
Surfing the Internet from My TRS-80 Model 100 - cpeterso
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/08/surfing-the-internet-from-my-trs-80-model-100/
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userbinator
More accurately, it's "Using a TRS-80 Model 100 as a dumb terminal for a
Raspberry Pi".

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davelnewton
Yeah, I would have liked to have seen something more like ethernet on the T100
(also very doable).

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fit2rule
You could just solder an ESPY wifi chip to the T100 and have it communicate
just fine over wifi, no rPi required ..

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baldfat
My first computer was a Sol-20 (My dad still has this machine) and than I
became a Commodore guy so I miss the days of talking Trash ;) between Pet-20
vs the TRS-80 days.

P.S. Yes colors are pretty and I prefer color.

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davelnewton
I hacked the crap out of this machine years ago; I still have mine and it
still works great. I know there are some people still using them IRL, too.

I loved that thing.

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kjs3
I ran into a journalist in the middle east a couple of years ago in a hotel
bar typing away on an M100. He said that he still used it because it was the
only "laptop" he couldn't break, the battery life was better than most
anything else and his local bureau still had an analog modem and he could
upload his story as long as he could find a phone line (internet not
required). Apparently he's not the only journo working this way.

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davelnewton
Indeed; all day no problem.

I've somewhat-considered doing a "clone" with essentially the same
functionality, but with modern components, and a real battery. I'd guess you
could get 2-3 days out of it.

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kjs3
By "real battery", I assume you mean a li-ion or some such. The fact that it
_doesn 't_ use an exotic battery and needs only 4 x AA batteries that can be
found just about anywhere was another bonus he touted. No charger to be lost.
No strange power plug to be adapted to. No power source needed.

Other than that, I'm with you. Something just as rugged, with a somewhat
denser display (80x24), very low power (msp430 comes in a couple of crazy low
power variants and has plenty of oomf), bit more storage. Add maybe a
PDF->text converter to the built in software and you're good to go.

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davelnewton
That's true about the batteries. Maybe a pluggable battery case that could
handle either. +1 for a denser display (and I might even argue for an OLED,
but creeping featurisms also mean poorer battery life).

Hrm, might have to start working on something. There are some crazy low-power
ARMs around too, I'd have to do a bit of research.

