Old Tandy laptops

Got a great story from the late Tom McCormack. He continued to use one even when he did freelancing and retired in 2002.

Anyhow, I asked him about it, and he told me a story how he had the thing during the San Francisco earthquake World Series game, and everyone who had the fancy laptops had their batteries run out. But Tom had this TRS 80 and was the onyl one able to file a darn story.

You could carry that thing in a gym bag and it would still work. I got the TRS-200 upstarirs in the attic. It still works, though I have no idea how to get the modem working, though I am tempted to try and get it to work. Wife wants to throw it out.

 

The Tennessean was too cheap to get us the thermal printers for our Portabubbles.

I dropped one once, Not good. Must have agitated all those bubblees in the bubble memory.

Mike Lopresti of Gannett News Service was still using some kind of throwback machine in the late 1980s. It predated the TRS-80s, but I can't remember what it was.

 

John Habib...longtime h.s. writer for the Manchester Union-Leader still uses his Trash 80 ... That's what I started out with, big trick with filing with so many newspapers was having each one's code (at the top of the file) and parameters, plus a list of dedicated modem phone numbers...some systems were easy to get into, others, you never knew...might take 10 times.... on the plus side was being able to file from any pay phone....kind of like today, when you can hijack a wireless signal and email the piece in.....

 

Oh, how times have changed. We think nothing about getting access to AP Exchange and countless other sources of wire stories at home.

I remember being quite impressed when I could get into the newspaper's computer system in the late 1980s using the paper's Tandy laptop and was able to read the wire.

Unrelated, but that also reminds me of the first time I saw WYSIWYG on the screen. This was prepagination days and you could WYSIWYG a story and headline and you could see how it would appear on the page. It was truly a wow moment. Those were the days when the composing room cut out all the copy, waxed it and put it on a flat. The days when you had to kiss the composing room's asses because they could make you or break you.

God, I'm old.

 

It was hard being nice to some of the sonofabitches who worked in composing sometimes, but it was a requirement. Making friends with the press operators didn't hurt, either.

Hot wax, changing the strip in the font machine for different type, airing out copy with an Xacto knife ... and today when some coach farts it's on the Internet in five minutes.

 

Every day was a battle royale with the composing room. There was genuine hatred. It got to the point that the animosity had to be dealt with. So we had a softball game. We worked it out on the diamond. Then we had a BBQ and a bunch of beer. We all became friends. It was cool.

 

Those Texas Instrument monstrosities weren't Portabubbles. They were called "Silent 700s" and they were horrendous. I never did learn how to use the editing mode on the one I had the misfortune to use for probably about the longest year of my life.

 

My trusty Trash 80 still works … when I can find a non-digital line. Stays in the trunk like a good, full-sized spare tire. I actually like seeing but four lines. Makes you concentrate.

The secret to the couplers was alligator clips. Bust off the suction cups, solder on the clips and look for an old payphone. The pre-1970s ones you could screw the mouthpiece off and access the wiring direct. The later ones you'd have to bust the payphone. Only did that once. It was an emergency. Really. Left a 10-spot in the coin return as penance. (Has the statute of limitations run out yet?)

 

At the paper i started at when i was 22, we were writing stories on typewriters and then a backshop guy would set the type. If you screwed up and marked the story with the wrong width, they'd have to re-type the whole thing. The backshop foreman was this scary Portuguese guy who would just scream at you if you messed up. It still makes me shudder.
Maybe I'll take one of my Tandys and a pica pole and a photo wheel and put it in a time capsule. The Tandy would probably still work 50 years from now. Thanks for all the great stories everyone.

 

The Tandy continued to work, but in later years I found that papers with upgraded computer systems couldn't accommodate a baud rate that slow.

For all its flaws, the TRS-80 was a huge upgrade over the previous methods, which often included dictation. That was a royal pain on both ends of the exchange.

 

I remember using these things, although it wasn't long afterward that the "better" ones started coming out.

Here's some coding I discovered in my office files....for your reading pleasure!



#SOM##SPTSLT,SLUG,KEY,INT#
#EOM#

 

I've got goosebumps ...