Negative Space: 80 microcomputing
- 80-Micro and the TRS-80, 1983-1984
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I’m going through some old 80-Micro magazines, and two editorials a year apart caught my eye.
- Baseball in the rain
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In 1980, after I bought a personal computer, I wrote a simple computer program in BASIC and sold it to one of the many magazines at the time. To the second-major newspaper of the area, this was a big deal.
- The Future from 1981
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One of the hallmarks of good science fiction is not just envisioning future technologies, but also the effects of the technology on everyday life. In November, 1981, Wayne Green looked into the usefulness of the secretary in the age of the personal computer.
- Learning to program without BASIC
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If BASIC is dead, how can our children—or anyone else—learn to program? Today people interested in programming have far more options available to get started hacking their computers.
- Peer to peer email from 1980
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A fascinating vision of the convergence of e-mail and text messaging from 1980.
- Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution
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David and Theresa Welsh wrote some of the first great software for the TRS-80, and knew a lot of the other people who were also writing great software. In Priming the Pump, they talk about the history of personal computers and the first non-kit mass-market personal computer, the TRS-80 Model I.
- The Radio Shack Postal Service
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What if Radio Shack had been granted a monopoly on computers in 1981? They’d probably look a lot like the United States Postal Service.
- The ruling class’s unexpectedly old clothes
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I recently ran across early use of “unexpectedly” for a conservative’s strong economy, referring to the early 1981 market recovery under President Reagan.
- Tandy Assembly 2018
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Tandy Assembly was earlier this November, and I have never seen so many Radio Shack computers in one spot. Also, my love affair with daisy wheels is rekindled.
- What is a captive audience, anyway?
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G.K. Chesterton writes, in Eugenics and Other Evils, that whenever someone starts asking “what is x anyway?” you know they’re trying to pull some wool over your eyes and make it the default. So, really, what is a captive audience, anyway?
More Information
- 80 Microcomputing Magazine March 1980 (magazine)
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Artificial intelligence, biorhythms, and investment analysis. Plus 14 programs with complete listings and source code for 4 assembly language programs!
- 80 Microcomputing Magazine December 1982
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Four hundred and eighty-two pages of articles, programs, hacks, reviews, and ads for the TRS-80 line of computers. This issue seems to specialize in reviewing and showing off the different programming languages available. It also starts to show off the graphics capabilities of the TRS-80 Color Computer. And lots of articles explaining how to use strings, arrays, boolean logic, and more.
- 80 Microcomputing Magazine February 1982
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A Special Education Issue of 80-Microcomputing: “Will Computers Replace Teachers?”
- 80 Microcomputing Magazine November 1981
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The annual business issue.
