June 30, 2025 – Updating Ads in Archive

Over the weekend I licensed ABBYY Finereader 16 and ran all 102 issues of 80 Microcomputing through it. While I am surprised at some bugs that seem to have survived 16 iterations of the program to make themselves known almost immediately, it has allowed me to leverage the dtSearch indexing software to help augment the graphic parts of the archive, mostly adding missing blurbs and ads, although also helping to correct some author errors.

The workflow is that I do an archive search for program whose author is known but which doesn’t have an ad. I then use dtSearch to try to see if they advertised in 80 Microcomputing. If so, I use GhostScript (command line) to extract to the page from the 80 Microcomputing to TIFF and edit accordingly.

While not perfect, it helped.

June 23, 2025 – Matthew Reed’s TRS-80 Emulators and Z80ASM

Matthew Reed, who has done so much for the TRS-80 community, including writing quite a few of the most important programs in TRS-80 emulation, has taken seriously ill and has decided to make all of the versions of his software which previously was subject to paid registration to unlock all their features, freely available in their fully registered forms.

Thank you so much Matthew!

June 6, 2025 – New Manuals

Mloewen has provided some missing manuals!

Title: Micro-Courier v1.00.00
Publisher: Microcom Inc-Radio Shack
Year: 1982
Size: 7,021,857
Pages: 104
Notes: [M3][26-1589]
Title: Orchestra-80
Publisher: Jon Bokelman-Software Affair
Year: 1980
Size: 2186295
Pages: 44
Title: Teleterm Terminal Emulator System
Publisher: Telexpress Inc
Year: 1983
Size: 7436278
Pages: 198

June 4, 2026 – TRS80GP Updated to v2.5.5

George and Peter Phillips have updated their awesome TRS80GP emulator to v2.5.5. TRS-80 Model I/III/4-related changes are:

New Functions/Updates

  • Debug -> File Utility window to examine and manipulate disk files.
  • Scripting commands to control TRS-80 and UI. http://48k.ca/trs80gp.html#script
  • Add your own commands to Custom menu with -menu
  • Run commands at boot with -cmd
  • Run commands along with with automatic input using -icmd
  • Can pass arguments to endpoints: -p [ :mx70 -mute ]
  • Motorola S-record file loading.
  • Paste modes for injecting text on unsupported operating systems + programs.
  • Added “-ib file” to run trs80gp script commands from a file.
  • Added “-ifr file” to paste in a file with no line ending translation.
  • Direct loaded BASIC programs can have multiple-line lines.
  • Bus tracing can be limited to address ranges with -tr low:high,l2:h2
  • Output registers to bus trace with -trpr A,HL or similar
  • -cix option to turn off warning when cassette I/O seen and interrupts enabled.
  • MX-70 can automatically pause at the end of every page.
  • MX-70 tractor feed and perforations can be turned off.
  • Add “save image” to printer window in Windows.
  • Add Cassette to Device Viewer.

Bug Fixes

  • Keyboard auto de-turbo now works on linux and mac.
  • Serial port, printer and other dialogs have explicit enable checkbox.
  • Fix linux crash when resizing window in turbo mode.
  • Fix linux crash when media key like “pause” or “next track” pressed.
  • Fix crash/emulation errors when examining active HFE disk images in Disk Viewer.
  • Fix crash formatting single-density only DMK files as double density.
  • “Typing” keyboard layout (-kl typ) better for Level 1, TRSDOS 2.3, CP/M input.
  • Keyboard layout and ghosting now remembered as user preferences.
  • Input system (-i flags) timing more consistent and useful.
  • Loading symbols with -ls still allows boot into DOS.
  • Symbols now appear in profiler output.
  • Copy screen to clipboard sometimes failed in graphics-only mode under Windows.
  • Trim trailing spaces and blank lines when copying text screen.
  • Pasting to Tandy 10 faster and more reliable.
  • MX-70 reset puts printer into default mode; cold restart drops pages.
  • MX-70 no longer gets bad line height if high bit set in size.
  • Stop -turbo from skipping renders; it was triggering legacy code.
  • On Windows sub-processes like from -p :mx70 don’t steal the focus.
  • IMD/JV3 with CRC errors now report those errors to the FDC.
  • Blank double-sided diskette images moved to Other submenu to reduce clutter.

You can download the emulator here or from their site at http://48k.ca/trs80gp.html.