Tarfun wrote:
This is testing the limits of my rusty memory.
Yes. TRS stood for Tandy/Radio Shack (the companies merged). In that process we eventually lost access to a host of leather goods sold in Tandy stores.
They marketed their computer as "Radio Shack Color Computer," or "Rainbow Computer." Those of us in the baby computer fraternity referred to them TRS-80 (or Trash80) computers. Its CPU was a Motorola 6809 (a prototype for Motorola's later 68000 series of chips).
It was my first computer. Radio Shack Basic provided me an opportunity to learn something about programming.
Somewhere along the line I encountered the Mandelbrot Fractal, and related articles in Scientific American. Using that little computer coupled to a 5-inch floppy, I managed to create a program to render the Mandelbrot Fractal. The deeper one probed into the fractal, the longer it took to render an image; sometimes several weeks! The 6809 was not a fast chip.
One little known fact about the TRS80 was that it could run multiple windows. It was neat to switch between them to see what was happening, even if only inconsequential.
Many TRS80 users at the time regretted that the Color Computer was marketed solely as a game machine. We thought that if T/RS had promoted its technical capabilities, and kept developing the machine in that direction, they might have emerged as a name brand PC manufacturer.
This is testing the limits of my rusty memory. br ... (
show quote)
Since Radio Shack doesn't manufacturer anything itself, it probably WAS a name brand PC manufacturer making it for them. Radio Shack had a very closer relationship with Texas Instruments over the years and used TI chips in a lot of stuff, sold TI chips and transistors in the parts department, and was one of the first retailers to carry the TI scientific handheld calculator that sold for something like $450 - so I'd just about bet the TRS-80 was made by TI for Radio Shack.