EEVblog
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 3 ต.ค. 2010
- The teardown the world has waited 27 years for!
Sick of seeing modern computer teardowns with their hideous BGA packages and 6 month product life times?
Dave gets all nostalgic and does a teardown of the famous Radio Shack Tandy TRS-80 Model 100.
What are the electronics and manufacturing technologies like from 1983?
This is rumored to be the last machine that Bill Gates personally wrote code for. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
I have one of these even now, and it's in use several times a week. It is the absolute apex of elegant engineering, getting maximum use out of the space and the technologies of the time. In 2023, mine still works flawlessly, and that keyboard - one of the very best to type on. With modern peripherals such as (Hey Birt!'s) Backpack drive, getting files on and off it is simplicity itself.
It deserves every ounce of the enthusiasm on show for it in this video. Great stuff!
Great video! The Model 100 also had an acoustic coupler pair that would slip onto a payphone for 'remote connection'. It was a favorite PC for reporters and journalist of the day.
The Model 100 was a big part of my life back in the mid 80's. It is one of the most usable computers of all time. As soon as you turned it on you had a calendar schedule, an address book, a simple notepad/word processor, a simple terminal program and of course BASIC. All your files (small ones) were right there, not on some floppy. I carried this thing around everywhere.
I wrote dozens of papers in high school and college using the built-in notepad and printed them with a BASIC program to make proportional lines. I had (and still have!) a typewriter with a parallel interface so I never handed in ugly dot matrix print. I may have purchased a real word processing program but I don't think I ever used it since I didn't need to do page numbers or footers.
I used BASIC for calculus. By plotting functions I could see if I got a derivative correct. Since it didn't have a spreadsheet program (the model 200 did) I occasionally wrote BASIC programs with long DATA statements and loops to process the numbers. Not as convenient as VisiCalc, but changing a number and typing RUN gave you a new answer in seconds.
The built-in terminal program was perfect for calling up Compuserve and your local BBS. There were cheap 1200 baud modems that Bell had gotten rid of and the terminal program worked fine with them through the serial port.
Of course "hacking" was a popular past time for us nerds back then and the Model 100 was tops in that category. The built-in dialer was just a relay for pulse dialing (no DTMF) but it was fast enough to dial all the numbers in my hometown looking for modems in just a week. We were also able to put the 300 baud modem into answer mode and tap into the school office terminal modem line (yes, illegal). We were able to capture all the passwords they typed. Switch it into originate mode and we could capture whatever data the school computer was returning.
I wonder where mine went.
Of course the idea of the Model 100 was that it was portable.
I still use mine in 2020 :) 37 years later, and 10 years after this video!
I sold thesee back "in the day" and did mods for my customers. For example, pop off the keyboard caps and slide the Rubber bands from Dental Braces to kill the keyboard "clicK" so College Students could use it in the Library without getting yelled at by the staff. I'd also solder a NiCd AA in line with the batteries and use 4 NiCd's there to make the whole thing rechargable. There was a VERY Good aftermarket ROM called IDEA that had an Outliner, Print Formatter and Database that all worked very well together to augment the native Word Processor. There was also one that had the MutliPlan Spreadsheet if you did more Number-Crunching.
Later-on Shack also sold a nice little 3-1/2" Floppy Drive (4AA's again) that REALLY boosted speed and reliiability. Tapes just couldn't cut it after that came out, yum!
Last I heard NASA was still using these to run experiments on the Shuttle and Space Station because they were reliable, stand-alone, units that could be literally programed to do ANYTHING, unlike much of what's out there today.
Good reading. It appears that it had a following despite the cost back in the day.
Great story Leo! I had the smaller TRS-80 Pocket computer which looked more like a calculator until it was plugged into the dock that offered me a serial printer (receipt size) which I eventually ripped out to do my own rechargeable mod. And your info about NASA is correct. My uncle worked for Honeywell on projects specifically for NASA and he swore by these machines. For one thing they ran BASIC natively and you could sit and hammer in a few hundred lines of code over lunch. What could make testing easier!? The most fun thing I did with my little Tandy was use it to write a program that launched my model rockets. (I was 13 at the time) ;) Thanks for sharing.
Neat idea with the rubber bands. The Model 100 had an amazing keyboard! Still one of my favorites of all time.
Rick Hanson, the Proprietor of Club100, passed away on April 30, 2011 . Over the past 2 decades, Rick has nearly single-handedly kept the Model 100 (and family) laptops going through his amazing dedication, passion and support. Through this dedication, Rick became friends with and touched the lives of many people across the globe and will be missed dearly.
A beautifully made piece of electronics technology and it's no wonder. Watching this in 2021, that $1,400 price tag would be $6,000 today - that's quite a price point to build to!
A really enjoyable watch, thank you.
The best keyboard on any notebook computer EVER!
2022 - just got my TRS-80 Model 100 off eBay - instant on and working at 39+ y.o. Amazing quality.
Just finished watching your Amiga teardown and made me dig out the good old TRS-80. I'm amazed, it still works just like new. I have the floppy drive and all the books/manuals and as you mentioned in the video, all the information they provided was amazing. Thanks for your videos, keep doing the "retro" teardowns.
"A really functional unit. Now let's crack it open." Hahaha!
Wish my laptop runs on four AAs and last 20 hours.
to me it's the ONLY AA Laptop but maybe someone tells me iam wrong?
3k hz or whatever means long life. and yeah, is light.
EXPANDABLE TO 32k RAM!
@@QuizmasterLaw There were more AA portables back then. As always, the screen is the most important factor. We went from a week of battery life to a single day when phones turned into smartphones. Same with those old portables: you can't have full-color high-res backlit displays and still have decent battery life. The CPU (2.4 MHz btw, not 3 kHz) actually has very little to do with that.
I still have my T-102 that I used through high school - and I graduated in 2006!
The teachers liked that it was quiet, didn't provide distracting light from the display, and I liked that it ran for 20 hours on a few AA cells.
Awesome video Dave!!! Please give us more retro teardowns.
I was half expecting to see a vacuum tube. ;) I love those older designs. They seem to be the only things that were truly built to last. It still blows my mind how far technology has come, knowing and seeing the history of technology and electronics. A great tear-down & tour! Thanks!
When I was at uni, I had one of these, in an ali camera case, with a ham TNC and VHF handheld. So I could get onto the Amateur bulitin board system. This was in the late 80's, before most people had even heard of email.
The other students thought I must have some secretgovernment job, as this seemed like James Bond stuff to them!
How things havemoved on.
But after seeing this video, I had a route in the loft. I still have the modle 100, the TNC and even the ali case. (The handheld does decades ago.) And they all still work.
What a great instructive vid.
Excellent videos. Between yourself and Benjamin Heckendorn. I have got back in to doing electronics.
I bought one of these ( a 102 ) brand new in Tandy (Radio Shack) in UK back in 1989, they were heavily discounted at the time and not every branch had them, I had to drive quite a way to get one. It was easy to program it to control a device via rs232 that I needed to be portable and reliable, there was nothing else that was as simple and reliable as this that worked away from power.
The Basic language on this was really good, I’m not programmer at but later I tried using the basic that was included with PCs in MS Dos, I think it was called q basic, and that was much more limited. About 15 years ago in fit of nostalgia I bought a mint condition 102 on eBay, and though the screen is much more limited than I remember, it’s still an amazing machine and extremely well built.
Wow, absolutely cool! Big thanks.
Thousands of journalists took these things to the field with them and uploaded their new stories back to the office. It was a close to a perfect device as you could get for them. I'm really impressed by the quality of build.
I had one of these as a kid -- think it was my third computer. It was the first machine that allowed me to connect to the outside world -- even though it was 300 baud, it was so cool.
Had the floppy drive too. If I remember right, I think it only held 100k when formatted using a standard 3.5" disk. It was carried everywhere and eventually the keyboard circuit board cracked forcing me to make my first repairs with a soldering iron... I should buy one off eBay just for memories.
Thanks Dave!
Nice, particularly the close up views of all parts.
"Brings a tear in the eyes, it really does"
Wow, I travelled back in time 10 years on EEV channel.
I had 2 of those years ago, first was a 100, then I found a used 102 for a great price and picked that up as well. I used one in my squad car when I was a police officer, it worked great for taking notes at crime scenes as well as at accidents. Once the injured were crated away, I could carry the little guy with me while taking measurements of the accident scene, and drop those figures into software that I had programmed up myself in Basic. Worked great for me.
the hand drawn boards instantly grab your attention! aside from the occasional wire jumper or extra component here or there, you don't expect to see something human / organic when you open the case to a modern device. nice tour! thanx!
-jc
I loved this video, thanks! Dave, how about doing a video in the future for us retro computer nerds about how to keep vintage computers working? It'd be great to learn about common faults with old gear (e.g. the aging capacitors you mentioned) and how to find and rectify these faults. And whether any components or chips are now obsolete, and if there are alternatives to components that are nolonger available. This would be amazing if you could do it!! Thanks.
I love it. I had a friend with one of those Tandy notebooks back in the early 90's
OMG Yes, the Tandy SERVICE MANUALS!!! They were the BEST!! My purchase of any serious Radio Shack piece was never complete, until i had gone back in and ordered the service manual. Me and my local store manager had a standing joke about that, he was a big ol' geek as many were back in the 80s, and when my SM arrived, i'd go pick it up, start flipping through it while I wandered the parts aisles, saying oh yeah, looks like i'll need this, and this, and this....
I own an Alphasmart and boy this makes my mouth water. Distraction free for the most part...
IIRC, these were quite popular on college campuses due to their portability.
SUPER, video, thank u!!!
I had one of these for a while about 10 years ago. It was fun to mess around with. I even got an upgrade ROM that allowed me to hook it up to a PC via RS232 and run a "server" software on the PC side so I could make it act like a disk drive for the Tandy 102. I even wrote some games on it in BASIC. BTW, Synthematix it did have sound. Basically just standard wave beeps and blips, but you could change the tone so you can play single channel tunes. BTW, I love it when people are really into what they do like this guy is.
I had a clone of this, the Olivetti M-10, as a teen in the 90's. It was my first computer and with BASIC and the excellent manual also what got me into coding. I tried making a Tetris game for it, but lacked the knowledge to make it work. I did make an intro with falling blocks assembling into the word Tetris.
I later broke it during a dumb experiment, but I still have some of the chips from it, and the LCD (it was in a separate case on the M10, so it could be angled). Just a few days ago I started the process of trying to bring it to life using an Arduino.
In the M10 they actually had two versions of the LCD column driver chip, one which was the mirror image of the other, so they didn't have to flip half of them over.
I just today built a charge pump for the negative voltage, decided on the wiring, studied signal timings, commands and memory layout. With luck I'll wire up and smoke test it tomorrow.
Mine still works in 2020. 37 years and going strong.
It still works after 27 years so those capacitors must be good quality.
yep, mine still works nicely BUT it has an internal NiCad backup battery which is prone to leaking!
@ungratefulmetalpansy I just finished rebuilding a Tandy Computer Speaker SYSTEM. It was a stand alone 110 volt device that fit under the monitor. It came in a very strong steel case, had a very large woofer with two smaller mid-range speakers, and a set of variable resistors for adjusting the sound output. You could feed in audio from anywhere, it had duel stereo inputs. I purchased it in 1994, and a couple of years ago, we were using it to remote the audio from the TV and Stereo system from one room to another, it began the dreaded 60 hertz hum. I stopped using it, but one day I didn't have a lot to do, I tore her down and replaced all the larger capacitors in the power supply portion, the control portion and even in the rather large amplifier board, it had all separate boards, and all through hole devices. When I was finished, using all top quality caps, the hum was gone, and she was back to being a very nice sounding speaker. To top it off, I installed a bluetooth receiver and made her a nice bluetooth audio device, I am using it right now for background and thanks to the replacement of the caps, nary a hum to be heard.
Awesome-ness.
Aaaaaah. Memories.
I never had this computer but
I had TRS-80 Pocket Computers, YES Pocket Computers.
And a TRS-80 Model III
Thanks Dave!
Good times.
Ahhhhyes! I really appreciate this tear-down! I have an old Tandy 102 in the closet. I grabbed it, tossed four AAs into it and powered it up for the first time in about ten years - sure enough, it fired right up without issue. Neat machine! Funny thing about the internal modem - it can only do pulse dialing. Tone dialing is not supported!
Brilliant! I love it!!!
Bloody iPhones indeed! As an electronics and electrical engineer who design boards myself, I am extremely impressed with their trick of reversing the LCD drivers to simplify the layout! Haven't seen genuine PCB layout tricks like that in a while!
DUDE! I wanted one of those SO badly.
Would have been great for BBSing...
Awesome idea!!!!
MORE!! MORE!!!
You have the coolest room I've ever seen!
Wow, that was amazing, nice to see somebody who knows the engineering side too :o)
I missed the link to the manual too. Would love to have it again. I used to have that thing memorized including much of the schematic/port outs.
I converted BBS software to be used by some HAMs with Packet Radio (data over ham radio). Also did some assembler on it. Wrote a compiler that took an enhanced version of basic (no line numbers and some other features) and converted to the internal one to execute.
Lots of cool projects. thanks for the video.
Had one of these. With a barcode reader and an external floppy disk drive. Great little computer for its day.
I love my Model 100. Battery life is phenomenal.
Apparently some remote research stations were using them into the 2000s due to the battery life. Powering anything more capable in the middle of nowhere was a serious problem, you'd need many more spare batteries and those batteries were so much larger.
That's less of an issue now, even with non changeable batteries external power is much more portable these days and the handicap of the CPU, RAM, and display limitations are much harsher.
My dad used to work for UCSD. He was a PhD in high energy physics. But, he loved old school electronics engineering as well. He told me one time, the only thing that can kill old school discrete electronics is oxidation creep. That's where the O2 in the air eventually creeps its way up the leads of the DIP's into the package and onto the wafer. It takes decades. Seems like modern ANYTHING has a lifespan of about 2-4 years.
Reporters, used the HECK out of these!!! It was the perfect field piece for the trade: you could key up your copy on-site, then modem it back to the editors.
I still have a M100 with the acoustic coupler cups, important back then, you know, telecom regs were really hit-and-miss about that stuff.
They were slick as shit back then. I remember people in government offices being impressed when I showed up with one to transcribe documents, back when freedom of information meant going to the relevant office and being handed a manilla folder of paper documents. You could also type up a story at the scene and use the ear muff coupler to phone it in. I still have my NEC version of the Trash 80 and it still works fine, despite Bill Gates' software..
omg it must have been a real pain in the ass to draw all that PCB without advanced design tools like we have today!!!! truely brillant!
I have two of those - I don't use them, but can't seem to get rid of them. I guess I remember how useful they were and how much hard work I got out of them. Every once in a while I'll fire one up.
It's older than me, but I still remember using it...
@unlokia Thanks! Good to see others share my passion.
I still have my Tandy Model 100 that I bought in 1984. It still works and looks as good as the day I bought it. I remember that it was popular with sports writers back in it's day. I have a 300 baud acoustic modem I bought for it as well as the cassette player used for storage. I have the "official" Radio Shack caring case for it. In it's time it was a great laptop. Thanks EEVblog for posting this video!
Oh my god your face when u say "take it apart!!" Youre a nutter dave its classic 😂
I wrote a program for these which could right justify a printed page, took 3 or 4 seconds to calculate the spacing of every line, thus three or four minutes to print one page, but that wasn't a big problem back then. The only other way was mechanical type setting, which took a whole lot more time.
I have one of those! I had it connected to a bluetooth module and it communicated to my windows mobile phone for text messaging as a joke with my friends. Very fun little guy :) ... I've written a bunch of programs on it recently! lol
So, where's the link to the service manual you mentioned ??
Was wondering what that little blue trimmer pot next to the modem was for, till you posted the schematic. Looks like its for adjusting the bias of the TX side?
Wait so I can take notes on this at school? I NEED one now because my quad-core 2.4GHz laptop just isn't cutting it.
Seriously though, I'd love to get my hands on one of these and bring it to school.
The parallel interface port is a neat dog's breakfast - the circuit that handles the interface handles keyboard and display communication as well. I built an interface board to control robot motors from BASIC, but after the port changed state it would immediately start changing again (interference from other I/O)- I had to use an octal latch that was triggered by the strobe line, so I could have the states "Stick" for the transistor buffers.
Interesting that the LCD module was using electronics that were about 10 years advanced over the rest of the board. All surface mount, including the caps. Also nice the Sharp chip with the Microsoft stamp.
Great! I've got just the same piece of history. Where may I find schemes and diagram?
Is it possible to get this to run on raspberry pi and replace the display with a more modern one? :)
And that, folks, is one reason why I was grateful to to get some form of early retirement.
Holy crap I remember those!
I also noticed that the display has surface mounted caps between the LCD drivers.
Hello, I am kinda stuck. I found an old motor in my inlaws attic and it does not have the data plate heck half of the housing has been removed. they have no idea what it went to nor where it came from. could have been in a box they got from a family members estate in the past. how would you determine the voltage/amp? the power cord has been cut back to the housing. I wanted to use it in a build if it was good and would save me some $$$. have a true RMS multi-meter and some electronic experience.
Wow, interesting indeed!, kinda took me back a bit. I worked on the original design team for Tandy back in the Mid to Late Seventies, Early , Early. What a time indeed, Have I got stories. If anyone is really interested in the history and development of technologies, I would be a great resource, I lived it!
BTW, You got some of it correct, but definitely some pieces missing....
I had one of these. It was a glorified type writer.
Today, it might be a good terminal for a linux box.
I have two of these M100's One I keep in my cubical that displays "TRS-80 MODEL 100 PORTABLE COMPUTER" then my name and date and time.. it has been running almost non stop for 20 years since I found it in a pile of junk computers being thrown out. its just one of those things I have brought with me from company to company.
+Jayrocco Sechsunddreißig haha! That's an amazing idea! I think I'll try to find an old computer and practice this trick myself as well.
+AlTheEngineer There is a lot of old software for these old M100's at www.club100.org/
I found one really cool clock program there and have since replaced my old program to a much more slick display..
+Jayrocco Sechsunddreißig that's amazing. I must pick one up! Just checked eBay and I can get it for under $200 for a good condition one!
I really wanted one when I was little
I sold one of these and the disk drive a year ago in the boxes for some ridiculously high price to a collector.
ACOUSTIC Modem also can acoustic load proggies!
hot tech for the day.
I have two sets of new capacitors to replace those in my 100's but now I'm wondering if I should
Hi Dave, great video! I actually always wanted one of these back when I was a kid, and got the TRS-80 COCO3 Instead. Many years ago I picked one up at a garage sale for a couple bucks and it even had the little bag! Could you please post the link to the service manual? I would love to print a copy to keep with my unit. Thanks!!
Bet that old school circuit board smells great!! sniff sniff mmmmmmm :)
It is because the Olivetti M10 was another variant of this. The TRS-80 Model 100 was the most advanced with the 300 Baud modem. This very computer with slight modifications was released by many companies.
what a pretty PCB......and talk about IC'S & drivers on one PCB lol.....but very good looking internals....some of the modern PCB's dont look soo good!!!!! Gosh im so new to all this....I came on looking at multimeters, saw one of your reviews.....and now i'm hooked....lmao........dave.....your like a DRUG.......lol....i keep coming back for more.....but i'm learning alot......i want to set up a workshop somewhere in the house now....
A winning product? Damn straight! Best year = 1983
Wow that took me back I once ran a BBS (bulletin board system) off the same model tandy Had a high speed 300baud modem hooked to it . The 2nd phone line only cost 9 bucks back in the day.
The basic unit came with 8 kB installed, and each for kilobyte addition was $300 Eddie could add up to 24 kB. You could interface floppy drives and a regular full screen monitor through a device called a DVI “ The DVI is a disc video interface. I cannot remember the price of the unit. The cassette deck used with The TRS 80 model 100 was for storing data in a serial data format on a special metallic cassette deck. Also applications could be purchased stored in ROM ships that could be plugged in to the bottom of the TRS 80 model 100. The barcode scanner could also be used for scanning programs into the TRS 80 model 100. The TRS 80 model 100 also had a user group magazine that helped find new ways of using the model 100 as well Is supplying many scannable programs via the barcode reader. I personally bought one of the very first model 100s and put it to work as a database for my field service job on CNC machines. You could do word search in the database for anything that you had typed into the flat database and find anything you have stored in there via simple Search routine. I even heard a rumor that Stevie Wonder used the model 100 for composing music while flying around the country in the world.
You can still buy LCD's like that today with the drivers mounted in cut-outs in the PCB.
lovely beast those 100's, i have a NEC PC8300 which is 'similar but different', if you get what i mean, slightly different BASIC!
Jeez, that's a lot of resistors!
Agree completely I wish we still manufactured products using this old technology, or at least old philosophy. The idea that products could last forever and be REPAIRED instead of tossed in the trash. With so much emphasis on recycling and going green, why are we manufacturing throw away products? I just tossed a BRAND NEW Brother printer in the trash because I couldn't figure out how to get it apart to make a small repair. No service manuals, and no screws. It was like a caveman trying to break into the monolith on 2001. Finally gave up after 6 hours of prying and getting nowhere.
I used one of these model 100's as a hacking terminal and it literally ran forever on AA's. I had a 2400 baud battery powered modem taped to the underside. The keyboard was AMAZING... loved it. Have owned a few of them over the years. The AA powered floppy drive was really cool but kinda hard to work with.
Where can I get one of those machines? :)
Cool report BTW. LOVE IT! :)
Wun Hung Lo - cheap quality caps. hahahahahha. I thought I'd heard them all. Nice. :)
You have mentioned that you will add a link to a documentation but i don't see it anywhere.
I really want one of these
the Epson HX20 was probably the first or one of the first 'laptops' as it predates the model 100, and this has built in mini printer and optional microcassette deck and memory expansion unit
I opened my old DSO 100 MHz scope up... wow! Full of 7400 logic ICs and jellybean parts like LM358 op-amps, all in DIP packages on a 2-layer board. Also, the CPU was in a DIP-64 package!
HEHE, i still use my TSR-80 102, for lots of stuff, and have a friend that uses his for is Drag Strip Car for simple engine info.. And Yes I love the 20+ hours of BATT run time..
so around 6WHr battery can run it for 20 hours and i can't get 4 hours out of my cellphones 8WHr battery.
Anyway is it possible to get one of this?
Redwan Hasan You can find them on ebay and at hamfests for cheap to nothing.
Thanks for the info Gazer!
I bought one of these but everything in the corner of the battery compartment is corroded likely from the battery. Anyways to revive that. I think two disks are fully corroded. and the screw in that corner as well.
Yeah... I've got the same problem. Have you figured out how to fix it> My 4 AA batteries leaked.. damn! Paul (backup6688@gmail.com)
is that an Extron tweaker you're using to point at the components?
So, $1400 1982 dollars equals just under $3500 2105 dollars.That could get you pretty much a top of the line 1080p i7 + SLI whatever the best laptop GPU is and max RAM + RAID SSDs, etc. In 1982, that got you an oversized scientific calculator.
Jay Man No, it got you a device NOBODY else made at the time. These were incredibly popular with journalists and other people that have to write documents on the road.
Yeah, I'm sure for 1982 this was like landing on the moon in the computing world. But, the equivalent of $3500 for a word processor? I mean, wouldn't it have been nice if there was something that could store words that was cheap, portable, that had an almost unlimited memory and didn't use any electricity? Man, that would be so nice. I think I'll call it a pencil and a ream of notebook paper. Oh, right, you need it typed? iI think I'll call that invention a typewriter. Nah, I'm just dreaming, nothing like that will ever exist. It is too good to be true. Lol, no electricity?
Jay Man Some software was sold at $20,000-$30,000 per seat back then. $1400 would have been reasonable for a word processor that you can take with you.
+Jay Man
I think the real reason journalists liked it was because of the modem. This way they could be on location, type their piece, dial into the BBS system or whatever they used back at HQ and upload their story in minutes for that day's news print. Pre-web sure, but once you had the equipment set up, it'd be much faster and cheaper than the mail or a courier service. Not to mention with a ream of paper or a typewriter, someone would still need to transcribe it later to get into whatever system would eventually publish it. Stored electronically, that was no longer a problem.
yeah but can your pen and paper perform 8-bit interger math?
those SOIC DRAM chips must have been pretty rare in '83
This video's a lot older than I remember.
I'm getting old :(
Yep :( Time's a blur...
Brilliant video, did this computer have sound?
Yes, just a single buzzer, same as the original IBM PCs.