Old Tandy laptops

I remember my first Tandy. Thought it was the coolest thing ever to sit at the kitchen table and write a story instead of having to drive down to the office. And those couplers were a nightmare. I still have one in a bedroom closet. Not sure if the couplers are still there.

 

GuessWho -- yeah the Slient 700s were the ones I broke in on.

Awful, awful -- changing a line of text in the middle of the story, which required some weird operation of writing in the line above the original text....bad flshabacks I'm having now, maaaan.

 

The Tandy's were way before my time, but stupid conversations with gas station people is right down my alley.

My favorite to date: (about two minutes before deadline, middle of nowhere)

Me: "Hello. I would really really appreciate it if I could borrow your phone for just a second. I'm from the Beagletown Bullplug and I need to file my story, and this is the only place open."

Gas station girl 1: "Oh, sure. Go there in the back. The phone's right there."

So I go in the back, laptap and phone cord ready to rock, when ...

Gas station girl 2: "Who the hell told you to come back here!!!!???!! Get out of here!"

Me: repeat story

Gas station girl 2: "The internet doesn't work on our phone."

I ignored her, continued on to the phone, which, go fucking figure, was screwed to the wall, covering the jack, so the pig was right, the internet didn't work there. She didn't have a damn clue why it didn't work, but she was nevertheless right. Damn. I hate people.

 

That's what I started with, as well. Had problems with the 100's phone connector one night, had to dictate. Switched to my own Apple Powerbook 145B with a terminal emulator after that; set the then-current version of WordPerfect for Mac (3.5) with a QuickCorrect shortcut to put in the modem codes and my byline automagically.

Not that the software receiving the file was any great shakes. Consistently lost files or misplaced them for hours (not good when on deadline); I had more than one conversation with the desk editor in which I was told, "I've seen your story cross the (modem) computer here twice now, and it's still not in the queue yet." On one of those nights, in the time lag between me sending the story and ACT sticking it into the remote queue, I managed to switch from the terminal emulator to my dial-up Internet connection and e-mail two stories in before either showed up in our system the "correct" way. When the ME questioned us about why our stories were making the desk late, the techs ended up having to fly in from El Lay three times trying to fix the problem.

 

The first Tandy I had came with a phone coupler. You stuck the reciever into a set of recievers and it transmitted. No internet. You could send from a pay phone.
Like everyone else said: that SOB was durable and reliable. A guy at the office still uses one to transmit from college football games.

 

This has been a fun look back ... borrowing phones, digital phone lines, moving hotel beds, standing in the rain.
You wouldn't believe it, but our new, state-of-the-art computer software -- built by a bunch of jerkoffs in Denmark -- has NO way to send directly into the computer. All of our remote stories have to be e-mailed.
Here's another story that I just remembered while thinking about strange places to send stories from:
There's a boxing card at a local civic auditorium. It was the first comeback attempt by Tony Tubbs, who had 15 minutes of heavyweight fame then dropped into drugs and obscurity. He nails some tomato can. I interview both, write it up and then go out to the lobby to use the pay telephone to send. It was right next to a portable bar that was set up for the night. While I'm sending, two women get into a disagreement at the bar. One throws a punch and it becomes a full-fledged, hair-pulling, blouse-ripping cat fight. After a few seconds, this guy steps in and breaks them up. It's the tomato can. He'd showered and come out into the lobby to get a beer.

 

Now that's a great story. I wish we had thought of that idea. I can definitely picture that. This thread is really entertaining.

 

The Silent 700 helped me to meet one of my really good friends in the sportswriting world. That was in the PeopleXpress days, and we both were going through Newark from our respective cities on the way to Chicago.
Since we both were carrying those clunky machines, it was fairly obvious to each of us the other was a sportswriter. So we got to talking. Been friends for nearly 25 years now.
I only ever met one person carrying a Silent 700 -- what we called a TI for short -- who wasn't a sportswriter. Guy was a salesman who entered his orders with it.

 

I landed a coveted stringing job in school once because I owned my own TRS-80. They hired me on the spot. Best $300 I ever spent. Wish I still had it.

 

Heaven forbid you leave out a #

 

Went from the Silent 700 to the Trash-80 and thought I had died and gone to heaven. With a set of couplers, there was no place (theoretically) from which you couldn't file. Although, as others here have said, it didn't take much for the transmission to garble.

I miss the days where I had to talk my way into filing from fast-food joints and convenience stores in towns of 2,000 people at 11:30 at night ... on second thought, no, I don't. As Carly Simon put it so well, "These are the good old days."

Telecopiers were a major pain the ass, too.