TRS-80 (1983-1987) Collection and Easter Eggs

[@trooperj9152]

As a note, you can change the black on green text on the Coco 3 using the palette commands to change the default colors. I'd often change it to white on black text just to make it easier to read.

[@sprybug]

Later on, I had ADOS and I set it so my CoCo 3 would boot up in 80 columns with a black BKG and white text on my CM-8 RGB Monitor.

[@ordinosaurs]

The MC-10 was famously sold in France as the Matra Alice sporting a lipstick red livery, and with the manual illustrated by the famed comics artist Moebius. Highly collectible.

[@torstendittel2290]

As someone mentioned below, the MC-10 has a cartridge port which is covered by the plate with 2 screws on its back. Tandy sold a 16KB RAM expansion for a total of 20KB of RAM (you coukd even have some of the CoCo's "hires" video modes then (at least in machine language)). I have a red joystick interface from the French Alice for that port but there are other expansions available designed by Darren Atkinson

[@allenhuffman]

"Every week" doesn’t seem like any kind of exaggeration to me. Jim’s a monster of a coder, for sure! (MC-10)

[@TheRetroChannel]

Funny, in the group emails between the SepTandy channels we joked that MindFlareRetro wouldn't be able to get his video out in time for SepTandy (he just made it in with a couple of days to spare). So Mr Lurch made a new OcTandy logo which Jan Beta then ended up using in his latest video. Anyway, SepTandy/OcTandy it's all good

[@MindFlareRetro]

#BetterLateThanNever ⏳ 😉

[@anjinmiura6708]

Yes, the VDG is a standard Motorola chip. The Dragon computer used the same chips but the basic language and some minor details are different. But yeah... the VDG was an off-the-shelf solution which made Color Computer development fast but the quality of the graphics bad.

[@rager-69]

I love your hand drawn keyboard on that (shoe?) box. I did something similar as a kid, but I traced around a penny to draw my keys.

[@michaelbarry8005]

9:30 I believe those low 6 bits are Commodore screen codes, not formal PETSCII.

[@csbruce]

2:11 No joystick port? 2:14 I wonder how much longer new TVs will still be able to receive NTSC RF video. The most recent "television" I bought is actually a computer monitor. 2:59 Commodore fell into the same trap with the Commodore 16. 3:26 That's clearly someone pining for a Commodore! 4:16 It's a wonder McDonald's didn't sue Tandy or Jim Gerrie for trademark infringement! A huge deficit of the CoCos was the lack of lowercase letters. 5:09 Having all of the BASIC keywords and operations listed on the keyboard can also act as a "cheat-sheet" reference for what commands are available to use. 10:41 It does seem a bit odd that the MC-10 BASIC would be derived from PET BASIC since the two machines have completely different processors. They would have had to change (almost) every instruction in the assembly code! As you say, I guess there were just some magic bytes in the source listing that nobody dared to change. 12:57 It seems like the VIC-20's inverse-video screen mode, where the character color controls the color of the "off" bits instead of the "on" bits in the character glyphs. 16:46 Sounds like the C128, but integrated properly instead of hacked together into multiple separate operating modes like C64 mode and a separate, incompatible 80-column screen. Did they fix the lack of lowercase letters? 19:17 Some Run-Length Encoding would probably help to compress the bitmap's ROM size. 21:30 I'm used to that order since that's how HJKL map in text editor VIM.

[@bnice7]

The Coco 3 had true lowercase in both 40 and 80 column modes. You really need to use the RGB out in order to take advantage of 80 column mode, though. The GIME chip in the Coco 3 was very capable, but still lacked hardware sprites.

[@8_Bit]

In fact, those Microware easter eggs on the CoCo 3 show the lower case letters.

[@CurtisBoyle]

You can get inverse video for the letters on the Coco 2 (and 1) with SHIFT-0, although that is technically lowercase (and BASIC doesn't recognize keywords). If you have a late model Coco 2 (referred to as the Coco 2B) with the 6847-T1 VDG chip, it does support true lowercase and inverse video (and full border options) with a POKE or 2. Regarding the Coco 3 CTRL-ALT-RESET easter egg... they actually had extra room on the 32K ROM left over, and asked Tandy what they wanted to do with it. Not wanting to hold up production, they said "fill it with random garbage, and it can be used to help generate random numbers". Well, raw 2 color picture data is kinda random garbage, right? So that is what Microware put in... and Mark Siegel of Tandy just about cancelled the launch of Coco 3 once he found out what they actually put in. I will also mention that OS-9 also had an easter egg - in the original, if you hit CTRL-A (to repeat the last line typed) before you typed anything, it gave some of the names of the programmers. In NitrOS-9, we changed that to use SHIFT-Right arrow, and originally changed the names to match the original 3 developers of NitrOS-9 (Bill Nobel, Wes Gale and myself). Since we released the sourcecode to the public, that message changed again to 'www.nitros9.org'.

[@8_Bit]

Thanks, I did try some other POKEs to get the inverse video but I must have the earlier Coco 2 as nothing seemed to be working. I also tried that SHIFT-0 bit but yeah, found out it only worked with the letters and not other symbols. Thanks for the extra info about the picture. I'll have to give OS-9 a try sometime.

[@CurtisBoyle]

@@8_Bit - OS-9 Works best with 512K RAM (or higher) for the Coco 3, although you can run a minimal version in 128K. Probably the easiest route is to use the EOU edition, since everything is pre-set up in it's hard drive (and floppy, if you are using an emulator instead of the real thing) image. You can get it from my webpage here: www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/nitros9.html

[@RichardCyberPunk]

I programmed on the MC-10 for about 2 years, but never knew about the 2nd Microsoft easter egg. Great to see this on youtube. Very well done. Thanks for posting.

[@richardhead8264]

_Hi Robin, does the Tandy 102 allow you to address individual pixels? And does the screen offer grey-scale? Thanks!_ 🤔

[@michaelctanner]

Happy birthday Robin and thanks for all your great vids!

[@TheHighlander71]

When I studied conputer science back in the 90's one of our labs was about 68000 assembly which ran on computers running os/9. I haven't seen that os since and I'd love to see it back in action. Running on the coco3? Wow!

[@trooperj9152]

The disk/video interface used the system bus on the Tandy Model 102 (the model 100 system bus is located underneath in the rom compartment). tandy.wiki/Disk/Video_Interface

[@EmilOppelnBronikowski]

That photo of the authors is great. Image if you would sneak a 4GiB video of yourself in a modern operating system installation disk. I wonder how much the extra ROM chips costed RS.

[@f1addict]

Great video! But I can't believe that no one has mentioned the End Credits Music... Loved it!

[@Tuxon86]

I started with the MC10. Loved that machine.

[@curiousottman]

Great video. At 4:03 you show Lode Runner on a TV/Monitor that I once had but for the life of me I cannot figure out what make model it was. Could you tell me? I bought one in 85 in Ottawa since it doubled as a C64 monitor and also had a TV built in switchable on the back. Thanks 8 Bit Show and Tell!

[@8_Bit]

I'm not sure, but that clip is lifted from Jim Gerrie's channel, so you may be able to ask Jim there: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aGaqaH-lqLOFbbc

[@curiousottman]

8-Bit Show And Tell :Thanks. Will do.

[@bgelais]

both same late 1983 got my vic-20 first computer ever. About the MC-10, the only screnn view of this one was on Channel 25 from former TV cable provider Cablovision Alma. So a MC-10 run 24/24 with kaleidoscope program printing in the center "Cablovision Alma Inc." with phone number of the provider underwith background mixtape music used in teletext channels.

[@AquaCarb]

I owned a Model 100 and seem to remember on the back of the computer was a cover you could remove to add a rom chip of a program.

[@bunnyhero]

how did i not know about the micro colour computer? :O i was a c64 owner back then and had a friend with the full-size tandy colour computer. somehow missed this one!

[@SomePeopleCallMeWulfman]

Maybe it's only me, but the "amber" color scheme seems to be way easier on the eyes.

[@smalltownMainer]

as for radioshack computers i currently have the trs 80 model 3, coco 2 and the mc-10. and for others i have a vic 20, ibm 5150 and apple iie enhanced.

[@MindFlareRetro]

You are quickly becoming the Retro Easter Egg Master (making you a _REEMer_ -- I just made that up now 😜). Great stuff. Wow, that bitmap -- that took some 🍒. I'm with you for OctTandy, and perhaps beyond -- I am a video slow-poke, ya know.

[@CobraTheSpacePirate]

I picked up a Timex Sinclair 1000 at the end of life sales with the 16KB mem expansion all together for like $19.99 or something ridiculous like that. It was interesting to use for a while because all I ever had before was just vic-20 and c-64...With all of the computer magazines and books that I had, I also had some listings for zx-81 so I finally got to program them in. One program in particular I remember was a program that modeled physics and you could enter distance and an x/y vector to try and get a rocket to orbit around a star. The graphics were just like a black asterisk in the middle of the screen and a little square that orbited the "star"...It was neat though because you could get elliptical orbits, or watch a decaying orbit as the rocket eventually crashed into the sun.

[@mikegarland4500]

This Playlist (8-Bit Easter Eggs) has another pair of reversed vids: the two TRS-80 SepTandy vids are in reverse order with 1983-1987 listed before the 1980-1983 one.

[@mikegarland4500]

I went back to make sure I had typed the names and dates correctly, and now they're in the right order in my playlist... Did you fix it that fast?? wow

[@FrethKindheart]

I have a CoCo 3 and the very same Tandy book and two or three of the white cassette recorders. I'll have to try this on mine.

[@Darxide23]

I had one that looked like your CoCo2 except I had the one with the "melted" keys. I honestly don't know if it was a CoCo or a CoCo2. I've seen both and they look so similar and I just don't remember which I had anymore. But I didn't have the cable to use a cassette deck so I used to stay up all night writing BASIC and leaving the system turned on for several days so I could play whatever game I'd come up with before having to very regrettably pulling the plug and losing it all and starting again.

[@laranaarana]

I used to sell those computers when I worked for RS in San Francisco in the 80s! Had a lot of fun there.

[@skilletpan5674]

Those plasticy scraping sounds really remind me of the 1980s PCs. Many PCs from that era sounded like that. Brings back memories. The apple ][ and the Mac liked to make those sounds when you turned them around or plugged in cables (and where trying to find the port :D ). Really brings back memories. There's no need to worry about the sounds, it's all part of the experience :D.

[@adam1984pl]

3:55 Are these game coded in Basic?

[@michaelditto]

(Edit: classic mistake - pause the video and comment before listening to what follows...) Did you notice that the replacement bytes for those three names are all executable code? All three of them bear the hallmarks of patches (bug fixes made without re-assembling the source). The first one: LD (FFFBH),A JP 7682H Second one (looks like somebody forgot that the subroutine at 26DDH clobbers BC): PUSH BC CALL 26DDH POP BC RET Third one: LD (F809H),A JP 218DH

[@8_Bit]

Nice work, I need to up my 808x game so I can spot it as fast as you :)

[@michaelditto]

Those are common instructions so I still know those opcodes by memory. But I typed my disassembly in Zilog notation, your Intel notation is more historically correct for the 8085.

[@wolvenar]

I was sure glad for the basic shortcuts. That chicklet keyboard was tough to type on. I still kinda miss them in current day. I had setup an arduino, with code in the arduino to emulate a keyboard. ctl, alt, and any key I had setup to, it would type the basic assignment. I know it could have been done in software on the pc, but this way it could move with me between computers. It failed some time ago but I haven't fixed it yet.

[@mikegarland4500]

At 5:20 you say the user must use the keyboard shortcuts and the commands can't be typed in, but I see a CHR$ listed on the keyboard in the closeup above the U key. But at 7:15 you type out the CHR$ command and say it doesn't have a shortcut and requires 5 keystrokes to enter. I'm confused...

[@8_Bit]

I'm discussing two different computers in this section, the closeup around 5:00 is of the Sinclair ZX81, which was a motivation for making the Tandy MC-10 computer that I'm typing on around 7:00. The Sinclair has shortcuts for every command, and forces you to use them. The MC-10 only has shortcuts for some commands, and does not force you to use them.

[@mikegarland4500]

@@8_Bit oh!! how embarrassing. Thanks for clarifying that for me. (One thing I will NEVER do is claim to be the most observant of viewers! In my defense, I am rarely ever uninterrupted in my viewing sessions. In fact, I would think something was wrong if I didn't have 3 people constantly trying to talk to me while watching them.)

[@CanadianRetroThings]

Love those Easter Eggs for Thanksgiving! I had the Fantastic Games book when I first got my Coco2 as a kid, it is where I learned most of what I have forgotten about BASIC programming 😀

[@basvanharen2904]

@8bit May I ask what the story about the Commodore security badge? I wonder about this every video. (Your a former Commodore security guard?? 🤔 hehe)

[@timsmith2525]

Great video! I wonder how much money Tandy saved on the CoCo 3 by using a standard white/red RCA jack pair instead of using yellow for the video.

[@StephenSE9]

My first computer was the Sinclair ZX81. My second was the British cousin of the CoCo: Dragon 32.

[@youreperfectstudio4789]

My first computer was the CoCo3 so I was spoiled. I got a Timex Sinclair, a Vic20, and a TI 99/4a later. My favorite to actually use, though, was the TI 99/4a even though it wasn't as advanced as the CoCo3 the hardware was just nicer and more pleasing to use. I accidentally triggered the easter egg in the CoCo3 once - I had no idea what happened or how to reproduce it, it was really weird!

[@wolvenar]

The MC-10 was the first computer I had that I could do anything with. I also had a TI-99 Both were bought for me second hand in 86. The TI-99 didn't have any way to load software of any sort so I never did anything with it.

[@AlanCanon2222]

Loving the bilingual verbiage on the badge, showing that this is indeed a Canadian computer.

[@oldofftime]

Robin, you rock!

[@stanguay169]

The Matra Alice from France was a clone of the MC-10.

[@CanadianRetroThings]

And it looks GOOD in red!

[@allenhuffman]

On my CoCopedia wiki, there is a good write up on the CoCo 3 easter egg including the source images that were used to make it, recovered from some floppies that we saved when the Microware building was vacated. www.cocopedia.com/wiki/index.php/CoCo3_Easter_Egg

[@anticat900]

The Timex 1000 may have been quite limited, but it was cheap and a big seller in the US for a few months, with close the £25% of the market. It pretty well was the cause of the computer 'crash' at the time, forcing TI, Commodore and many others to drop their prices to at or below cost. Many when to the wall, though Commodore was able to hold on due to MOS giving it a cost advantage the others did not. The Vic was then able to flourish with its superior abilities and Timex never really regained a foothold.

[@tommyovesen]

Nice. Funny those Microsoft easter-eggs. I worked for Microsoft before. Maybe I made an easter-agg somewhere :)

[@breadbaker]

#OcTandy caught me by suprise 😆👍 Well played, sir.

[@elfenmagix8173]

Another excellent video.

[@richshealer3755]

I did not know there was a Microware link to the Coco 3. Only took me 37 years to learn that tidbit.

[@CoindoorDave]

I actually got a hold of T. Harris and asked him about the Coco 3 image Easter egg, specifically about the circular image on his shirt. He said it was a Led Zeppelin shirt!

[@8_Bit]

Funny! What a huge amount of ROM to "waste" - it's a hilarious easter egg :)

[@PET_-rp9rx]

That cursor on the CoCo 3 is mad fast!(yes I'm a 1mhz CoCo2 user)

[@MichaelDoornbos]

13:50 I finally got my Coco2 working again. Did a Composite video mod to it. First time it's been on since probably 1986. This noise you make here is EXACTLY the noise everyone makes at this thing. It's a neat machine, but the colors are easily the worst I've ever seen.

[@8_Bit]

Is it even more intensely putridly radioactive with the composite mod?

[@MichaelDoornbos]

@@8_Bit other than being able to hook it up to a non RF monitor it’s the same. Pretty sure that video chip is giving it all its got and that’s it. It’s actually pretty usable if you turn the color off altogether. Could rename it the MonoCo2

[@PicaDelphon]

I still Have my TRS-80 102 and With expansion Box mine has the Floppy 5-1/4 and some video output if I remember Right, I also Have the Portable 3-1/2 Floppy Drive I use in ARMY Training years back in 88'-89'..Limited Space so Laptops were allow in Class..

[@ariss3304]

From a technical perspective I think it’s pretty clever that the Easter egg was replaced with instructions, it would’ve been so much easier to zero it out.

[@michaelditto]

Mr. Hayashi has the honor of having just one letter of his name remaining in the M102 ROM. Suzuki and RickY can only claim one ASCII space character each as theirs.

[@proxy1035]

0:00 all i want to know is why there are 2 spaces between "Colour" and "Computer".

[@raymitchell9736]

Just a guess... maybe they wanted to have the extra space in case they needed to add a few more vowels to color? Ok... I know it's the British spelling, LOL 😁 I really don't know why they needed the extra spaces ?

[@Okurka.]

That's just one large space.

[@richardperritt]

Flipping all the ports upside down also includes the barcode wand port.

[@melanierhianna]

I have NEVER seen a Micro Color Computer and I thought I knew of all of the models from that time. I don't think it made it to the UK.

[@domramsey]

I've just got a 102 that had similar marks on the screen. Toothpaste got rid of them all for me.

[@haywoodyoudome]

3:10 Radio Shack was never known for making smart business decisions.

[@karlos2586]

Timex sinclair 1000 was my first love!!!!

[@melanierhianna]

They could have compressed that image to make it a lot smaller.

[@winstonsmith478]

$5.99 for a CoCo 3 at a thrift shop? How long ago? I never get that lucky.

[@AppliedCryogenics]

I appreciate how the MC-10 has the excellent MC6800 family CPU. Way better than that overused, obtuse, and underpowered Z80. Let the flame wars begin!! ;-)

[@acidsyndicate355]

Is this nothing other then just print out the Memoryadress, where Microsoft stands??? Or the other names??? The names are in the basic rom...

[@RobertBlow]

They were my thoughts to be honest. Would be interested if our theory could be debunked.

[@tomypower4898]

Yes computer!

[@Vallee152]

13:55 the yellow is way better

[@lassie6]

Wow...

[@MurderMostFowl]

How did anyone type on these things? I imagine it wasn’t very pleasant. ( At least the coco 1/2/3 had a real keyboard... but the others... yikes )

[@8_Bit]

The Model 100/102 are pretty nice to type on actually. The MC-10 is not - but it's quite a bit better than the Timex/Sinclair 1000 that I show next to it! That was my first computer, and I basically didn't know any better; I was just thrilled to have something - anything - that I could hook up to my TV and program.

[@Okurka.]

It's better than flipping switches on an Altair 8800.

[@theannoyedmrfloyd3998]

Actually, the Zee X-81 had 1K of RAM whereas the T/S 1000 has 2K of RAM, expandable. The ZX81 was also sold in kit form which owners got to build. com POZZ zit Hah yah shee

[@Okurka.]

*Zed

[@fubaralakbar6800]

Octandy :D

[@DavidYoud]

WooHoo, I'm famous now! :D

[@8_Bit]

You've been famous to me for a long time already :)

[@tarstarkusz]

What resolution is the 80 column mode running in? Seems to me that even 640x480 should look reasonably good in composite. Have you ever tried it on a B&W TV (most obviously don't have composite) where all the color information is ignored? It just seems odd that any relatively new NTSC TV or "monitor" would not look decent in 640. Is it easy to get just luma out of the computer?

[@allenhuffman]

@@tarstarkusz I used a color TV in 80 column mode and it was blurry as heck but that’s all I had. There is a POKE that turns off the color burst signal that makes it look better, and a composite monochrome monitor looks awesome.

[@tarstarkusz]

@@allenhuffman I put the word monitor in quotes because some TVs were sold as "monitors" if they had svideo or even composite input. I have an RCA from the 90s that has monitor on it. I used to run 640x480 video on it through composite and it looked OK. Presumably it would look awesome with a proper computer monitor. Do you know if the 80 column mode is 640? With 7 pixel wide font, it could be done in 560, which seems more reasonable.

[@allenhuffman]

@@tarstarkusz The composite output on the CoCo 3 was very poor. Our max resolution was 640x225. The BASIC had 32 columns (CoCo 1/2 mode), 40 and 80, but also supported 64 (not supported in BASIC, but would have matched TRS-80 Model 1/3) and I think 128 (only one word processor I had used it, and it was a horizontal scrolling mode -- so not all on screen at the time. Lots of secrets still in this machine.

[@zxrenew5642]

The 100 and 102 were japanese machines made by Sharp and just badged by tandy.

[@8_Bit]

It was the "Pocket Computer" line that was made by Sharp, while the Model 100 was from Kyocera. I mentioned both of those in the previous episode.

[@HuntersMoon78]

I got a ZX81 for £3. Yeah I'm a cheap-arsre retro collector.

[@AcornElectron]

Waste of valuable space!

[@dougjohnson4266]

Microsoft wasting memory! Tisk Tisk.

[@allenhuffman]

For the CoCo 3 easter egg? That was Microware, who patched on top of Microsoft's code, if so.

[@jpcompton]

Yet another wasted effort chasing the ultra-low end of the market. Sad, really.