Old Tandy laptops

Thank goodness for the TRS-80 else I might never have had a career. A guy gave me one (or maybe sold it to me), then that one broke. I tried to have it fixed and was pretty much told it ain't gonna happen.

Then I found on a BBS or maybe it was a flyer about some guy that had one and was selling, and nabbed it for like $50. (Still can't believe my luck in the timing in that one). Then that one was nearing its end, and a friend swapped me his TRS-1000 or something like that (with the flip up screen, much more like a word processor) for an old Mac SE. There may have been more to this deal, but that was the gist of it. Much better machine - especially since there was a way to tell how long a story was instead of just counting lines and doing a rough estimate.

I never dared harm my TRS-80 (else possibly ruin my freelance career), but once upon a time, before I got into writing, I did see a friend of mine hurl one and the couplers across a hotel room. Man he hated those couplers (thankfully I never used those).

It amazes me sometimes how far we've come in such a short time.

 

I had four years experience with telecopiers back in mid to late '70s working as student asst. in SID, sending story after story after football games. Two settings--4 and 6 minutes, but 4 minuets never seemed to work right. usually ended up taking the long way around.

As for TRS-80, used it all through the '80s as a sportswriter. Small screens made it tough to develop any "flow" with writing, but we managed. Two choices to send--either use couplers (totally unreliable because of outside noise factor) or cords you could plug into phones that had removable jacks. I could never understand why anyone would even bother with the couplers.

One time covering an event, in press room, fellow writer from our paper doing sidebars was trying to send coupler and it wouldn't go through. Time after time, he kept trying, banging his head against the wall. He started yelling and going ballistic, and all other writers in room stopped to watch this. I was finished for night and getting ready to leave, but couldn't take it anymore from my guy. Finally, I walked over to him, told him to use the cables instead, and to calm the heck down.

By the way, I have saved my second "Trash" 80 and coincidentlaly just took it out last week because I had to use carry bag for something else. Forgot I even had it, but will always keep it.

 

Telecopier. Drove you nuts when you would send a gamer in on deadline and the page would split.

 

I loved that thing.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/radio-shack-trs-80-model-100-portable-computer-w-box_W0QQitemZ190122158196QQihZ009QQcategoryZ74947QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Here's how bad the SID budgets are in the SWAC: In 1999 I gave my TRS-80 model 100 to the SID at Grambling. I hope he got some use out of it, because I sure wish I had that thing now as a keepsake.

 

You and millions of others.

 

Apparently you never had to file from a pay phone.

 

yeah, the couplers saved my ass a few times

you'd throw 'em in the car as a last resort, but once in a while they came in h(t)andy

if you covered HS sports in the 1980s, you sat in your car in the pouring rain at a pay phone in some skanky convenience store parking lot off the interstate with the phone cable running out the window and the window rolled up as much as possible but the rain pelting you anyway. with a long drive home.

that was our jobs

 

I had one very early on, when I first started. This was only 15 years ago.
It was the fancy flip-top one, so at least eight lines of text.

It was a beautiful thing. I left that paper, but took it with me. I still have it.

Wow. People back then programmed in Basic. Hard to believe. That's what the thing operated on.

 

There's something to be said for the experience. I never had to go the pay-phone route, thankfully.

 

that's what i remember - holding that damn coupler as tight as I could to the phone connection in a vain attempt to block out stadium noise.
Many six lines stories arrived in our computer system.