TRS-80

In the summer of 1978, I was getting ready to go into the 5th grade. I had some issues at the public school the previous couple of years, so I was going to go to a new school that year. St Paul's Lutheran school. 

One day near the end of the summer, my dad came home with a new TRS-80 computer. The U of M had a promotion where he got the computer for a special price, and it was paid for over time through payroll deduction. I didn't know anyone who had a computer, so this was really exciting for me. Most of my neighbors got new things before we did, touch tone phones, microwaves, color tv, cable, etc, but we were the first with a computer. Unfortunately a computer doesn't give you much bragging rights compared to the other items, but to me it was pretty cool. 

The computer came with a couple of software packages that were useful for my dad, but the only program it had that interested me at the time was Eliza. It didn't take long for the responses to get predictable, but still it was exciting to be able to carry on a conversation with a computer. Even with the canned responses, she probably seemed smarter than a lot of kids my age. 

The other thing the computer came with was Level II Basic. There was an instruction book that came with the computer and was written at a very low level, so even a 5th grader could understand it. There was a stick figure that guided you through the book, and did a pretty good job of teaching the programming language. I loved that book and loved being able to write code that the computer executed. I thought it was so cool. I still think so today. 

I learned a lot on that computer and if it weren't for the tape drive, I might have learned even more. The computer only had a black and white screen, and the graphics capabilities were almost non existent, but I did write a number of games for it. I used to get magazines that would have code in them for creating a game, and I would spend weeks typing in data statements, then I would finally get the code debugged and the game would work. Then after a week or two, I would try to load the game, and it couldn't find it one the tape. The tape drive was a really unreliable way to store data. 

Years later my did upgraded the TRS-80 to have more memory and he added an 8" floppy drive, but by that time, I had stopped using it. I often wonder how my life would have been different if I had maintained my interest in computing throughout middle school. I remember having computer time in classes in junior high school on the PET computers, but I was so far beyond the class and teachers at that time, that I just found it boring. Plus the keyboard on the PET's really made them look like toys. 

It took my dad a long time to upgrade to an IBM PC from the TRS-80. It didn't help that since it was discontinued, he could get parts and upgrades for the TRS-80 for really cheap. He did eventually get an IBM PC, and he got one of the first ones that was offered with a 5 mb hard drive. Now that thing was cool.