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Comment by codazoda

4 days ago

My identity is tied to it's competitor, the TRS-80 CoCo, released in 1980. I didn't own it until a few years later. My friends had the Commodore 64 and I was jealous.

Your art reminded me that some of my earliest code produced animated flying rockets:

          *
         * *
        *   *
        *   *
        * U *
        * S *
        * A *
        *   *
        *   *
        * * *
       ** * **
      *********
          *
         ***
         ***
          *
          *

The Trash 80 was the first computer I could afford. A great little machine and Z80 assembly has a certain simple elegance.

  • I worked all summer and was able to buy a TRS 80. I could not afford the cassette storage so I'd just type my programs in line by line to run them each time. They were pretty simple.

    A snake like line drawer that crashed when it hit the screen edge, stuff like that. I was 12 or 13 and didn't have any mentors but I did know some BASIC from a school program. Really loved that machine.

  • I never tried ASM on it. Interestingly, the TRS-80 CoCo did not have a Z80, it had a 6809E @ 0.895 / 1.79 MHz. Mine had been upgraded to 64KB of RAM.

I grew up with a CoCo 2 that I got for Christmas when I was 5. I remember the BASIC book it came with that had programs you could type in. Also, Demon Attack!