
1981 Radio Shack computer catalog (2015) - wyclif
http://mashable.com/2015/02/06/radio-shack-catalog-1981/
======
_spoonman
This made me realize how much money my parents had to save in order to buy us
a computer for our home. They must have had to save up for months and months
for it. My father was a loan officer at a small community bank and my mom was
a homemaker (is that still PC?). Now I work in IT. Thanks for the investment,
mom and dad. How humbling.

~~~
jackhack
Similar experiences here, spoonman.

A computer in the 70s/80s was a serious expense, similar to buying a nice used
car, or a year of state college.

My folks bought me an Apple ][ around 1980. $2500 bought : 1mhz, 48k of ram, 1
floppy drive, a 9" Sanyo monochrome monitor, and what seemed like an endless
universe of possibilities. The next six years were a blur of Assembly (Lazer
Systems Interactive Compiler), and Applesoft Basic, trying to unlock the
secrets of that machine and write my own games. It was magic! I am 100%
certain that $2500 investment by my folks is the reason I have had a career in
software.

I remember riding a 10-speed bike downtown to Computerland to buy an
individual floppy disc @ $5/each. The university bookstore only sold Gorilla
brand, and they were around $7 each.

Imagine the joy when I learned to use a scissors (later, a nibbler tool) to
cut a notch out of floppy case so I could use both sides. Like finding free
money!

Now a RaspPi Zero is $5 and information is limitless. This is a gilded age.

~~~
lisper
> This is a gilded age.

That is quite possibly the biggest understatement in the history of humanity.
And it's not just because computer hardware has become essentially free. When
I was a kid, to get any kind of information meant waiting for the daily
newspaper to be delivered, or a trip to the library, or, if you were lucky,
pulling out a volume from the encyclopedia on the book shelf (another very
pricey commodity in those days). It still boggles my mind that you can buy a
full-featured Gnu/Linux server for the price of a hamburger, and Wikipedia is
literally free. It's a freakin' miracle.

~~~
jandrese
And your local library often didn't even have any books in whatever interest
area you were looking for. Or maybe it had one from 1967 that was hopelessly
out of date with the current state of the art.

My parents bought a Commodore 64 when I was a kid and I loved the thing, but
I've come to realize over the years that I knew almost nothing about it as a
kid. I had never even heard of PEEK/POKE and if it wasn't in the (admittedly
pretty good) manual then there was basically no chance that I would. I
remember the manual briefly touched on the sprite generator, but not in enough
detail that a kid who only knows BASIC could use it. It never even mentioned
the SID sound chip. The only "computer" books my library had were talking
about CDC machines and IBM mainframes, or extremely general discussions about
core memory and them fancy new transistor things. I think they might have had
some programming language books too, but since I didn't have any compilers
they were useless. This was in the 80s.

Today's kids can get in depth information on almost anything, and have ways of
talking with experts if they get stuck. I'm excited to see how they turn out.

~~~
ptrincr
Actually, the manual, at least the one I got with my C64, did mention many of
those aspects and even gave examples of them.

This is the one:
[http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk/images/thumbnails/350/525/...](http://www.retrogamingworld.co.uk/images/thumbnails/350/525/detailed/3/commodore64usermanual-2518.jpg)

As a kid I didn't really understand much of it, I remember making a simple
sprite move around the screen, and designing my own sprite using the grid
example it gave.

However looking back at the manual now, it's amazing how much detail it goes
into, from sprite positioning, sprite expansion, drawing multiple sprites (
all via POKE and PEEK) to programming the SID chip (one whole chapter on
this).

It doesn't deal with handling sprite collision though, so you would struggle
to make a game I suppose. But the manual is surprisingly in depth. It does
mention that for more advanced topics you would need the "C64 programmers
reference guide".

------
pskisf
The TRS-80 is still alive! Everyone come listen to our TRS-80 focused podcast
TRS-80 Trash Talk

[http://www.trs80trashtalk.com](http://www.trs80trashtalk.com)

------
VLM
Original source seems to be

[https://archive.org/details/radio-shack-catalog-
rsc-04-compu...](https://archive.org/details/radio-shack-catalog-
rsc-04-computer-catalog-1981)

Theres a lot more to see at archive.org of course.

~~~
fail2fail2ban
That is a wonderful site, so much information, they even had full emulators
for favorite old programs and games that run in the browser. (Curse JavaScript
for working so well.)

~~~
Tempest1981
I played with this a while back -- brought back memories. Takes a few steps to
set it up.
[https://github.com/lkesteloot/trs80](https://github.com/lkesteloot/trs80)

------
JoeDaDude
So many gray haired models are in the photos. You don't see that anymore, and
certainly not in computer ads!

~~~
slfnflctd
Marketing has become more biased in some areas, but at least we can say it's
definitely become less so in others. The only black person appearing in _any_
of the photos in the entire thing was shown as an example of a user for the
'starter' (lowest end) system.

------
fail2fail2ban
I graduated High School that year, I'd done some BASIC programming on an Atari
2600 with a BASIC cartridge. I imagined a consumer computer like the ones on
that cover but with several tape machines and a loader top program so the user
wouldn't have to load tapes manually for common programs. Little did I know
the hard disk had been invented by IBM in the 1950's.

Today kids learn Java in High School and carry powerful computers in their
pockets and on their wrists. I'll probably be pushed out of the Java industry
before I even retire by one of them.

~~~
FrancoDiaz
I had a 2600 back in the late 70s, but never knew that they had a BASIC
cartridge. That must've been one helluva limited programming experience
considering how limited the 2600 was for game programmers writing in Assembly.

~~~
spc476
It is. Here's a picture of what it looks like
([http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/14.1](http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/14.1))
and I even wrote about my experience in using it:
[http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/16.1](http://boston.conman.org/2015/06/16.1)

The executive summary: it's both incredible (it has features I've never seen
elsewhere) and horrifying (wait until you see the keyboard, and you only have
64 BYTES for everything).

------
madengr
That's cool; thanks for posting. Brings back memories.

We had several Model 2 (gray) and 3 (white) in our school (mid 80's), but only
a few had floppy drives. The ones that didn't were connected to the
instructors machine (had had dual drives; oooohh) connected via that network
controller (box with big knob). It hooked to the cassette port of the client
machine so a program could be dumped to multiple machine simultaneously, or
the knob could be switched to receive from a particular client machine.

Used to play Telengard, and use the hex editor to insert foul words into
certain programs.

Computing back then just seemed so much more exciting; Tandy, Commodore,
Atari, Apple, original PC. It's ubiquitous and drab now, or maybe it's my
middle agedness.

~~~
mgkimsal
I feel the 'drab' aspect of what you're saying, although I also see that we
focus more on what we can do, vs 'how' it might get done (different versions
of software for Commodore, Atari, PC, Apple, IBM, etc).

------
SpikeDad
I wrote agricultural software for both the Pocket Computer and the Mod II
working my way through college. The PC was actually a very nice piece of kit.
We wrote some of the first software that farmers could use while carrying it
in the fields - IPM (integrated pest management).

Ah, backing up to cassette.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Ah, the Pocket Computer. I had one of those in early 90's when I was a student
pilot. I programmed it to do flight calculations and learned valuable lessons
in UX. Trying to operate those tiny keys and read the display while trying to
fly a hot, noisy, vibrating Cessna 152 was an exercise in frustration.

~~~
fuzzfactor
By 1982 there was the second-generation Pocket Computer, with the optional
4-color printer/plotter and the RS-232 ("COM Port") interface so I could also
connect to an acoustic coupler telephone modem, then use any dial or touch-
tone telephone to connect to time-sharing services.

This all fit into a carrying case not much smaller than a regular laptop these
days.

The Standard API Petroleum Measurement Tables had been recently reapproved in
1980, for the first time as a computer routine rather than hardcopy handbooks
of 83,000 entries each. This was a specific standard computer program, about
2K of Fortran77 32-bit mainframe floating-point code which had been jointly
adopted by API & ASTM complete consensus. That much text would not fit into
the Pocket Computer anyway. To get the 4-bit Pocket computer functional as a
replacement for the handbook, I had to ditch the floating point, not use the
exact algorithms the table was based on in any recognizable way, and come up
with a bit-saving scheme not unlike the UNUMs of Gustafson[0] which have been
discussed here. Each byte of memory was economized.

Carrying it while boarding tankers and barges back then, I would guess that
pretty much turns out to be the first laptop on the Ship Channel.

Now everybody's got a laptop and it's no big deal.

[0]
[http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029](http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=2913029)

------
SixSigma
My friend has a TRS-80 Model II. I translated some games for him from other
computer magazines. It was a fun experience. I can't remember much about it
other than I did it and was quite proud of myself (being only 12 at the time).

~~~
ansible
Yeah, back before my friends and I had computers, we would pour over the
program listings in various magazines. We even started writing our own
adventure game, modeled after one we saw the source for... even though we
weren't able to even run it.

Crazy computer kids, we were...

~~~
madengr
I remember some magazine came out with BASIC programs translated into bar
codes, and with their special scanner, you'd scan in your program instead of
typing it. Damn how I wanted that thing, of course you would not learn as you
did from typing it in and finding your errors.

~~~
SixSigma
I learned to code by transcribing code for the Acorn Electron (which I didn't
own or have access to) from teletext onto paper !

What I didn't know at the time was that some of it was encoded so that say "#"
would mean "print", I didn't find out until the internet came along and I read
stuff like the link [1] for nostalgia.

I still have a BBC computer and Cub RGB monitor - I have an SD card adapter
for it nowadays. I have a BBC Forth ROM chip in it and so I have a Forth
Machine at the flick on a switch with a built in A/D convertor, Speech
Synthesis also in ROM and a 1Mhz interface bus. Pretty cool gadget still.

[1]
[http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/aab/revs/morley/Teletext...](http://www.acornelectron.co.uk/mags/aab/revs/morley/Teletext_Adaptor_000.html)

~~~
madengr
I have a C64 with many bells and whistles (modern interface adapters), an
Apple II, and a Briel Computers Altair clone kit (blinken lights). Also have a
C64-SX portable, and Tandy 100.

[https://rfpoweramp.com](https://rfpoweramp.com)

------
DanBC
"telephone interface - $199". That's roughly $500 today.

And the $299 8K ram expansion gives a bit of context to "640k should be
enough" comment.

~~~
walshemj
Back around that time in the UK I brought 5 modems 4 answer 1 answer
originate. I think they where around £350 for the answer and £600 for the
answer originate one.

I wish I had had the nerve to get our electronics shop to build the $20/$30
modem design that was published in BYTE

------
zwieback
I was a 6502 man at the time - still looking down on all the Z80s. I
eventually put a Z80 card in my Apple ][ to run CP/M but it felt dirty.

~~~
to3m
Well if you don't like the Z80 models, there's a 6809 one too! That should be
more to 6502 programmer tastes.

The weird thing about the range is how none of them is compatible with any of
the others.

------
protomyth
I think the TRS-80 model III has generated more love / hate relationships than
any other computer. My Dad had them for teaching college classes, and they
definitely took folks on a love to hate to love ride in the space of 15
minutes. They were pretty damn useful though. I miss the old daisy wheel
printers sometimes. Documents seemed more formal being pounded out.

------
camiller
My cousin had the pocket computer, I always coveted a model III, but my school
installed 8 (eventually 16) Apple //e computers networked to a corvus
constelation 10MB hard drive. So I ended up with a Apple //e at home.

~~~
dorfsmay
10 GB?

~~~
phurley
Kids these days :-)

Check out the add
[https://habrastorage.org/getpro/habr/post_images/5b6/a0b/e6d...](https://habrastorage.org/getpro/habr/post_images/5b6/a0b/e6d/5b6a0be6d0d4c0c58c10c925ff4218d4.jpg)

Makes me feel better about the 2 grand I dropped after I graduated from
college on a 1G hard drive.

~~~
colanderman
I think the GP's post originally said 10 GB.

~~~
camiller
Yes, I corrected after realizing, and having it pointed out.

------
scottlu2
I saved money from lawn mowing and paper delivering to buy a trs-80 model 1
level 1. I remember it being around $525 which was a really tough goal to
reach. It was awesome though to finally reach it and bring the trs-80 home.

~~~
antod
$525? Coincidentally that is the exact amount I paid for my first computer (in
NZD though). That was two years of saving up money from delivering newspapers.

It was the TRS80 model II and model III from my fathers work that made me want
a computer. My the time I had saved up a chunk of money, the ZX Spectrum was
released and I could finally afford one (I waited a bit longer so I could get
the 48k one). The C64 was far too expensive for me at the time.

------
norea-armozel
Wow this takes me back. I think my parents had one of the cheaper models. All
I ever did was play games on it. It's sad my dad eventually gave it away or
threw it out. I would love to play with it now.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
Same here. Our first home computer was a TRS-80 when I was a little kid, maybe
7 or 8. I'm not sure how my parents afforded it, but I think by the time we
got one it was already deeply discounted. We had to use a tape drive to load
programs and I'd ride my bike to Radio Shack to buy little games on tape. I
mostly used it to program simple things in Basic. It came with this wonderful
manual narrated by a cartoon TRS-80 robot that was very kid friendly.

Then shortly after the Apple //e came into our lives. It was like night and
day, especially considering we had a modem and I could dial into these strange
things called BBS's. It even had color! Wow, what a game changer that was.
Computer camp was little more than my classmates and I copying videos games.
There was almost no DRM back then, maybe a question asking you to check
something in the manual to make sure you at least had the manual that shipped
with the floppy.

Its crazy to think how the Mac and Windows 1.0 came out shortly after. The
innovation from 1981 to 1985 was incredible. In four years you went from using
a TRS-80-like monstrosity to sitting there using a mouse and keyboard running
a refined and user-friendly GUI interface. I remember the first time I used a
mac. I just used paint for hours on end. It was magical to me.

------
squozzer
Hacking in those days was a rather strightforward affair.

Walk into RS store.

Type

10 print "some profanity"

20 goto 10

Leave store before RS dude sees you.

~~~
unwind
As an obnoxious note from the past, it's way better if you do:

    
    
        10 PRINT "SOME PROFANITY ";
        20 GOTO 10
    

The trailing ; makes the PRINT not move the cursor to the next line, so you
end up with your string plastering the entire screen in a cool (at least to
early-teen me) way.

Also, of course computers of that day didn't use lower case (it seems that was
an add-on for the TRS-80) quite as often as we do today. :)

And yes, I checked the BASIC manual for the TRS-80:
[http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-info-
level2.htm#IO](http://www.trs-80.com/trs80-info-level2.htm#IO) to make sure
this was supported, I never had a TRS-80.

~~~
joezydeco
The pro-level trick was to make that string exactly 13 characters long.

Since the screen was 40 characters wide (at least on the Apple ][ it was), the
print would happen 3 times and then the next one would wrap around and be
offset by 1 character on the next line.

This had the effect of making the words appear to smoothly scroll horizontally
across the screen as the text rolled vertically.

------
webtechgal
My ex-boss used to sell Tandy computers (offered under collaboration with a
domestic computer company here in India, called DCM Data Products) in the
1980s and I think he still has a few TRS-80 Model IV (running CP/M) and Tandy
1000 (their first IBM PC clone, 8088/4.77Mhz) stashed away somewhere.

~~~
DanBC
There's probably a Youtube channel there, of getting old software running and
doing a video review of it.

People kind of know that we had spreadsheets and word processors and payroll
systems back then, but they don't know what they were like.

------
spaceisballer
Any idea what the profit margin was on computers back then? That's what I'd
really like to know.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
I don't know about desktop computers, but in the late 80's-early 90's I worked
for a peripheral company that made laboratory/light industrial I/O boards for
TRS-80's, PC, etc.. Our rule of thumb was that selling price was roughly 5x
Bill Of Materials cost. So a $100 relay board cost us around $20 in parts (and
probably $5-10 in labor) to build.

Most of the non-parts cost was probably marketing expense.

These days I can buy a similar piece of hardware on Alibaba for $15!

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I wouldn't be surprised if the same rule about BOM and labour cost still
applies.

~~~
Gibbon1
It does when the volumes are low due to overhead and non reoccurring
engineering. Back in the 80's took an engineer and draftsman a 2-3 months to
design and layout a PCB with tape. Might spend $100k on engineering, overhead,
and sales and sell ~500 units/yr. ($200/unit)

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Ugh! Tape layout! I did that a few times in high school the cheap way (scotch
tape/duct tape and a Sharpie). By the time I graduated and got a job as an EE,
at least we had (crappy) PCB software so I never had to do it again except for
a few hobby projects.

And now I can get OSS tools for free that totally blows away the state of the
art at that time. Amazing!

------
WalterBright
I acquired a Heathkit H11 around 1981. Sadly, it's the one computer I later
got rid of, and the only one (of probably dozens) I've ever owned that was
worth a damn a few years later.

------
walshemj
I never knew that RS did a videotext system as well as its computer line.

------
kilroy123
Wow that power controller is pretty cool. I'm curious how that works...

It sends a signal through the power socket, but do you have to have special
light bulbs?

~~~
VLM
Standard X10 protocol, unchanged since the mid 70s. 4 bits of house address
(usually a letter) plus 4 bits of unit address (usually a number) gives 256
theoretical devices.

As far as long lived protocols go, X10 is up there... 1975 to 2016 and
counting...

~~~
michaelcampbell
And still useful. I use it to control a water pump to push water to sprinklers
on my roof for the hot Atlanta summer months. 1 Gal of water evap from the
roof is ~8000BTU's (I'm told - someone correct me if that's wrong).

~~~
hx87
8000 BTU is about right. It's impressive that you actually got that water to
evaporate from the roof in a decent amount of time in Atlanta though, since
it's so humid. I'm not sure that it does much, since either your roof or your
attic floor is insulated.

~~~
michaelcampbell
A gallon over a big enough area, with a roof that's dark, in 90+degree ambient
temperature and direct sun... evaporates within a few minutes. Sometimes < 1
minute by visual inspection, anyway.

re: "doing any good", yes, that's hard to say. The ROI may not be for years,
if ever. It was as much a "I have an idea,let's see it through" project as a
real money saver.

The attic is insulated, and with a radiant barrier, to boot.

~~~
hx87
Yeah, a dark asphalt roof and direct sun would do it, as I've observe in my
parents' house in Houston. You're also right the the ROI is probably zero or
negative since your attic is insulated and has a radiant barrier so the
temperature of the roof itself is close to irrelevant.

~~~
aardvark291
> dark asphalt roof and direct sun would do it

But if you were going for cooling, you wouldn't go for a dark asphalt roof.

~~~
michaelcampbell
HOA. Not much choice. We got the lightest we were allowed.

------
mzs
In '91 I started HS and the one my parents wanted me to go to had a lab of
Model IIs with the huge floppy discs. I guess they were well made.

~~~
FrancoDiaz
The old 8" floppies like in WarGames
[http://www.itworld.com/article/2823486/security/106464-The-t...](http://www.itworld.com/article/2823486/security/106464-The-
technology-of-WarGames.html#slide3)

------
mosburger
My middle school had about 6 Model III's in the library around 1986. One of
the science teachers taught a programming class during study hall on those
things, so it was one of the first computers I ever programmed on. A year or
two later my parents bought a Tandy 1000 and I was hooked.

------
ecloud
I still have the flatbed plotter. I don't see it in that catalog; maybe it
came out a little later.

------
aidenn0
This takes me back. I just built a new home server and realized it has over
one million times as much ram as the first computer I used (A Kaypro II).

Fun fact about the Kaypro II: it was the first Kaypro model, but they added
the roman numeral II to borrow some of the Apple II's popularity.

~~~
ansible
I've been telling people for years that my optical mouse has more compute
power than my first computer. It's crazy how far we've come.

It's also unfortunate that we're seeing the end of Moore's Law, and the easy
gains in compute power through the use of a process shrink. Here's hoping
people get really serious about molecular nanotechnology research.

------
martin1b
I bought a model 3 a few months ago from a guy cleaning out his basement. Love
it. TRS80s were a fantastic computers. Reminds me of walking into RS playing
with the display computers, wishing I could take them home.

Was hoping to see a Dungeons of Daggorath game cartridge.

------
outside1234
This ad made me remember how much text "bulged out" at you on the screen in
early computers (because they were CRT technology) and how it looked "sunk in"
when the first flat screens came out. Good memories!

------
Tempest1981
More nostalgia -- old calculators:

[http://www.mrmartinweb.com/calculator.html](http://www.mrmartinweb.com/calculator.html)

------
dsiegel2275
This is great. Thanks for sharing.

Really brings back some memories. My father ran his own business and had a few
TRS-80s. The first programming I did was on these machines when I was in the
second grade.

------
johnohara
On page 7, it seems that for twice the price, the "Business" system bested the
"Engineer" system by including a set of curtains and a bad toupee.

------
JustSomeNobody
Those people needed to learn about ergonomics.

But seriously, my first computer was the handheld TRS-80 and I fondly remember
programming Pascal on the TRS-80 Model III in H.S.

------
carrja99
This brings back my memories. Many nights of my elementary school years were
spent up late hacking on basic programs on our Tandy Color Computer 3.

------
typetypetype
I love how detailed and wordy the descriptions are.

------
adam12
There's nothing quite like looking at old computer ads that takes me right
back to my childhood.

~~~
FrancoDiaz
Yep, reminds me of Byte

------
MrZongle2
I love the "TRS-80 Certified Cassettes" on page 14.

------
facepalm
Note that it shows a lot of women using the computer. So much for "advertising
drove women away".

~~~
jandrese
It shows lots of secretaries using the computer. It's clearly something the
boss bought to get fancy graphics on his reports that the secretary is typing
up.

~~~
facepalm
Right - because if they are women, they have to be secretaries, whereas the
men are technicians? What about the teen girls that are also shown in the
catalogue - training to be secretaries at an early age?

~~~
jandrese
You are aware this catalog is from 1981 right?

~~~
facepalm
That's the point - there is this meme going around that supposedly women lost
interest in computing because of advertising in the 80ies.

Never mind that the whole field of computing changed with the advent of home
computers and PCs.

