). Might be a tad less annoying.
Nice! I have the tech bulletin downloaded and ordered some resistors. I'm not actually great at basic electronics, but I keep meaning to learn more! I'll download your PDF as well for reference :-)
the 9 pin socket was for the barcode reader (there use to be a magazine that let you scan a basic program into the TRS80) as for the "hard drive " it might be the com settings? ? I'd like to get one, but I probably would have to get a new memory battery. I also had a Assembly chip expansion.
Would be cool to see a simple board with leds connected to the user port or something, and use them for automatic antenna tracking! Or even better, something like a vhf/uhf relay. of course everything can be done easier and quicker with an arduino, but what's the fun on that?
i ran into the same problem loading basic programs, the model 100 series is looking for a specific basic file format. if your basic files are plain text, load them as a .do file, then load that into basic. the complete reset and wipe after a full memory crash is normal, this happened a lot while i was running into issues with loading text files as basic files and crashing the laptop. i also had issues with fast serial port speeds.
wow...I had a model 100...used it to takes notes for a IBM 360 assembly class that I shouldn't really have taken. Looking to replace it with NEC Ultralite PC-17-02 to do packet radio goodness
3:07 "...people were still making up their own connectors left and right" Like Apple does to this day where they can get away with it. And charge a ton for 3rd parties. I had one of these back in the 80s. Made a great terminal to dial into our Unix based department computer.
FWIW: I remember seeing something on TV decades ago about _"bubble memories."_ I was under the impression that technology was supposed to be the 'next best thing'. Clearly it was not.
To get into bios: PS2 keyboard or basic usb in lowest bandwidth usb port. DEL key on some mobo's rather than F12, I have also seen F2 and F5. Also only start spamming whichever key you are trying after the keyboard lights flash or while they are in the process of flashing. Happy travels and thanks for the vid :-)
Now given their age absolutely even if you can't replace it anytime soon. Desolder those batteries and get rid of them! I've had a few of these specifically die from battery leakage!
They have beautiful historical computers, and I have also worked with magnetic bubble memory, which was ideal for storing data at the time. Can't the missing parts be printed with a 3D printer?
16:03 I have heard of TS-DOS but never used it myself. My first PC was a full fledged 286, so it already has MS-DOS installed (5 I think with Norton shell) It's a late model being produced either in late 1990, or early 1991.
Regarding serial, maybe try "COM:58N1E", which is 1200 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop-bit, XON. The system remembers the setting of the last COM command and defaults to this, so you should have to supply this only once. (First digit of the parameter is the baud rate [5 for 1200, 1=75 … 9=19,200 ], second one the word length [6,7,8 bits], then parity ["O"dd, "E"ven, "N"one, "I"gnored], then the number of stop bits [1 or 2], and finally XON ["E"nabled, "D"isabled]. )
LOL as someone who just soldered on some pins to a single board computer today I understand the hesitation to solder onto computer motherboards :P Probably does not help that I am terrible at it and my soldering iron sucks. These are some pretty cool machines and I have never seen bubble memory either. Holy crap tho the amount of double A batteries in that thing tho.
1:19 you had a Toshiba T-1xxx! I don't know what model yours is, but it's not the T-1200 - that was my very first computer (well it was my dad's computer for work, but I used it more than he did). I still have 2 of them somewhere...
I think it might have been the 1400HD. My Dad bought that to write letters and I immediately filled it with DOS games. The hard drive got so flaky that he had to put it in the freezer for 15 minutes before it would boot up 😂
I have a pile of electronics kits that I need to assemble, including some cool stuff that @SimpleElectronics gave me. Just haven't had time to sit down with it!
sometimes these bios key-checks don't like usb-hubs between the keyboard and the PC (if that is the case) or maybe it has an old ps/2 port which does recognize it better that early in the boot
If the modern computer has Windows on it, it is possible that it could be in Hybrid power mode (Fast Boot) or Hibernate mode, in which case it will ignore your request to enter an alternate mode with F2 or F12 to prevent altering the system running state. You have to do an actual reboot from Windows for it to work, either click on the power menu and _Shift_-click "Reboot", or type in the admin command prompt "shutdown /l /r", or better "shutdown /l /r /fw".
Phillips head screws were well entrenched and nothing new by the time this was out. They were first used in the 1930s. Certainly by 1970, pretty much all consumer products with screws in them used Phillips head.
1:34 you should retrobright the cases, which is using hydrogen peroxide (in strong concentration) in the sun. Also 3d printing will help with the battery covers, and maybe even the missing keycaps. Though how you would label them IDK.
3:24 I'd like to see if we could integrate that acoustic modem into the parallel internet we talked about a little while ago. While yes, since it uses TCP/IP communication standards, (I assume) The audio connectivity portion is VERY interesting to me. I am certain we could remake/emulate the connection handshake and data packets, and be able to use such a modem as an alternate end point to an off grid internet. I say end point, because I'd prefer that a more accessible device like that be only in use in limited numbers. But imagine we take the LoRa repeater, and hook it up to a daughterboard that will translate the digital information into the correct sound frequencies for the modem using, I dunno, a speaker?
18:27 reach out to Adrian Black. I'm sure he'd LOVE to look at these units, he's fixed MANY 1980s PCs and has an entire basement full of rare and dedicated parts to many machines.
does he have a youtube channel?
@@itrstt66 Adrian's Digital Basement
@@itrstt66 yep Adrian's Digital Basement is his main channel.
Same here. lol. I have many Tandy's. They're the first computers I ever had. I have the Altier, the first IBM PC Compatible, Commodore 64, Amiga, etc. I even have an original Macintosh Plus with Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, etc., signatures etched into the inside of the case. I have many old 8086 computers and 8088 computers from IBM, TARGUS, TANGENT, etc.
@@mattparker9726 Oh I got a buddy with a poll barn that makes his basement look empty... lol. Computers from the 1960s and 70s in there.
I'm commenting as soon as it came up in the video so that I don't forget (so I don't know if you figure out later): when the battery is soldered on like that, you can get a replacement that you solder in which can take a coin battery. Definitely worth it even if the battery still works, because those are prone to leakage!
About 15 years ago, I had a business meeting with IT folks at the St. Petersburg (Florida) PD and they had literal STACKS AND STACKS of these that they were finally retiring. I guess they had them in the police cars.
I’ve heard some busses used these until the early 2000s as a sort of terminal for handling payments and tracking passenger stats.
I relate to this video more then you can imagine.
RIP - cockroach egg purses in the first unit you opened.
Yep, my first thought as I found them in an old adding machine.
yep, I was thinking roach eggs or roach droppings depending on density and texture
So its got basic ? That means programming is possible on it ? It would be awsome if it supported 3.5 inch floppy.
Those would have been the future machinists, no wonder it doesn't work.
@@BigPicture-s5qYes you can program in basic and then run the basic programs. I’ve never heard of the floppy drive for it but I have different rom chips you can put in it and even modern SD card mods that people make check out club 100
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog - is used to check to see if every letter is working, when you type 'jumped' you miss the s :)
Saveitforparts Space Program just got its mainframe units
Except for calling Elon, it may be the only other thing that can get Butch and Suni's chin back home safe from the ISS.
Tape memory...WOW you just brought back memories.
You get today's 'made me smile' award for reminding me of bubble memory. Mmmmmm! Buuuuubbbbbble memorrrrryyyy...
I still have my Tandy 200. It needs a new power switch, The 200 was one of the reasons that Radio Shack was in operation as long as it was. It was the first clamshell computer on the market, and Tandy Patented the concept. For the next 17 years, any laptop computer that was sold in a clamshell format, payed a royalty to Tandy to be able to sell that device. It wasn't the only thing they did right, but moving to selling cell phones pretty much killed the stores.
Yeah I still joke that you could go into Radio Shack and the teenage manager wouldn't know what anything was outside the phone counter. It was a cool store once you got into the back half!
The local radio shacks in Corvallis and Eugene Oregon hung on until about 2015... I hit a total of 4 of them looking for a specific adapter.
Eagle River Alaska had one until about 2008...
It's just not cost effective to have small local electronic parts stores... and many of the RS stores doubled down on gimmicks and toys with uncompetitive pricing, rather than the thing most serious techs needed it to be: An electronic parts supply.
Grid Compass was the first clam shell laptop released in 1982 ..Grid collected royalties for the Tandy 200 (1985) until 1988 when Tandy bought Grid... in 1993 Tandy sold off their computer division (including Grid) to AST Research..
Tandy went from the late 1970's as largest personal computer company (most years they were ahead of Apple in sales) ..by mid 1980's they were the largest computer company in the world and largest consumer electronic supplier..they were one of the first companies to sell the Motorola brick cell phone in 1989 Model CT-300 ...by early 1990s they were no longer manufacturing their own computers ...Tiger Direct and Egghead were killing the electronics side...they tried selling other companies computers and other companies cell phones. ..like Fry's Electronics and Radio Shack were slow to move to online..and that is what killed both companies among hundreds others..Tandy sold their Computer City stores off in 1998 to CompUSA..
I worked for Tandy at a Tandy Computer Service Center in the 1980s basically at Tandy's peak ..they had a weird business strategy...the Radio Shack retail stores lost money for 10 months a year and November and December made up for it..this worked for at least 20 years..but could not work in the post internet days...the Tandy Computer stores (which in the 1990s became Computer City) made profit every month through the 1980s but died by late 1990s...
Radio Shack lasted for 80 years starting in 1921 by 2000 they were pretty much dead...
@MickeyMousePark Thank you for the correction. I was not aware of either the grid compass, nor that Tandy had purchased them. I suspect that where I had learned the erroneous information was also unaware of those factors, just knew that Tandy was earning royalties on the Clamshell design, and thought it was related to th 299.
I've heard a lot of retail stores operated that way, it's where the term "Black Friday" came from. That post-Thanksgiving shopping rush was the first time of the year stores would be "In the black" and making a profit for the year.
Thank you for this rollercoaster 🎉 love your content and hope all is well with you and yours
Oh no those look like oothecas at 07:58 this is why I always open old electronics with gloves lmao
Work pest control, that is exactly what you're looking at. It may not necessarily be roach, though. That could also be a few species of fairly common fly.
Thank you Gabe for this wild ride bro. My contact with oldest tech was with an Apple II C that my father smuggled past the dictatorship blockade that was in course here in Brazil.
Important tip: some "standard" keys to enter the BIOS: del f2 f10 f12 . Try all of them.
f8 is also common. Many modern machines use two different ones, one for bios, the other for just the bootloader choice menu.
Sometimes the F-keys are set to send other key codes, like volume or e-mail, and you need to hold the Fn key to make them transmit proper F-key codes.
"I've heard of Grub in linux, but never in a Tandy 100" OMG I literally LOL'd
Verify: OK! The bubble RAM is where all the greatest test files hang out. :)
I have a couple of these and there's a pretty decent multi-ROM floating around that expands the usability of them. There's quite a few games and the serial to WiFi adapter even works on them as well. Awesome video as always and this is somehow reminding me I need to order a fresh OSHA shirt soon!
I have a Model 100 and I'm the original purchaser. Still all original and mint condition. I've got the casette, RS-232 cable, and all the other accessories.
Nice! I wish I'd kept more of my old stuff.
As someone who grew up with typewriters being a thing in libraries and in my home, I love this formfactor for a basic writing computer.
For me, the issue is that it lacks a fold-up screen, to make the ergonomics work; 5° detents to 30° would have been REAL nice.. but added fragility. Many forget just how narrow that viewing angle for the LCD really is.
I was 12 years old 1982 i first heard about bubble memory. i found it very interesting the history behind this.
Wow, that's awesome!
Bubble memory is effectively, permanent, as in , ReWritable RWCDROM, of FLASH RAM memory stick, etc.
he he he, how many people picked up on the "banned in Texas" joke. 😆🙄
Great find with the TRS-100's. Lovely presentation.
DB-9 was for Light pens and other things. I had a 100 with the case you have. 3 1/2" drive Acoustic Couplers and a Disk Video Interface for home. Thanks for the memories! never saw the Bubble memory before.
I think you mean barcode scanner. HP made a nice barcode scanner pen that worked just fine with this system. There was some software that you had to load to get the pen to work.
One of the major US news agencies used 100's for field reporters. I personally have a
connection to bubble memory. They were supposed to be the next big thing for personal computers ... but they had thermal issues which killed them.
Thank you for this TRIP down memory lane I remember my dad bringing this home. He was proud of his model 100 computer. I was not allowed to touch it a whole lot but it is the first device I got to see work on the world scale with compuserve and he showed me a few games on there. Regrettedly it got tossed out a couple years back and I'm so wishing it had not been thrown out. It was 1 of 3 vintage computers Thrown out the other 2 was a Texas Instruments 99 a and atari ST520. But thanks again for the trip back to the 80s.
Oh dang! Sad when old stuff gets thrown out, but there always seems to be a time period where stuff is too old to be useful and not old enough to be antique...
@@saveitforparts At this point I do think it's an antique my dad was also proud that this was the last computer that Bill Gates actually worked on directly another reason I really wish I had kept track of it
@@saveitforparts I found something deep in the depths of my garage basement I'd like to share a picture of what I found that I will not be saving for parts do you have a way I can send you this picture of my TRS 80 model 100
I have this same exact computer with the bubble memory expansion! I got it in jacksonvillve IL at the steam festival so I wonder if it was something more available in the midwest since I've never seen the bubble memory module in california.
Love it
I owned 4 of them over the years, the first one when it was brand new, I did a trade for it.
Bought another one around 1987 , loved it.
Than around 2007 I bought a couple and sold them, they were mint !
If I recall this was a personal project of Bill Gates.
Cheers.
Thank you for taking me way back 'in my day.'
It's very rare to capture capacitors in that stage of their lifecycle! What a find ;)
Most of these caps are from an era before China tried to steel the recipe Japan had developed for electrolytic capacitors, and got the wrong recipe. A lot of companies saw the low price on the new caps out of China, and saved a bunch of money by not buying the proven Japanese caps. Only to learn 5-10 years later that the caps would fail and take the board they are soldered to along for that ride. These caps are going to be good until the electrolytic in the batteries dries out. That will present a more observable problem w/o having to look for damage on the circuit board. (usually)
@@RNMSC it was a (bad) joke about the cochroach eggs :D
@@u0000-u2x Ah. joke went over my head. I'm not likely to have reached up to grab it in that case. ;-)
I do know that there are a lot of vintage radios that do get their caps replaced, not because of the breakdown, but because of the drying out. Some of them can be restored by feeding power to the radios through a variac and slowly bringing the voltage up until it's at whatever voltage the power supply is expecting. But I think that's more for power supply capacitors.
I do kind of like the idea of it being an effective torture test of Cockroaches though. 🙂
He is one of the smartest of our generation
Banned in texas joke was perfect, great video on a piece of obscure and unusual tech. More like this would be awesome! Save it for parts, or save it for fun? Videos on the backwoods Alaska tech nerd origin story would also be very welcome.
You're awefully lucky to have lived that many years and still not know what those little "beans" are.
I grew up in Alaska and we didn't have those little guys!
What are they? Turds of some variety?
This is a pretty cool retrospective. I wasn't fortunate enough to have access to computers until the i486sx. A friend of mine had a TRS-80 at his house, though, but his father wouldn't let him "play" with it. Heh
Those resistors are probably causing you issues... making it look like you have a flow control/checksum problem. I feel you on the hesitation to desolder more on the main board. Even though I have been soldering all my life and even do surface mount soldering this retro repair stuff makes me nervous because mistakes happen. And ruining an antique is painful!
I'm sure 'Hey Birt!' would be a good contact. He has loads of portable Tandy troubleshooting videos
Loving the t-shirt change
@28:03 sometimes it doesnt work with usb keyboards unless you change it in the bios (i think its called USB Legacy) so try keyboard with DIN-plug maybe?
also its not always F12, some use (depending on brand/version) F1, F2, F10, Esc or Del
also be sure the Fn is or isnt active depending on what is required.
And i think sometimes pressing spacebar (or was it another key) makes bootscreen visible (maybe also showing key you are looking for).
My first computer was a trs 80 coco. I learned to code in trs color basic. It was the beginning of a long journey of coding.
You could ask the 8-bit guy for help, pretty sure he knows stuff about thr TRS80
I'd go with Adrian Black because of reasons :)
@@cocusar📎
@@dmacpher not only that, but now I feel it's a company, focused solely on the x16 and the petscii robots and such games. it's fine, I don't see anything wrong (besides the 🔫), but it's not why I subbed to that guy. I was a translator of his videos back in the day, I'm not a hater. Just not what I expected. adrian seems to be a more down to earth man, with overall good intentions and I always get hooked on his videos.
@@cocusarDavid isn't really making much money off the X16 and such, just enough to keep it afloat. He's an enthusiast trying to bring the old days back, same reason he's opening the arcade so cheap. Seems every bit as genuine as Adrian.
@@babayaga7434 He's also someone who brings a huge-ass gun to a bakery to "own the libs".
1:58 I am SO BEYOND jealous that you live near Freegeek. The sheer volume of old PCs and parts there makes me kinda thirsty, ngl.
I'm editing an interview with all the staff right now, should be out in a couple weeks!
I had one of those! A hand me down from my wealthy doctor uncle. He bought it for on the go work as a roving pathologist working at hospitals in the Vancouver lower mainland. It was already a curiosity by the time I got it in the early 90’s and had fun fooling around with Basic coding. Sadly it was cast out during one of many moves.
Amazing! Dig that backpack, too!
Thanks 🏴☠️
From what little I remember about it, "bubble" memory was serially accessed memory which used "magnetic bubbles" which were "pushed" through whatever the storage medium was. For its day, it was quite storage-dense when compared to most other kinds of storage. I believe that it used a destructive read, which meant that the bits needed to be written once again after reading in order to keep the data. Its main problem was speed. The serial access scheme slowed down access times quite significantly. Along with improvements in storage density of other media, this led to bubble memory being dropped as a data storage method.
Edit: It's "jumps", not "jumped", otherwise you don't hit the letter S and the whole idea of using the phrase is to use every letter of the alphabet. 😄
Edit2: The serial connection issue looks very much as though one end is misconfigured compared to the other. Maybe the Tandy is trying to use 7 bits and parity, or maybe it can't actually use 9600bps and both ends need to be configured for a lower speed, or maybe it can't use xon/xoff for flow control and needs to use CTS/RTS. But the fact that the resistors are wrong is also a possible reason for the problem.
If you can get the RAM chips out, you may be able to test them using something like the TL866 programmer and chip tester.
Edit3: I presume your telephone was one of the old "party line" magneto telephones? I had a couple of those fitted into my old home at one time, not as proper telephones but as an intercom. It was a very old house with a separate bathroom/laundry/toilet building, so the magneto phones were a good way of getting attention if you'd forgotten something you needed for your bath and didn't want to dry yourself, dress yourself, toddle back inside to get what you'd forgotten, toddle back out to the bathroom, undress again and get back in the bath again (by which time the water would be significantly colder, and we didn't have piped hot water, so you had to bathe and get out before the water got cold).
Yep, we had some old army field telephones with the AC ring crank and a bunch of D batteries for voice amplification. Occasionally had to go fix the wires that squirrels would chew on!
@@saveitforparts Cool. Mine were proper Post Office telephones, designed to run off of 3V from two 1.5V cells. Originally, the cells were supposed to be huge things around 1.5 times the height of a coke can and a bit thicker around. I just used a couple of D cells, though. They worked just as well, since the only reason for using the huge cells was to make them last longer.
Try moving the USB connection of your Linux desktop keyboard to a different port. Motherboards turn on the port groupings one at a time and keyboards have a small boot time. I had to move mine to the port group next to the onboard devices to catch F12!
I used to work tech support for PCSG. I was issued a model 100 with a Chipmunk floppy, the memory bank (256k) the battery bank b and a rom bank and of course the SuperRom.
I remember these from high school. They had them in the computer lab. I tried taking the computer class and back then, most people were skeptical that they were going anywhere. I couldn’t figure out how to make it work in the lab so I asked the kid “Mike” running the lab to help me. He was a year behind me and kinda squirrelly looking, but seemed like he knew what he was doing… I was really impatient and I think I transferred out of the class the next week. I think Mike Dell went on to work with computers after high school. I probably should have kept up with him. 🤦🏻
I have a pair of Model 102s which are very similar… I believe the 100s are notorious for faulty capacitors. In addition to changing the memory batteries, I’d recommend a recap service and see if that helps. Cheers!
THis was great! I was very close to getting trs-80 (trash-80) but opted instead for an Atari 400. Love it!
I had one of those as well, mainly played cartridge games on it though. I remember the keyboard kind of sucked for typing your own programs.
@@saveitforparts Indeed the keyboard sucked. I ended up hard wiring a real tactile keyboard I sourced from a local eletronics parts store back in the '80's and kludged it into the 400. Worked great.
My stepdad’s boss owned an Osborne back in the early to mid 80s. My stepdad was an electrician for a small audio company. it was technically considered a portable computer. I guess, it seem to weigh about as much as a neutron star.
A few years ago, I was given an Atari 800 (sadly now has a dead keyboard) from a family member.
More recently, I just added a TI-99/4a, and a C64 to my “roster”.
Hadn’t ever seen a Commodore of any kind in person before I got my 64.
I will say, I like the 99 more than either. It looks nice, without being massive like the 800, and has a surprisingly decent keyboard.
My favorite thing is that it has easier to remember (for me) BASIC commands for graphics and sound. The POKE command just always seemed like an afterthought to me, and makes the Commodore have a slight “prototype-y” feel. “CALL SOUND” just feels more “right”.
The three computers still on my “wanted list”, are a 100 like yours, a bare bones 98 era machine (Think a Packard Bell would be a cheap way to fill that void) and a Compaq Portable (or an SX-64, either would be cool.)
I’ve also got a 486, but something’s wrong with it right now, and I don’t have an AT keyboard for it.
I still got my Olivetti M10, originally purchased in the 80s. It's nearly same as the Model 100 but has a tilt screen. Also got the Memory expansion. And oh yes .. a Dataphon S-21d acoustic coupler since it was all portable and battery operated. Good old days of dialup Mailboxes and DATEX-P :)
Bubble memory was non-volatile, like core memory. I think it was also power hungry when in use. The chip had to warm up in order to work, and had a built in resistive heater.
7:57 cockroach pods - either American or Brown Banded. The literal bug in the system. :)
21:30 Yeah I think you're spot on with the corrupted RAM chip(S).
My most vintage computers right now are TI 99/44 and 44/a. I also have a NABU that can kinda be use today.
The CMOS chip on the bottom is to add an embedded operating system. They were all the rage in the early 80s with Tandy computers. Only computer store I've even been to that not only sold computers but also leather and leather tools. They were also sold inside Radio Shack stores. I also had a Tandy 1000 RLX back in the day.
Back in 1976, I picked up a old mechanical adding machine. add, subtract, divide and multiply but I could never get it to work so I just took it apart and found a small clear plastic square( Bublbe memory ) and after looking with a magnifying glass, I could see tiny tiny donut magnets with super thin wires running verticaly and hortizontaly through each magnet. I still have that thing but it is packed away deep somewhere. I am getting closer to having my new garage insulated, walls and wired for a lab and maybe UA-cam later. So, I will be going through everything I have stored and should come across it. It looks so delicate.
that would be Magnetic-core memory (1955 and 1975) not bubble memory (1960s-1970s)...
SIFP-"Id like to order a pizza for delivery please.." Pizza Parlor-"sure, what's your phone number?" SIFP-".......... 3"
Please tell us more about your childhood, sounds super interesting!
20:50 Gabe, try reseating and socketed chips… the corrosion on the pins over time will act like an insulator, giving you problems with digital components. Reseating the chips will freshen up the connections.
I think the memory power is a rechargeable NiCd battery that gets charged up when the AA batteries are installed or when powered with the 6 volt adapter
I don't know if it was already said but to enter dell bios its F2 just spam it at boot, if it gives you trouble trying spamming F2 from a fully powered off state. I have a ton of dell systems they last FOREVER
My first computer was a used COCO I got for working afternoons at Radio Shack in the fall semester of '85. Rigged up an old portable cassette recorder for mass storage. I had the 4K RAM upgrade.
Wow, haven't thought about my old "trash 80" portable in decades. I used it for writing programs for my desktop in middle school in the 1980s
I built my first computer in 1977 got my trash 80 shortly after, worked with Steve Jobs at Atari before he started apple did final testing on the 400 and 800's sucks to be old though but wise!!
@lutomson3496 middle 1970s one of my scout leaders worked at the University of Akron computer lab. Learned fortran & cobol programming from him there. After my dad saw I was actually good at something he had me start doing stuff for the family business.
Very cool, I still have the NEC PC-8201 version of The Tandy from back when I was a kid, we bought it new. Mine worked last time I turned it on.
I do have some of the manuals, do you think they would have what you need?
A lot of the manuals are online, although I'm keeping an eye out for a printed one.
In my TRS80 100 schematic transcription (on github) I annotated the relevant resistors mentioned in the bulletin. Soldering required unfortunately. If you want to avoid desoldering the old ones, you can probably get away with parallel soldering 390 Ohm resistors in parallel (on the back of the board). Might be a tad less annoying.
Nice! I have the tech bulletin downloaded and ordered some resistors. I'm not actually great at basic electronics, but I keep meaning to learn more! I'll download your PDF as well for reference :-)
the 9 pin socket was for the barcode reader (there use to be a magazine that let you scan a basic program into the TRS80) as for the "hard drive " it might be the com settings? ? I'd like to get one, but I probably would have to get a new memory battery. I also had a Assembly chip expansion.
Would be cool to see a simple board with leds connected to the user port or something, and use them for automatic antenna tracking! Or even better, something like a vhf/uhf relay. of course everything can be done easier and quicker with an arduino, but what's the fun on that?
i ran into the same problem loading basic programs, the model 100 series is looking for a specific basic file format. if your basic files are plain text, load them as a .do file, then load that into basic. the complete reset and wipe after a full memory crash is normal, this happened a lot while i was running into issues with loading text files as basic files and crashing the laptop. i also had issues with fast serial port speeds.
Try to get hold of The 8 bit guy, this is right up his alley
Hey , it’s the end of June. Time for some boating videos.
I’ll still watch whatever you post, but I like boats.
The struggle of getting into the BIOS is so real! XD
you have to spam esc, f1, f2, f10, f12, and del (with your 5 hands) - no one ever agreed on what the stupid setup key was
I recall looking at a trash 80 in 1980. they were priced at $1400 then, think how much that would be today.
"I've now changed that things gender twice and gotten this video banned in Texas" ROTFL.
wow...I had a model 100...used it to takes notes for a IBM 360 assembly class that I shouldn't really have taken. Looking to replace it with NEC Ultralite PC-17-02 to do packet radio goodness
I wish i still had my Tandy 102 i had when i was a kid, used that to dial into my library card system.
3:07 "...people were still making up their own connectors left and right"
Like Apple does to this day where they can get away with it. And charge a ton for 3rd parties.
I had one of these back in the 80s. Made a great terminal to dial into our Unix based department computer.
I lugged a Toshiba T1100 through New Zealand in 1989. Like a damned chump :)
FWIW: I remember seeing something on TV decades ago about _"bubble memories."_ I was under the impression that technology was supposed to be the 'next best thing'. Clearly it was not.
It was probably revolutionary for the time, but tech moved so fast in the 80s/90s that a lot of good ideas turned out to be dead ends.
@@saveitforparts>>> Yuppers.
To get into bios: PS2 keyboard or basic usb in lowest bandwidth usb port. DEL key on some mobo's rather than F12, I have also seen F2 and F5. Also only start spamming whichever key you are trying after the keyboard lights flash or while they are in the process of flashing. Happy travels and thanks for the vid :-)
also sometimes esc, and f1 as well
@@gorak9000 True :-)
Now given their age absolutely even if you can't replace it anytime soon. Desolder those batteries and get rid of them! I've had a few of these specifically die from battery leakage!
They have beautiful historical computers, and I have also worked with magnetic bubble memory, which was ideal for storing data at the time. Can't the missing parts be printed with a 3D printer?
Ahhh.. A Trash 80.
I was a Shacky circa 1986ish - 1994 ish....
Such cool days
16:03 I have heard of TS-DOS but never used it myself. My first PC was a full fledged 286, so it already has MS-DOS installed (5 I think with Norton shell) It's a late model being produced either in late 1990, or early 1991.
Regarding serial, maybe try "COM:58N1E", which is 1200 baud, 8 bits, no parity, 1 stop-bit, XON. The system remembers the setting of the last COM command and defaults to this, so you should have to supply this only once.
(First digit of the parameter is the baud rate [5 for 1200, 1=75 … 9=19,200 ], second one the word length [6,7,8 bits], then parity ["O"dd, "E"ven, "N"one, "I"gnored], then the number of stop bits [1 or 2], and finally XON ["E"nabled, "D"isabled]. )
The ones that you have with you currently are the same type that were used in the movie rad so you could say they're red pieces of equipment
LOL as someone who just soldered on some pins to a single board computer today I understand the hesitation to solder onto computer motherboards :P Probably does not help that I am terrible at it and my soldering iron sucks. These are some pretty cool machines and I have never seen bubble memory either. Holy crap tho the amount of double A batteries in that thing tho.
looks so cool
you can reboot your Linux machine directly into the bios/uefi setup with the command "sudo systemctl reboot --firmware"
1:19 you had a Toshiba T-1xxx! I don't know what model yours is, but it's not the T-1200 - that was my very first computer (well it was my dad's computer for work, but I used it more than he did). I still have 2 of them somewhere...
I think it might have been the 1400HD. My Dad bought that to write letters and I immediately filled it with DOS games. The hard drive got so flaky that he had to put it in the freezer for 15 minutes before it would boot up 😂
My number was 3. That's awesome!
Maybe a video on learning the needed soldering skills (and salvaging/rigging up the gear for it)!
I have a pile of electronics kits that I need to assemble, including some cool stuff that @SimpleElectronics gave me. Just haven't had time to sit down with it!
@@saveitforparts looking forward to it!
2:07 Yes! FGTC!! I volunteer in the Retro Room on occasion.
Wild, I was just mentioning bubble memory in a conversation with a coworker a couple hours ago.
very cool old school stuff tho ... but what a mission trying to get 1 to work but good on you tho show us them lol .. big thumbs up 👍😃👍
sometimes these bios key-checks don't like usb-hubs between the keyboard and the PC (if that is the case) or maybe it has an old ps/2 port which does recognize it better that early in the boot
We had a trs-80 desktop as a kid, an external floppy drive bigger than a loaf of bread. I played a lot of the Castle Guard game cartridge.
If the modern computer has Windows on it, it is possible that it could be in Hybrid power mode (Fast Boot) or Hibernate mode, in which case it will ignore your request to enter an alternate mode with F2 or F12 to prevent altering the system running state.
You have to do an actual reboot from Windows for it to work, either click on the power menu and _Shift_-click "Reboot", or type in the admin command prompt "shutdown /l /r", or better "shutdown /l /r /fw".
"I'll get around to that later"
Yep... sure you will....
Phillips head screws were well entrenched and nothing new by the time this was out. They were first used in the 1930s. Certainly by 1970, pretty much all consumer products with screws in them used Phillips head.
1:34 you should retrobright the cases, which is using hydrogen peroxide (in strong concentration) in the sun. Also 3d printing will help with the battery covers, and maybe even the missing keycaps. Though how you would label them IDK.
3:24 I'd like to see if we could integrate that acoustic modem into the parallel internet we talked about a little while ago. While yes, since it uses TCP/IP communication standards, (I assume) The audio connectivity portion is VERY interesting to me. I am certain we could remake/emulate the connection handshake and data packets, and be able to use such a modem as an alternate end point to an off grid internet. I say end point, because I'd prefer that a more accessible device like that be only in use in limited numbers. But imagine we take the LoRa repeater, and hook it up to a daughterboard that will translate the digital information into the correct sound frequencies for the modem using, I dunno, a speaker?
I knew some ham radio guys who used these with packet modems for texting, worked great for that!
28:10 I think it’s F10 on the Dells. I recall having to smash it repeatedly until it took.