TRS-80 model 2

[Qbus]

Picked up a TRS-80 II system with eight-inch drive, printer and lots of documentation and software. Going to assume that this was a larger version of the TRS-80 system that was maybe intended for business? Or something back in the days before DOS ruled the world?

Going to list it for sale down in the sale section but if no one is interested may end up cleaning it up and playing around with it. A couple questions first, One- Going to assume that just like the TRS-80 they had some form of Basic in ROM and that is the operating system? Load and Save commands will allow reading and writing to the local drive? Second- what type of power supply did they use? Was it a linear or switching supply? Don’t want to do it yet because I just listed it for sale but if no one is interested will take everything apart and clean it all up including looking at the power supplies but the system still has its stickers from the last time Radio Shack serviced the system back forty or so years ago and before I tear them want to give who ever buys it that option.

Back in 77/78 in High School remember the TRS-80 and seeing them at that time, never owned one but have some experience running PC/DOS Basic and lots of time spent playing around with DEC systems and working in Basic in that environment so going to assume that Radio Shack Basic cannot be that different from MS or GW Basic.

 

[eswan]

The Model II is quite a bit different from the I/III/4 series. It loads everything from disk, no built-in basic. Switch mode power supply, with rifa capacitors that almost certainly are due for replacement. I wouldn't worry about the warranty stickers, almost any Model II is going to need some internal attention, and without opening it up you don't really know what you have. It's kind of similar to the S100 systems, with a passive backplane and individual boards that plug into it. a stock system will have a Z80/serial board, parallel/Floppy board, Video/Keyboard board, and a 64k ram board. An expanded system could have a hard drive controller, 68000 cpu and 16-bit ram.

Currently, mine is booting from a Gotek w/ Flashfloppy firmware (and 34<->50 pin floppy adapter) as I haven't gotten around to diagnosing the 8" Floppy.

Massive amounts of information available here: https://github.com/pski/model2archive

 

[Qbus]

Cool, did they have a floppy driver in ROM so it would boot from a disk? figure its a lot like a first generation PC wanting to run some form of DOS or CPM? Think those things were a ton of money back in the day and you have to wonder why if they put Basic in ROM on the regular TRS-80 they did not include that on the model two? maybe the idea was that they would be running dedicated software and did not need it but have fond memories of the old IBM PC systems that had both 160K floppy drive along with MS Basic and gave you the option of running both.

 

[NeXT]

The ROM has a simple floppy driver. You loaded a disk, it looked for something in track 0 and off it went in either CP/M or TRS-DOS II.
You are correct in that it was aimed at the business market. Packages such as Scripsit, Visicalc, Wordstar and a few database programs were available from Tandy. Yes you can drop in boards from a Tandy 16 or 6000 and build a machine that will run 68K Xenix. I've had all that hardware for over a decade now and have really, really struggled to make much use out of it, much less fix problems with the hard disk controller. Dig deep enough into the forums and you can find threads I made years ago asking for help and eventually I just gave up and pushed it into storage.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I don’t have a II myself (and don’t really want one), but recently (last couple years) I’ve gotten the impression that the interest/activity around these machines has been on the uptick over the last few years. See, for instance, the github link @eswan included in their post, and there are also hardware projects out there focusing on these machines, like solid state hard disk emulators, replica high-res graphics cards, etc. So if you're interested in diving into the machine there's certainly a lot you can do with it. As noted, they do *not* have BASIC in ROM; in terms of architecture they're "basically generic" Z80 computers, with an "all RAM" memory map that allows them to run cross-platform operating systems like CP/M in addition to their version of TRS-DOS. (Which, while somewhat structurally similar to the TRS-DOS on the smaller Model I/III machines, isn't really compatible with them to any significant degree; TRS-DOS II comes with a Microsoft BASIC implementation which is *related* to the BASIC in the Model I ROM, but likewise has enough syntax differences that even BASIC programs of any significant complexity will need minor modifications to move between the two platforms.) And, as noted, if you really want to go nuts they can take a 68000 card and run Xenix, which is a Microsoft port of Bell Labs' UNIX V7 for the PDP-11. Really about the only thing that distinguishes them from a heavy-duty S100 machine like a Cromemco or NorthStar is they have the built-in video console instead of relying on a serial driven terminal. (Although if you do go the Xenix route you can connect a few terminals and convert it into a multi-user machine.)

So, yeah, if you want to play with it now is probably a better time than a few years ago, when it seems like these things were mostly forgotten... but that said, maybe I should explain why I don't really want one myself:

As has been noted, these were business focused machines. They were quite expensive when new, heavy, large, power-hungry, and of course they have those imposing 8" floppy disks. This means that basically nobody bought one of these for home use unless they had a very specific use for it... and as a result almost the entirety of the software base for them is boring stuff like mailing list programs and accounting packages. A significant number of Model IIs were actually sold in conjunction with consultants that would set up offices with customized versions of whatever order processing/inventory management/whatever software package they were offering and do training on it; the machine might also be used for word processing or running Visicalc, obviously, but again, these things were intended as workhorses and the software base reflects that. (There certainly *are* a few games for it, your usual collection of card games and text adventures, but it's the same stuff you'd find for any other text-only CP/M-style machine.) Which, hey, if playing with that kind of stuff sounds exciting to you by all means go for it; homebrew Z80 machines of roughly similar capabilities are all the rage these days. Just set the expectations accordingly.

(By contrast I love the smaller TRS-80 Model I/IIIs *because* they were cheap and accessible enough when new to spawn a huge library of fun/weird/goofy software that's very tightly coupled to their hardware; they're *not* "just another CP/M machine".)

 

[shirsch]

The ROM has a simple floppy driver. You loaded a disk, it looked for something in track 0 and off it went in either CP/M or TRS-DOS II.
You are correct in that it was aimed at the business market. Packages such as Scripsit, Visicalc, Wordstar and a few database programs were available from Tandy. Yes you can drop in boards from a Tandy 16 or 6000 and build a machine that will run 68K Xenix. I've had all that hardware for over a decade now and have really, really struggled to make much use out of it, much less fix problems with the hard disk controller. Dig deep enough into the forums and you can find threads I made years ago asking for help and eventually I just gave up and pushed it into storage.

There has been a resurgance of interest in these machines along with new hardware and software. Worth taking a look at the Tandy Discord.

 

[Agent Orange]

Back in the early '80s I was tasked with purchasing and implementing a non-IBM computer for our office. I was working for a specialty paper company in northern Michigan and the choices were slim. IBM was ruled out because of the extravagant costs at the time. The sole purpose of the office computer would be to track paper stock and manhour accounting associated with the finished product. The budget was set a $5000.

Although we had a local Radio Shack, I was directed to the Tandy Computer Center in Traverse City, where the entire product line was on display. The Tandy 2000 was just out but was a budget buster. I settled in on the Model II with the optional 3 bay 8 inch drive console and work table, thereby offering a total of four 8 inch floppies. I also purchased a data base package which would be used for the inventory. All of our accounting was done in BASIC of which I still have copies of.

The Model II was basically problem free and totally reliable as one should expect. One reoccurring maintenance problem was the small green felt pressure tabs on the floppy drive disk tensioners. If they wore down too far you just lost a floppy. A small quirk with the floppies was that if you left a floppy in the drive and powered down, you would lose you saved data and the floppy would have to be reformatted.

As far as games go, there weren't any. However I did put together a ridiculous BASIC NFL point spread program which was posted in the plant break area, and everyone would hoot and laugh at. Once in a while it was right on. We also had a random number generator to pick the daily lotto numbers, and that was the extent of it. I should add that right before the plant closed, some software firm in Chicago wrote a custom accounting package for the Model II. Great little machine in its day.

 

[Qbus]

Went thru all the Radio Shack stuff over the weekend, wanted to get it out of the cardboard boxes and clean off all the covers. Was going to catalog all the software but there is too much to list, twenty-two volumes in all. One of the accounting binders still had a price tag on it from 1980 for $299.00, that’s in 1980 dollars when money was worth something! Hope that was for the entire accounting suite and not just the Accounts Payable binder it was attached to.

 

[oktology]

Went thru all the Radio Shack stuff over the weekend, wanted to get it out of the cardboard boxes and clean off all the covers. Was going to catalog all the software but there is too much to list, twenty-two volumes in all.

Check Peter Cetinski's Model II Archive and make sure all your software has already been imaged and uploaded.
If not, get with the folks on the Tandy Discord server about imaging them.