Well, well well. I'm so excited to see Bits and Bytes scanned. This was my magazine growing up as a preteen and young teen in New Zealand. I used to love reading it from cover to cover. I even had a ZX81 game printed in the ZX81 column called Chopperdrop (I think that was the name). I can't remember which issue it was published in, and I've downloaded all your scanned issues to date and can't find it yet, so I'm very excited to see new scanned issues as they arrive. Keep up the great work and thanks for the trip down memory lane.
Philip

What an awesome site. You've built up a most remarkable archive here of System80 related bits and pieces. I was a member of the Auckland TRS-80 Users Group back the early days before LAN parties and Fragfests existed. It didn't stop us lugging our machines along once a month to the Amateur Radio Club Rooms in Mt Roskill, and doing "offsite backups" of floppies. I seem to remember we even did some networking "via state of the art" null modem cables!

Regards

Mark Frater

Hi Tezza! Nice site you have here. I "grew up" in the early 80's using the TRS-80 family of computers here in the US. I guess I got my first TRS-80 (Model IV) in late 1983, and really enjoyed it. I was in my early 20's at the time, and now, in my very late 40's, find myself fondly remembering those "simpler" times in micro-computing.

Good luck with the site, it's nice chatting with you on the VCF, and why aren't you on the VCF IRC channel?

This is great - I had a system 80 for years (actually, I only threw it out a few years ago - still working, highly expanded, but the keyboard suffering).

I do still have a system-80 rom tech manual, which details many if not all of the calls you can make into the microsoft roms for doing things like floating point maths. Interested in a copy ?

Keep up the great work. (I wish I had it back now !)

Keep up the great work! The beginnings of the computer revolution needs to be remembered.

Great site. If you would like more information on the TRS-80, please let me know. If you do not recognize the name, I am the original creator of the TRS-80. It was my idea at Radio Shack. It was my baby and I lived through all the problems of child birth.

One of the initial pains was the companies lack of interest in the idea. In fact my job as Buyer/Product Manager was threatened by one of the executives by telling me "If you are working on that #$^&% computer, I will fire you ass". I even have comments from Jon Shirley who was the VP of Marketing in Europe at the time in response to my telexing him that I was planing a computer for the product line. As many people know, Jon became the President of Apple.

Don French

Hey Teza,
Wonderful site, glad to see you enjoying that IBM 5150… Also am glad to see others scanning in and making for download vintage computer magazines. Keep up the good work.

re: System-80 site.
Something I didn't see mentioned on the site (under modifications?). I went to Waiopehu college in the 80's. At that time our "computer lab" used a network of System-80's. The network involved swapping out the eproms for a customised one that ditched the built-in machine code monitor and replaced it with software that allowed one machine with the disk-drive expansion to feed software to the other machines in the class. (Don't know what the physical connection was.)
128x48 in B/W! My son thinks a Playstation 1 is obsolete.

Hi,

This guestbook was opened 9th July 2008, just after the 9th anniversary of System 80 archive site. Please leave your mark.