No. of Recommendations: 2
My first storage on my TRS-80 Model 1 was a cassette tape recorder. When I upgraded to a 70kb floppy drive, I felt like I could rule the world.
LOL !!
Same here. Cassettes were the only option until early 1980: 35-track floppy drives. Connected the drives, loaded the cassette, and saved to the floppy. Cassette setup then discarded. Ran off floppies thereafter. Got the word processer (Scripsit UC--no lower case available) and saw Visicalc in the spring. Told the owner "BUY IT !!" ($100) and he did a few months later. Then things got a LOT simpler.
We were running a retail store inventory system that we adapted to a manufacturing business. Outside programmer added an inventory-interactive bill-of-materials stand-alone program (based on an existing program) that had selectable "deduct from inventory doing BOM" or "do NOT deduct from inventory--just give a status check on a 'what-if-we-wanted-to-build-it'" machine. I added a new program to enter items to be added to inventory, cost data, and so on. After these, it was FAR easier. Mainly making monthly backups (floppies), which was done by a part-time worker who was majoring in computers at the U of MN. He had a lot of time to play with them (no games--didn't have any, as the games were on cassette), do art, etc. Moved to a Xenix system in late 1984 (for a special project needing RDBMS) and the Model 1s were no longer used/needed. I left in March/April 1985. Kept my own Model 1 until 1992, when I finally got a PC and went online from home shortly thereafter. Traded the Model 1 away for a couple remote-control toy cars and gave them to my nephew (mid 90s). Now he is a high-end Mercedes-certified auto body repairman and he handles all the very expensive cars that come into the shop for bodywork. I don't own a car !! LOL !!!
