History of Tandy Pocket Computers

History of Tandy Pocket Computers - Jeff Birt

[@irazipkin83]

The biggest thing to me as a teenager in the 80s was the dot addressable screen. In junior high I made a “track and field “ game. Was charging a nickel to play it in study hall. Wasn’t getting much business until I added a high score page!! Forgot to mention. Only the pc-2 had it

[@Fezzler61]

Excellent presentation! Enjoyed it.

[@bvds2007]

Great source of information. Just got the PC-2 which I couldn’t get as a teenager… I’m really impressed with the build quality and the power for an early 80’s machine. This presentation is very helpful.

[@lawrencejelsma8118]

I don't use the Tandy PC-6 assembler code just useful for teaching what assembly language is. The programming in Basic programming languages of the 1970s is what makes that gem in programming calculators a must have for life. I have so many programs written and working written in Basic (Fortran IV in 1987 not as much). It is easily interpreted manually to work in Microsoft Viaual Basic. The Microsoft objects of pointers, labels and text boxes for input and output Basic programming are what needs to be hard manually converted. The meat of the program on a Tandy PC-6 can be better a duplicate in Visual Basic any year program. That is so important for computer cell formula calculations in Excel spreadsheets. I still love the Tandy PC-6 gaming programs based off its interesting "horse race"'manual demostrated code in Basic to write a game "Deal or No Deal", Lottery number picks, Card games of many, etc. I still am enjoying Basic programming fun in my well preserved Tandy PC-6 any programmer who loves Basic (or higher language conversion of simple low calculations programs patience to learn and convert to Basic). 😊

[@uscgpsu1]

Just watched this. Great preso I’m just north from STL I have a PC-6

[@lawrencejelsma8118]

How did you find one today in 2024? It is worth it "working today" vs someone saying needs to be repaired. $119.99 and $19.99 at the time being worth $250.00+ today (if new) is worth it because I ran programs and calculations for like 5 years before replacing operations two batteries and 10+ years for the memory battery on this gem. Mine works today and I have programmed matrices Linear Algebra solutions of many problems, Polynomial Muller's Method finding roots of any size polynomial (at runtime DEFM statement to generate array size at run-time), quadratic two roots displayed in either 2D array or just array, polar or complex conversions and adding and multiplying them upon user inputs, ... All the way for fun gaming programs! I love it still today in 2024 after years of Basic programming everything useful to not do those hard routine Linear Algebra a polynomials calculations and complex number add and multiplying to eventually the handbook's given "horse racing game program" and making so many games based off that knowledge!! All in Basic the easiest programming language vs other languages that may be better but complex!! 😂

[@kattaylor5741]

Just finished my 24K RAM module for the PC-2. This uses the 16K Y0# and the 4 x 2K S1# through S4# chip selects that, with the standard 2K internal user memory, gives over 26K RAM. I'm using a pair of 256kbit SRAMs and throwing away the excess.

[@gp2k00]

Slides available at: github.com/Jeff-Birt/tandyAssembly2022_Slides-