Tandy TRS-80: The Budget Computer

Even back then, there were computers for people who couldn’t afford the more expensive stuff. Take this Tandy, which costs little more than a upgraded Netbook today. From Core Memory, photographed by Mark Richards and written by John Alderman.

TRS-80 Model 1 (and Model 100)
Year created: 1977
Creator: Tandy Corporation
Cost: $399 ($599 with monitor)
Memory: 4KB ROM
Processor: Z-80

Despite Apple’s marketing message of personal empowerment and freedom, they weren’t giving away those Apple IIs. A computer—especially one with a price tag of $1,300 or more—was beyond the comfort range of most people in the country, and few parents considered such a thing necessary to child development. As far as business went, it would be a while before a “killer app”—a must-have application—would be developed for machines available at an affordable price.

The TRS-80 was in part an antidote to this. If parents were convinced of a computer’s necessity, but their pocketbooks couldn’t support an Apple, then $399, or even $99, was worth considering. For a business that wanted to experiment with computing, that was a reasonable asking price.

The system was developed by the Tandy buyer Don French and Homebrew Computer Club leader Steve Leininger, who was quoted by Creative Computing magazine at the time as saying he had rejected a company plan to sell a computer kit because “too many people can’t solder.” This was an interesting admission from the company that owned Radio Shack, famous at that time for selling electronics parts to hobbyists. Nevertheless, the TRS-80 was actually rather sophisticated. Four kilobytes of RAM were matched with 4K of ROM holding Radio Shack’s proprietary version of BASIC. The silver-and-black color scheme—even more than a beige box—evoked a kind of futuristic proletarian chic. Like other, similar systems, the TRS-80 used a cassette tape player as a storage device.

The early portable TRS-80 Model 100, designed by Kyocera and released in 1983, was evidence that, by that time, beige was winning the color war. Rugged and able to start up immediately, the Model 100 as utilitarian and much-beloved by traveling reporters.

Core Memory is a photographic exploration of the Computer History Museum’s collection, highlighting some of the most interesting pieces in the history of computers. These excerpts were used with permission of the publisher. Special thanks to Fiona!

The above photographs were taken by Mark Richards, whose work has appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Fortune, Smithsonian, Life and BusinessWeek. The eye-candy is accompanied by descriptions of each artifact to cover the characteristics and background of each object, written by John Alderman who has covered the culture of high-tech lifestyle since 1993, notably for Mondo 2000, HotWired and Wired News. A foreword is provided by the Computer History Museum’s Senior Curator Dag Spicer.

Or go see the real things at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif.

Gizmodo ’79 is a week-long celebration of gadgets and geekdom 30 years ago, as the analog age gave way to the digital, and most of our favorite toys were just being born.

Millenniata’s Millennial Disk should last longer than you, your memory

Considering that we’re still waiting patiently for any company (we’re looking at you, Call/Recall) to produce a commercially viable holographic storage solution, we’re required to tackle Millenniata’s newest assertion with a sprinkle of skepticism. The claim? It’s specially lubricated, fortified and homogenized Millennial Disk is said to last some 1,000 years, making it the world’s finest and most longevous archive solution. If it’s legitimate. We’re told that digital information is carved into layers of hard, “persistent” materials, and somehow, those carvings are able to stay fresh and readable for more years than you care to count. Still, we reckon the robot apocalypse will be in full effect by the time 3009 rolls around, so even if it only lives up to half of its claims, we’ll still be impressed.

[Via Slashdot]

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Millenniata’s Millennial Disk should last longer than you, your memory originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Navigon 8410 GPS debuts, packed full of features for the trendy Euro jet-set

It’s been a few months since Navigon ceased doing business Stateside, and already the company’s back on our radar with a device that made us wish they’d stuck around these parts a while longer. The Navigon 8410 features a 5-inch touchscreen, a polished steel frame, and a righteous assortment of features, including: DVB-T digital television tuner, City3D’s photo-realistic 3D mapping software (only for select cities on the continent), and a media player for all your fave tunes, flicks, and pics. Available only in Europe, we don’t have a ship date for you yet, but we do know it’ll cost €449 ($630). Now, if you excuse us, we were due in Bonn hours ago.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

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Navigon 8410 GPS debuts, packed full of features for the trendy Euro jet-set originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel’s 34nm-based 320GB solid state drive creeps closer to reality

Hankering for an SSD that’s as big as your traditional HDD? So is Intel, or so we hear. In fact, we’ve been hearing whispers that a capacious 320GB solid state drive was in the works since January, and now those whispers have been upgraded to library-like voices. According to the generally reliable Golum, Intel’s so-called Postville SSD family is well on its way to reality, and with them should come much needed price drops. The new series should top out at 320GB, with an 80GB and 160GB version falling underneath. Word on the street has it that both of the smaller two will be around $100 cheaper than the same-sized X25-M drives, though there’s been no leaks on the 320GB model’s MSRP. Still, Intel has a golden opportunity here if it’ll just get these things to market — a cheap(er) SSD with a brand name like Intel could blow the solid state market wide open.

[Thanks, Marius]

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Intel’s 34nm-based 320GB solid state drive creeps closer to reality originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Laser-equipped Virginia Tech dirt buggy can be driven by the blind

And you thought those self-driving whips in DARPA’s Urban Challenge were hot stuff. As the mighty Hokies look to prove their dominance in the field of engineering, a student team from Virginia Tech has assembled what amounts to a vehicle that can actually be driven by blind individuals. In short, the specially equipped dirt buggy is outfitted with an array of laser range finders, an instant voice command interface and a few other related systems that enable drivers to respond to whatever the vehicle “sees.” Best of all, the project is far beyond the drawing board, with a blind driver (Wes Majerus) already singing praises about the vehicle and deeming it a “liberating” experience. Regrettably, there’s no information on what the team plans to do with the vehicle going forward, but we do know it hopes to pass along the same technology to more street-legal motorcars.

[Thanks, Trisha]

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Laser-equipped Virginia Tech dirt buggy can be driven by the blind originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 06:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cool Search Engines

collecta.jpg

Wired: How do you find a new search engine if all you know is Google? Typing “search engine” into the usual box might lead you to Microsoft’s newly launched Bing, the combined search at Dogpile, or the former king of search, Altavista.

But for those willing to dig around, searching for search engines can reveal a treasure trove: The net is rich with specialized search services, all trying to find a way to get their slice of the billions of dollars Google makes every year answering queries.

Here’s a quick preview of a few of the cool search engines picked by the writers of this article:

Take mobile. Google works fine on the iPhone, but for quick searches on the go, ChaCha can’t be beat. Simply text your question to 242242 and you’ll get an answer sent back to you.

In the age of Twitter, there’s fierce competition to be the quickest indexer on the net — a feature even Google co-founder Sergey Brin admits his company can improve upon. IceRocket, OneRiot and Scoopler are typical of the trend.

The smartest one we found is Collecta. It scours the net for the most recent blog posts, news stories, tweets and comments and displays them in a continuous waterfall. It’s a torrent of information to keep track of, but if you are worried about your company’s online reputation or want the latest news on Iran, it’s indispensable.

Read on to find out more!

Cool Search Engines That Are Not Google [Wired]

Fujitsu’s sleek FUTRO S100 gets VIA Eden implant

By and large, thin clients are relatively boring. That said, they’re typically dead silent and plenty powerful to handle the most basic of tasks, and thanks to Fujitsu, this one’s even halfway easy on the eyes. The new FUTRO S100 was revealed today, complete with a 500MHz VIA Eden ULV processor that enables the entire system to suck down just 11 watts under full load. Other specs include 1GB of DDR2 memory, a pair of USB 2.0 connectors, VGA output, Ethernet, a VX800 media processor, Chrome9 HC3 graphics and internal CF-based storage support. There’s nary a mention of price, but it’s ready to ship today for those with the correct change.

[Via HotHardware]

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Fujitsu’s sleek FUTRO S100 gets VIA Eden implant originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 03:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Video: Cacophonic typewriter doubles as piano

See, we knew those check writers in NYC had something brilliant in mind when dropping a cool million on typewriters this week! As the tale goes, they’ve contracted one Fabien Cappello to modify each and every one into a ‘Typing The Sound’ concept, which bangs away at letters whilst making all sorts of racket. Unfortunately, there aren’t any how-to details to be found (nor any real proof that a pianist isn’t behind this guy fooling us all… nor any truth to the aforesaid tale), but the video past the break is still worth a gander. Honest.

[Via MAKE]

Continue reading Video: Cacophonic typewriter doubles as piano

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Video: Cacophonic typewriter doubles as piano originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Jul 2009 01:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How would you change ASUS’ Eee PC Seashell line?

In the past month and change, ASUS has found time to issue not one, but two new Seashell netbooks. Originally shown to the adoring public at CeBIT in Germany, this fresh take on the Eee PC was a welcome change to the drab netbooks we were accustomed to falling asleep on. We managed to have a look at both the ultraslim 1008HA as well as the more business-oriented 1005HA, but now we’re eager to hear your opinions on the matter. What would you do differently with the Eee PC Seashell line? Would you beef up the battery? Add a few ports? Swap in a different display or processor? We know Microsoft’s Windows XP limitations are holding PC makers back, but who says your imagination has to abide by those same guidelines? Detail your dreams in comments below.

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How would you change ASUS’ Eee PC Seashell line? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 23:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Garmin-ASUS nuvifone M20 and G60 shipping to Singapore in August

After a patently absurd amount of delays, it actually feels like the Garmin-ASUS nüvifone tandem is approaching a proper launch. Whether or not anyone actually cares anymore, however, remains to be seen. Across the sea over in Malaysia, one particularly lucky soul seems to have stumbled upon both the Linux-based nüvifone G60 and the WinMo-powered nüvifone M20, and he claims that both handsets will be shipping en masse to the region “within 30 days.” Best of all, that totally jibes with what we’ve heard directly from Garmin today, which has informed us that the smartphone will be in Singaporean stores in August, with a few other Asian nations seeing it in late July. Now, if only North Americans could look forward to the same…

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Garmin-ASUS nuvifone M20 and G60 shipping to Singapore in August originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Jul 2009 21:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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