TRaSh Talk
In my quest to get hold of some of the classic early-80s 8-bit machines, the TRS-80 immediately sprang to mind. Although it didn’t seem to have much market share in the UK, it was pretty popular in the US.
One of the first things that I found out was that a “TRS-80” isn’t referring to a specific model, or even form factor of computer. I’d always considered Tandy/Radio Shack to be the brand, and TRS-80 the model. It quickly became clear that TRS-80 was really the brand. I guess the very first machine was simply called the TRS-80, but was later renamed to the Model I. This was followed by the Model II. The Model II was not in any way compatible with the Model I. The Model III was though. Confused? I’ve tried to summarize the various TRS-80 models and their compatible successors. Let me know if you can work out the naming convention.
Model I - Model III and Model 4, 4P and 4D
Model II - Model 12, Model 16, Model 16B and Tandy 6000
Model 100 - Model 102, Model 200, Model 600
Pocket Computer PC-1 - PC-3 and PC-8 (rebadged Sharp devices)
Pocket Computer PC-2 (rebadged Sharp device)
Pocket Computer PC-5 - PC-6, PC-7, PC-8 (rebadged Casio devices)
Color Computer - Color Computer 2, Micro Color Computer 10, Color Computer 3
To cut a long story short, saying “I have a TRS-80” is as descriptive as saying, “I have a Toyota.”
The models I was primarily interested in were the Color Computers or CoCos. In particular the original CoCo. I have a bit of an (unhealthy?) obsession with the “keyboards” that were included on some of the early 80’s machines. In fact, the worse the better. I knew that the original CoCo did not have a “proper” keyboard so as I scanned eBay I found a TRS-80 Color Computer that didn’t have a “proper” keyboard. The price was right, so the deal was done.
A few days later, a box arrived. It seemed awfully small to have a CoCo inside (the CoCos are pretty substantial machines). On opening the box, this little guy popped out.
Yes, it’s been through the wars a bit…
Now you may be thinking, this thing doesn’t look that small. Well, hold on to yer hats…
You will have no doubt have deduced from the picture, I also have a CoCo2. I’ll be looking at that in a future post.
Yeah. Weren’t expecting that were you? Or maybe you were. This is the TRS-80 Micro Color Computer sitting next to a TRS-80 Color Computer. The Micro Color Computer, or MC-10 to its pals, is very much a micro version of the CoCo. Sort of…. more later.
The CoCo is a substantial machine for sure, and completely dwarves the MC-10. Let’s see if there’s something closer in size.
The closest thing I could find was the very small ZX81. The MC-10 is a really small computer. Now it’s a lot thicker than the ZX81 (stack two ZX81’s on top of each other and you’d be getting close.)
Let’s take a quick tour around the MC-10
On the right-hand side, there’s only an on/off switch. Bear in mind that in the early 80s in the UK, an on/off switch was a bit of a luxury. Usually turning the power off meant unplugging the power cable.
A little bit more going on out back. DC-in, TV-out, reset switch (fancy!), serial connector, and cassette connector. The mysterious cover in the center is for an edge connector that could accommodate a memory expansion (the MC-10 came with 4K of RAM)..
The left-hand side is dull as dishwater, or a blank slate. You decide.
The MC-10’s bottom contains a bunch of stickers and the TV channel selector switch.
The keyboard is not great. It’s far too small to allow two handed typing and the feel of the keys is definitely on the plasticky side. A hell of a lot better than a ZX81, but not as nice as the Laser-50. Of course, the Laser-50 is somewhat stymied by the lack of a space bar….
So, was this a small CoCo? Sort of. BASIC programs written for the CoCo could mostly run on the MC-10, but machine code compatibility wasn’t there so the range of software was quite limited.
Radio Shack brought the MC-10 out to compete with competing machines that were much cheaper than the CoCo (e.g. the Vic-20 and ZX81), but since they introduced it in 1983 after the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum had been released, it all seemed all a bit too little, too late. The MC-10 didn’t sell well and was discontinued in 1984.
