Forum post from Jim

[erico]

Entitled Basic Programming on the Tandy TRS-80 MC-10, Jim runs a personal blog with his experiments on basic with such machine.
He recently did a post about our joint adventures on this land and it is a nice read. 

http://jimgerrie.blogspot.com.br/2016/04/some-examples-of-retro-programming.html

[spacefractal]

spam.....




Dont worry. Just kidding. Nice project, that even im have not heard very much about Tandy, so its mightbeen a Brazil thing :-). Im do really like that R-Type picture with the ultra lowres. Could been fun to do such a shooter in that resolution with that style.

[bigsofty]

I've heard of the Tandy TRS-80, it was more popular in America I think than in Europe. I liked the look of it, it has a great 80's/70's retro-future design. I've also heard its one hard SOB to program too! That said, it has a Z80 CPU, which uses my all time favourite assembly language syntax...



Mmmm, lovely, I'd buy that today, if at had modern innards of course...

[erico]

Haha total spam! But it is fun to work with such limitations, I always wondered on how to produce such fxs constrains on GLB.
Here a brazilian trs80 model III...very charming. I once found one on a trash bin and almost took it home crying.

[bigsofty]

Another lovely design, it's basically what people think of as your stereotypical 70s/80s computer should look like!   

BTW I recommend this website for anyone who is interested in the early designs of micro-computers... http://www.oldcomputers.net/pics.html

[spacefractal]

Nice machines.

Im remember played Decathlon on a IBM with ugly graphics, very bad sounds, but its did have fun gameplay as least.

In the early days, im mostly did have focus on Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 for 8 bit.... Im did not have Spectrum and such machines....

[matchy]

It's about TRS-80 COLOR basic games.

It's interesting to find clones like the Dragon32/64 and others of the Coco. Here's a MC-10 clone, Alice:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=60

[UBERmonkeybot]

@Bigsofty That old computer website is great.Took me back a bit.

They have a Jupiter ace on there that was my first computer(That my stepdad bought).It used Forth as a language.

[MrTAToad]

The Dragon 32 was (slightly) more well known than the TRS-80.  I used the former only once for a few minutes and never saw one again...

One machine I would like to use is a SAM Coupe,,,

[erico]

Is it about the color version? It seems the MC-10 can´t handle what the coco could, and are slightly different on a few bits (very few, but undermining).
Either way, here is what little erico so much longed for. I still have its manual and an assembler book.
I wish I had kept the machine. Looks a bit ugly nowadays but almost like an A500

edit: Who, in their senses, would design a joystick like that...

[Ian Price]

I do actually like the look of the machine (in an understandable retro way), but yeah those joysticks! The machine reminds me an awful lot of the Acetronic videogame system I had as a kid -


There were actually two controllers attached; not sure why that image only shows one. It was on par with the Atari 2600.

My wife had a Drgaon 32 and raves about Cuthbert et al.

[spacefractal]

Im also did have a Atari 2600 and also played Intervision games as well as kid.

Atari 2600 was a bit more advanced, but understand why you write is pair with Atari 2600, its from the same area.

The playfeild screme seens to been somewhere maze thing, but the Pong and the Maze seens to been very well suited for it with a nice analoge control (that two game im brief looked on).

[Ian Price]

Yeah, the Atari was more advanced, but I was trying to portray the look/feel and type of games that the machine played host to - Atari 2600 stylee.

My wife (and, as a result of marriage, I!) had an Intellivision too. I REALLY hated the control scheme on that. The disc was awful! Had some nice games on though - BurgerTime was my fave.

[spacefractal]

And yes :-), it's Atari 2600 style games :-)

Yes, the intervision controller is crap.

[bigsofty]

The Linus Write is a weird one, it appeared in 1987, 5 years before The Apple Newton but for all intents and purposes it was a tablet computer. It even had handwriting recognition! Yet, Wikipedia all but ignores it and acknowledges Apples Newton as the first tablet computer.

http://www.oldcomputers.net/linus.html