I had a 4 hour lunch with Don French in Las Vegas. Hearing the story of the trials and tribulations he had to endure to get the TRS-80 made was amazing.

He says the accounts of his efforts in Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution are correct, should anyone be seeking to read about it. The accounts in Tandy’s Money Machine, less so.

Site Updates since the last …

• All pages have been converted to HTML5, other than the non-Wordpress catalog search result pages and the non-Wordpress magazine search results page. The site should scale to monitor size well now.
• The software search results page, which is a combination of php, html, css, jquery, and mysql, has been converted as well. I have also put in a near approximation of the WordPress navbar to make navigating from the page easier.
• The software search results page now also displays whether there were Radio Shack Bulletins in regard to any piece of software.
• Customer service bulletins, whether on the software search results page or the Radio Shack Bulletins page, are all downloadable.
• The way WordPress handles news is not conducive to widescale fixes, so most links from a decade ago, whether to sites, files, or pictures, are bad. I am converting super-old news to web pages, fixing them along the way, and removing them from the way WordPress generally handles news. This way they are still searchable, but also consistent.
• Having lunch with Don French this weekend; looking forward to it!

Jay Newirth has made a limited run of 3-D printed miniature Model I’s and Model III’s.

Anyone interested should visit his store at http://www.plaidvest.com/newsoft/.

Site Updates since the last …

• Cleaned up inconsistent CSS from all over the place, hoping for a more uniform look.
• Removed the ‘who posted’ and in ‘what category’ from news items, and consolidated the look of the news items. Old news will continue to be messed up though.
• Shrunk the right “navbar” to give the site more width.
• Fixed the WELCOME page links and updated it to include 3 suggested page groups.
• Broke out more of the INTERNAL into separate menu items under the ADVANCED heading.
• Consolidated 4 different sets of RAM ADDRESSES into one page. I merged them all, and it will take time to consolidate the different entries; so for the time being there may be 1-4 different entries per RAM address. Of course, I had to get them all into the same format which involved a LOT of decimal to hex and hex to decimal conversions.
• Consolidated 3 different keymaps into one page.
• Continued cleanup work on the ROM EXPLAINED pages. These pages will likely keep getting cleaned up.
• Created an Interviews page and moved individual interviews off the menu. Rounded up links I from other sites as well.
• Scrubbed for more bad links.
• Posted somewhere in the area of 320 ZIP’s contaning patches to various pieces of software, for the new Patches page.

If anyone wants to error check and/or otherwise help clean up the RAM ADDRESS page or try to help organize the uploaded Patches, such help would be welcome.

Rocky Burgen has created a papercraft design of a Model III and its manuals. It even has swappable screens!

You can read about it and download the designs at http://rockybergen.com/whatsnew/2019/11/12/trs-80-model-iii-papercraft-design.

It has been a while since I posted what I have been working on so …

• Converted the entire site (other than search results pages) into HTML5, including verifying all links.
• Restructured the overly cramped “Zaps/Mods/Pokes/Tricks” Pages.
• Broke out all ROM/CPU related pages.
• Added pages explaining the disassembled Model I ROM.
• Added a Radio Shack Lore page, which is excerpts from discussions on comp.sys.tandy.
• Updated the magazine search database with new magazine.
• Added new magazines to their respective pages
• Removed all pop-up pages (except search results pages); everything is now included in the WordPress site

The podcast TRS-80 Trash Talk # 33 is out now.

“In this episode we review Tandy Assembly 2019. There were lots of additions to the show this year including the new Tech Track. What worked well and what worked not so well? There’s the usual segments on new projects, new acquisitions, listener feedback and the book review. We talk about JetSet which is a flight simulator for the TRS-80 Model II! There’s some discussion about ARCNET, CP/M Plus and floppy disk baking. Then, in our main segment, we talk to TRS-80 Model 100 enthusiast Josh Malone. Josh gives us a great overview and then a detailed rundown of this most famous portable computer.”

You can download or listen at http://www.trs80trashtalk.com/.

Jens Guenther has forked Mark Grebe’s SDLTRS v1.1 (not updated since 2010) and has released v1.2.3 for both x64 and x32 Windows incorporating a number of changes and fixes.

The files can be downloaded from the Emulator Page or from the GITLAB. The copy on the Emulator Page includes the DLL needed.

The GITLAB page with the source and details can be found at https://gitlab.com/jengun/sdltrs.

Jay Newirth recently announced he has a new website for his TRS-80 parts.
Visit his site at http://plaidvest.com/newsoft/ for RAM and model case badges, replacement keyboards, motherboards, or complete systems.

Update: CLAIMED!
A site visitor is giving away what is pictured below free for local pickup. Hasn’t been powered up since the 80’s.
I will relay messages sent to me in the order received – email to contest at trs-80 dot com. First come first served, noting that I will be away from the computer all day on September 10, 2019 and I will not be able to remove the news item even if claimed until I get home.