Part I: Tandy in Education & TRS-80 Network 2 Demo
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2024
- Part I of my SepTANDY series: TJBChris' Tandy Education Connection (TEC). I'm exploring Tandy/Radio Shack's educational offerings, focusing on connected classroom and networking solutions for TRS-80 computers. Part I explores Tandy's overall education offering and dives into the cassette-based Network 2 controller using my TRS-80 Model III and 4 computers.
Music/SFX (in order):
None. Just me jabbering.
Video clip:
Bites & Bytes Episode 3: How Programs Work (TVO, 1983)
External links:
TRS-80 Microcoputer News Issues: colorcomputerarchive.com/repo...
Radio Shack Computer Catalogs: colorcomputerarchive.com/repo...
Ian Mavric's Web Site: www.trs-80.com.au/trs80/index.htm
References:
TRS-80 Microcomputer News - July/August, 1982
TRS-80 Microcomputer News - September, 1982
TRS-80 Microcomputer News - October, 1983
Radio Shack Catalogs: RSC-4 (1981), RSC-5 (1981), RSC-7 (1982), RSC-20 (1989), RSC-21 (1990)
Chapters:
Intro (0:00)
Overview: Tandy's Educational Offerings (2:58)
TEC Series Outline (7:57)
Network 2 Hardware and Topology Overview (8:30)
Overview of Network Stations (13:44)
Sending A Program To All Stations (16:23)
Different Programs For Different Stations (21:00)
Saving Student Work To The Host (24:01)
Experiment: Can All Hosts See Student Work? (26:52)
What's Next, Thanks, And Outro (29:39)
I do these videos unscripted, so I apologize if the in-the-moment descriptions of things are a bit scattered. If you have any questions/comments about this video, you can find me in any of these fine locations:
The Tandy Discord Server
The CoCo Nation Discord Server
The TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo) group on Facebook
The CoCo Crew Podcast group on Facebook
On the Vintage Computer Forums (vcfed.org)
The TRS-80 Models I-4/4P Group on Facebook
Tandy / Radio Shack Model II /12 / 16 / 16B / 6000 Owner's Group on Facebook
Twitter (I'm TJBChris there...)
The Level29 BBS (I'm TJBChris there, too.)
Particles BBS (Guess who I am here? Yeah, TJBChris.)
Thanks for watching! - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Great video! I played around with a Model 3 TRS-80 at my local library as a kid in the early 80's. Never realized it had this educational capability.
Thanks for showing Tandy's in relation to education. All we ever saw was Apples and of course could never afford one for our home.
I remember that TRS-80 networking solution all too well.
Great video. We had this very network design in my computer classroom in 1983/1984. Thanks for the walk down memory lane.
Glad you liked it. Thanks for watching!
Same 😂
My grandfather got my father a TRS-80 Model I when my dad was 12. He taught himself programming and learned assembly in school when he was supposed to be learning English.
Hey thanks for reminding us just how old we are!
What a great presentation of Tandy in Education! I was one of those kids that grew up with Apple II's in elementary and junior high school with a C64 at home for many years. I enjoyed hearing you mock the computers talking to each other and the teacher talking to the kids LOL! All that was missing from this video was you having a drink 🙂
Hahaha thanks! The drink did make a brief appearance, and in one take which was sadly terrible and edited out, I even mentioned it (and took a sip). At school, we were mostly Apple IIs, a few laggard TRS-80s that didn’t last long, and later, IBM PS/2 Model 55s for high school keyboarding classes. Home was the CoCo 3. I got a lot of “Talking To’s” from computer teachers back in the day, and I’m sure that impression has its roots there.
I don't comment much, but I have to tell you, this video took me back to 7th and 8th grade. I my middle school, we had a mix of Apple II's, TRS-80's and a very few Tandy 1000's. All of that hardware was so far beyond my reach as a kid, but I did dream. I the meantime, I had either my TI99/4A or my C64 and C128 during that period. I have a Model IV downstairs with garbage on the screen, I need to get back on that repair. Anyway, thank you for the video, well done. For a guy turning 50 at the end of the month, I feel a little younger now.
Thanks for the wonderful comment! My school was mainly a mix of a few TRS-80s, lots of Apple IIs, and later, IBM PS/2 Model 55s for the high school keyboarding classes. My youth was spent coveting the “bigger” machines than my first, a CoCo 3 (which I loved and still do)…Model 4s, Model 12s, and later Tandy 1000s we’re all objects of my affection. I’d definitely recommend trying to get that Model 4 going again. There’s a Tandy thread on vcfed.org, groups on Facebook, and a Tandy Discord server where you can ask questions along the way. Believe me, you won’t regret getting that 4 going. To me, the Model 4 epitomizes retro computer systems.
@@TJBChris Man your school went full IBM and embraced MicroChannel with that model 55! I actually posted on vcfed about my model 4. I can send you a link, if like, you may have something else to add. I have a brand new FreHD I bought for that machine. I set it aside because it was so bulky to work on with the CRT. I need to make a jig to bench the MB and power supply.
We weren’t the first stop in those machines’ lives…by the time we got ‘em they were a tad long in the tooth. 😁. I’ll have to check out your post!
@@TJBChris Search, "Model 4 Non-GA Garbage at power on"
Nice setup, it looks like something out of the 80s/90s.
In Australia some schools had TRS-80s and some had Commodore 64s in the 80s...then they switched to IBM PCs with a few Macs.
And you've got one of those Micronta "big display" digital wall clocks. Wish I still had mine!
Since I was a kid, I had always wanted one of those large Micronta clocks…I used to come across them in the strangest places: grocery stores, dentist’s offices, etc. I finally found a broken one on eBay a couple years ago for cheap and figured it was worth trying to fix it. Fortunately I was successful. Thanks for watching!
We had this for our middle school English class in 1982 that our teacher got as a grant so she write up something for her PhD thesis. Sixteen Base model 4s + a high end end model 4 with multiple disk drives and a Daisy Wheel printer. All running Scripsit. After a class or two, she quickly grabbed eighth grade me as a teacher aid since I actually understood computers. It was all fun stuff.
On a side note. Nice room with not only a crapload of computers, but a TiVo guy, simpsons poster and a random automobile gauge cluster (Focus?)
That classroom setup would have been heaven for me back then. Thanks for the compliments on the room and the collection. You’re correct, those are car gauges in the background. The gauges are an experiment. I want to see how high the odometer goes and what it’ll do when it gets there. Some odometers go all the way to 999,999, while others (Ford trucks) will get to 399,999 and then roll back to 300,000. Since I had these lying around from a previous project, I figured it was an easy background experiment. The tricky part is the odometer won’t click up if I feed it speed data that exceeds the speedometer’s limits, so it’s slow going. Maybe I’ll do a short on it… Hmmm. Thanks for watching!
Great to see this technology demonstrated. I remember reading about this as a 9 year old armed only with a Tandy catalogue and wondering how the heck it worked. I don't think there were any significant installs of TRS-80 systems in the UK so never saw it in action.
Thanks for the comment! Playing with the Network 2 now is the first time I’ve ever seen it work myself. Like you, it was largely theoretical for me until now. Thanks for watching!
So cool! I never knew anything like that existed for the TRS-80s. It make sense as that's a fairly simple yet effective solution! My elementary school computer lab was full of Apple IIe machines, not networked, but with everyone just having his own floppy disk for the program of the day.... usually some MECC goodness LOL.
Ah, MECC...I can't tell you how many times I died along the Oregon Trail! Our labs were mostly Apple II after the TRS-80s went away, and like your school, each Apple II had its own set of disk drives. To the Tandy/TRS-80 offering, I was surprised myself as to the extent of Tandy's involvement in education. Thanks for watching!
Hi Chris, great video which brings back memories. When I was in the ninth grade, which would have been 1983 / 84, my school had a computer lab with about a dozen model I's networked to a duel disk drive model III. They were teaching basic programming and using the model 3 to save the students work. I spent a lot of time in there. I didn't take the class but I already knew basic quite well at that point. One day I wandered in during their class and the students were gathered around the model 3 with the teacher watching him save their work. I went over to one of the students workstations whose program had not been saved yet and inserted a line at the beginning of the program which read print " type run again and I'll break your arm ": end. After the end command I inserted a control character, which I can't remember anymore, which caused a carriage return without a line feed. The effect was that when you listed the program you could not see this line of programming because it was quickly overwritten. The students program got saved with my little surprise in there. I understand they had quite the commotion the next day in class when this students program would not run properly and they could not see why until the teacher got smart and listed the program to the line printer and saw the line printed out which was then printed over with the next line, but at the speed of the printer you could see the line of programming there. Good laughs on that one and I never got blamed for it.
Hah I love that story! You got lucky getting away with it…my school was small and I was THE computer kid, so if something like that happened, the spotlight was on me whether I did it or not. Thanks for watching and for sharing the story!
This reminds me of the prank I did, however mine was in a shop selling Tandy clones.
They had a machine setup with a Votrax speech synthesiser. I typed in a program that would make if spew out a pile of ant-shop junk, after a delay to allow me to be well over the other side when it kicked in.
The sales man behind the counter had a quick solution, he just turned around to the fuse box behind the counter and pulled a breaker or two - basically he dropped the shop!
Hi! We just did our video and first experiments with the Network II (video comes out later today) and Color Computers. However, your theory (I believe) is correct. The only way I got things to work was to use our Color Computer 1 and our TDP System 100 (coco 1 inside). The audio levels differ between the CoCo 1 and the later models. Interestingly; I was successful in sending data from the 1 and reading it with a CoCo 2 but the opposite would not work. This makes me think the audio is just louder coming out of the 1, and the decoder chip in the Network II is able to ‘hear’ it. Awesome video by the way!!
Hi, thanks for watching my channel! You’ve found (yet another) fan of yours! I’m glad my experience isn’t an anomaly…in fact, your experience lines up with mine exactly - the CoCo 1 was the only machine that could get a signal out that the other CoCos could “hear”. With a CoCo 1 host, my experience was short BASIC programs would load fine, except on one picky CoCo 3, but longer ones would choke before finishing with IO error. Thanks for watching and sharing your Network 2 experience with me!
I remember seeing these network boxes in the catalogues and wondered how the worked. I always assumed there were extra bits you connected to the student stations to make it all work, I never thought they'd use the cassette ports. Everyone thought cassette was so slow, so why they went down this route seems odd.
The cassette is definitely an interesting choice. I think it helps with the “lowest cost” part of the equation, where you could equip a classroom with the cheapest machines possible. At the time, all I/III/4s and the Color Computer had cassette ports. For the I/III/4 line, serial cards were an optional item, so I’d imagine starting with cassette broadened the market quite a bit. It came with some trade-offs, but overall did do the job. And you can use the cassette-based Network 2 to bootstrap your Network 3 serial port-based network. 😁 Thanks for watching!
The middle school I went to got stuck with vic-20's right before they was discontinued. The high school was Apple IIe then IBM Pc clones.
Wow, VIC-20s. I haven't seen many schools with Commodores where I was...it was mostly Apple or TRS-80s, or later, IBM-compatibles. I will have to look into Commodore's educational offerings. Could be fun to research! Thanks for watching!
In the Netherlands there were in the past computers especially made schools. It was the Aster Computer, it was based upon the Tandy TRS-80 (I guess it was Model 1). These Aster Computers had two cassette ports, one for the cassette and the other for the network, I assume this also was copied from Tandy. I never saw it working in school. At my school they did not have computers, they had caring educators.
Neat! I had not heard about Aster before. There were quite a few TRS-80 clones made around the world, and I always like hearing about the different TRS-80-like computers that were out there. In my school, computers were more of an accessory, rather than the star of the show. Kid-me would have preferred the computers haha. Thanks for watching!
What SUNY school did you go to? I live in the Buffalo area, and went to college near Geneseo.
SUNY Oneonta offered seminars for elementary and high school students, and I took a computer related one when I was in school. A room of Tandy 2500s was quite the sight! Younger me was definitely in my happy place in that lab. Thanks for watching!
How did the newer non-Z80-based Tandy machines send and receive BASIC programs? I would think that the BASICs would be incompatible.
As long as they all used the same protocol and baud rate, they should be able to communicate via cassette port. For example, even the Color Computer with its 6809 processor was able to run at a speed of 2400 buad. On second thought, that is the serial port, not the cassette. The cassette port had a different baud rate from the serial, I believe.
@@stephen.jenkins- yes the Coco’s cassette baud rate was 1500 baud.
I was thinking more along the lines of the content of the data stream as opposed to the data stream itself.
Generally, even flavors of Microsoft BASIC (the prevailing BASIC across ‘80s micros of the day) had variations between each system, but the core was pretty much the same. So, the hardware architecture of the machines you were sharing BASIC programs across wouldn’t matter as much as the little details. An example: some platforms used PRINT@ to print text at a specific spot on the screen. Others used the LOCATE command. Combine that with different text screen resolutions, and a plethora of other differences, and you usually found yourself converting the program even if you were successful getting it onto your target machine. You had to know both the source and target flavors of BASIC well to pull it off. Hopefully that’s the type of answer you were looking for. Thanks for watching and the great question!
You wouldn't be able to mix the Z80 Based Tandy's, ( Model 1, 3 and 4 ) and the Tandy Color Computers, ( Model 1, 2 and 3. I don't have any of the Model 1, 2, 3 or 4, but I have heard the Basic's are Compatible. On the Color Computers, the Basics are Compatible, as long as they are at the Same Level, ( Standard BASIC verses Extended BASIC ). Keep to the same CPU Type, and you would be fine, ( Except in the case of using the Color Computer 2 or 3 to send a Program to the Color Computer 1 )
My high school computer lab was made up of idk 8? 16k diskless model 3s with a double disk model 4 as host and print spooler. As a prank, i created a simple text editor that allowed someone to type in and list basic programs. But when you trief to run, you simply got the reafy prompt again. I loaded this on one machine and sat innocently typing at another machine while the school's valedictorian entered his program and got very confused. I even had it spin the disk on the host when he typed save, but of course nothing was saved. Not very nice, but seemed funny at the time.
As an outside observer, it’s funny now, too! That’s a great story! Spinning the disk drives are a nice touch, BTW. To this day, I’ve been known to prank coworkers by creating fake Linux “shells” that randomly run the command some times, and other times just say “No. Just no.”, throw an insult out, or return MS-DOS error messages in response. Thanks for sharing and for watching!
@@TJBChris That's funny! I mean terrible. Oh, I dont know what I mean!
The only part you missed is when pretending to be the teacher, they’d assign a teacher who hadn’t been trained and us screw offs would end up reading the manual and showing them how to do all of that. Lol
They’d ask us rather than ask the one nerdy teacher who ran the lab to avoid embarrassment. Hahaha.
Hahaha I was the person who showed them how to do it. I may have been a screw-off when it came to course material, but showing up the authority on the computer front? Oh, I was IN!
Tying the audio for multiple computer's cassette ports together is hardly a "network".
For the time, it was better than pretty much anything else you could buy for a microcomputer to get the connected together. While it doesn’t look like today’s networks, they are all interconnected and can engage in some 2-way communication (even if it is somewhat manual).
@@TJBChris Simply putting the optional RS-232 card in each of them (later models came with it standard) and connecting them together would give you a faster method to transfer files. You can even boot the OS this way with some versions of the ROM.
@@stargazer7644 Funny you should mention it. Check out my next video in this series, I covered that very subject (Network 3). 😁. In the video after that, I covered the serial boot ROM, too.