TRS-80 / Tandy Coco 3 in an IBM Portable PC Case Project

[@dalhend]

Just wanted to say that I had that same idea in the early 80's. However, I built a nice PC case out of wood. It was about the same size as an IBM/AT. My thought was wouldn't it be nice if my office computer matched the surroundings, like my desk. Who wanted metal/plastic... Wood was nicer. Anyway I tore a COCO apart, moved all the components into the case, including the floppy's and the multi-pak mother board. I added a long ribbon cable to use the same COCO keyboard (externally). I took this down to a legal rep to see if I could get some sort of patent on computer cases to match office furniture. I demo'ed the working system, he was impressed and wanted to pursue this, but needed 5K in fee's... I scrapped the project.

[@RetroLogicLaboratory]

Hey that's a pretty cool story. What I find funny is that in the 70's and earlier, "real" products had to be at least wood veneer, if not solid wood. Then the 80's came along and it *had* to be at least fake woodgrain. Nowadays a lot less of that coming out, but I appreciate the desire people had back in the day for wood in consumer products. Question for you, do you remember how you extended the keyboard? The mylar is difficult / impossible to solder so I'm curious if you remember how you solved that problem.

[@sprybug]

I grew up with the CoCo 3 and had a setup that had paks, cables, etc, all over the place. I wanted to do the same thing that you are doing back in the day. Can't wait for the update.

[@RetroLogicLaboratory]

Awesome to meet another Coco'er! I'm still dreaming of my Coco repack in a PC case, but hope to be doing the follow up video in the next couple of weeks.

[@mszymcza]

This is a great project and I can see how your keyboard translation might carry over nicely to allowing broken TRS 80 Model 3 and Model 4 keyboards to be replaced with a more standard AT keyboard. As you know, those TRS keyboards are a bear to replace because they soldered the keys on the PCB frame. Keep up the great work!

[@RetroLogicLaboratory]

Hi, thanks for the comment and kind words! I am working on my matrix keyboard adapter video at the moment, hopefully will publish something soon. And you are right the M4/M3 keyboards, they are not only hard to fix but they also seem to be prone to failure now that they are over 30 years old.