OT: Tandy Silver

[Bill Vermillion]

On Thu, Aug 19 11:06 , Jay R. Ashworth, showing utter disregard for 
spell-checkers gave us this: 

> On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 10:34:03AM -0400, Bill Vermillion wrote:
> > > Naw; let's make it a trivia quiz.  Anyone remember where Tandy Silver
> > > came from?
> > 
> > Everyone knows that don't they? :-)^32

> Well, apparently even *I* don't.

That's why I had smileys to the 32nd power.  It's one of those
truly obscure things.  I did a 'loc'[1] on paint or color and
there was a file in one of my directories that had the name
of tandy-paint-color.  It was  post from Mike Yetsko who was
deepling involved in the early days - possible as a CSR.

> > They used a readily available paint shade that was picked when they
> > needed to paint the RCA TV sets that were modified to work with the
> > Model I.

> > The name is Mercedes Silver.  That shade was available quickly.

> It had been my understanding that the sets *were* that color, and they
> painted the computers to match...

I remember seeing those monitors somewhere with the RCA name on
them a long time ago.

> but this page agrees with you:

> http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-1.htm

I just checked there, never having been there before.  My Model I
was the 4th sold in Orlando.

> So, clearly, I have it wrong. Love that list of OS's. LDOS was
> *so* sweet...

LDOS was a great training ground for Unix with it's device
independance and linking ability.    I had an original TRSDOS
2.1 - with a handwritten label at a 12 page mimeograph instruction
set from Radio Shack.

In the second set it even talked about device independance and how
you could link in such things as IBM Selectrics. [Someone was
really dreaming there].

But Randy Cook never finished it.  And the final version I got a
few months later had a lot of things mentioned in the first mimeoed
sheets removed.

I moved to VTOS 3.0 - from Randy himself, as it was better than the
TRSDOS.  Then when Dennis Brent made a deal with Randy it became
VTOS 4.0 from Small Business Systems Group.  And finally there was
a real manual.  I just pulled it down from the shelf and see
the $25 invoice for the manual was dated February 3, 1981, with
a note from Dennis saying sorry it took so long.

My name is among about 30 on the intro page that he thanked, with
also the line "-- and the whole gang at Micronet* (MNET-80 &
VTOS/BBS).

A year later Micronet re-orged and was renamed Compuserve.

I also found a member list of active members in our TRS80 group
from 1980.  And since the list was in alpha order, the top
name on the list is Scott Adams - of Adventure International {not
the comic strip}

Then later Randy sold VTOS out from under Dennis - and a lot of
people were unhappy about that.  It went to Lobo - and its first
name was Lobo Disk Operating System - and the became Logical Disk
Operating System.   

That was to drive their add on HD interface and later one of the
OSes for the Max80 - a hardware act-alike for the Model I, but the
software was more like Model III - which cause some problems.

The Max80 was a great machine.  The serial interface - in 1981 -
could go to 500,000 bits/second.  It used the Z80-SIO.   Not as
simple to program as the 8250?? - that became the standard [and
slow] serial chip.

I often wonder what I'd been doing today if I had not made that
step in 1977 and bought that Model I.    Who knows - I could have
become rich and successful instead of addicted to these
wee beasties.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com