Selling the Model 100 RadioShack Training Video

Рет қаралды 15,847

Күн бұрын

Radio Shack Tandy Model 100 Training Video purchased on eBay titled: SELLING THE Model 100 5086/FT-0784 FC#3112
Great video with a complete overview of the functionality of this excellent little portable computer.
Ripped from VHS using an SVHS player into a Formac Studio DV/TV Firewire capture device, then cleaned up using 'lordsmurf' AVS scripting and finally exported using VirtualDub and the External Encoder option with help from a guide by radriff.
Frankly the capture process was so complicated a more interesting video would be documenting a workflow for achieving consistent output for this sort of thing.

Пікірлер: 69

@antonnym214 4 жыл бұрын

I worked at the Northlake Computer Center in Atlanta. (not IN the mall, across the street!) and we didn't have to sell the Model 100. It was like popcorn; It flew off the shelves! It was so popular with journalists, reporters, house property appraisers; we couldn't keep it in stock. We had a waiting list! Same thing with the models 102 and 200 when they came out. I owned a model 100 myself and LOVED it. LOVED! I wrote BASIC programs and then I wrote a program to optimize and renumber other BASIC programs. It was popular with Pilots, too, because one of my customers was a pilot and wrote a program for the Mod 100 to dial up the National Weather Service and download weather data and used graphics to show national and regional weather maps for the pilot.

@shaunbrowne3963 5 жыл бұрын

I had one of these. It's very straightforward to use. It's unfortunate that this simple type of computer are no longer usable. I found the Model 100 a valuable tool in the 80's.

@xorbe2 5 жыл бұрын

raspberry pi + tenkeyless + matrix lcd display + duck tape

@gettingpast4391 4 жыл бұрын

Totally useable even today. I use mine to take notes in meetings. No need to worry about laptop battery dying. Also works as an RS232 terminal for many devices. Handy for solving complex problems with short basic programs. The keyboard is one of the best ever made for any computer.

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

@@gettingpast4391 I agree, these can still be useful today for simple tasks, and they still outlast today's laptop batteries. The keyboard is lightyears better than the chiclet garbage found on laptops now. I also use mine as portable RS232 terminal (I checked out a VAX and an Alpha server with it several years ago). For a few years I also used it to keep a log of my electric and gas meters to monitor consumption, as I suspected the utility co. was screwing us over! They're also very handy for taking quick notes; no menu diving, no booting, no mucking about: turn on the power, resume where you left off, type in, turn off again. Done.

@rossanderson6859 4 жыл бұрын

I miss the 80's...

@hstrinzel 10 ай бұрын

Great video! Amazing how much of that I DID NOT KNOW when I had the machine decades ago. Thanks for the video!

@cayankeelord3730 3 ай бұрын

I remember the era well. This is when you actually had to know something about operating systems and commit to memory how to use things. I still have my model 100 and an Apple II boxed up with all the peripherals with hundreds of programs with a 24 pin "Image Writer" color printer and a 6 color pen plotter.. Boots up in 3 or 4 seconds. I wish my Intel core I7 based computer would boot in 3 or 4 seconds !

@JasonMarkantes 5 жыл бұрын

Still have mine, in working condition. Occasionally boot it up and try to figure out something fun or clever to do with it, but it is archaic. Fun to remember using it for email way back when. It definitely launched my computer hobby and career.

@undefinedname1398 5 жыл бұрын

I still have my model 100 and cassette player. I also added a special ROM that has an application like excel. Gosh, I miss the good old days.

@BaarBear 6 жыл бұрын

The very first practical "laptop" computer.

@mrpetielicious5861 4 ай бұрын

Thank you for posting this!

@isbestlizard 5 жыл бұрын

my god 8K of computing power and it fits in my briefcase? I neeeeeed this for my imporant business executive wortk

@antonnym214 4 жыл бұрын

I was there. We used a lot of tricks to make that memory go farther. We would code in 8085 assembly language, hand-assemble the program and pack it into a BASIC string, then find the memory location of the string and do a USR call to jump to that location to execute the machine language program. Hyper-efficient stuff!

@heedmywarning2792 6 жыл бұрын

thank you for the upload! Been looking for this video for over 12 years since seeing it on ebay.

@travistaylor3186 3 жыл бұрын

Why am I so glad someone saved this video for posterity.

@antonnym214 4 жыл бұрын

Nice channel, sir! Well-researched, narrated, and presented. I have subscribed!

@ThBreadMan 6 ай бұрын

I just bought one i can't wait for it to come in

@brianmi40 2 жыл бұрын

I was a Radio Shack store manager starting when I was 19 in Michigan City, IN, for 4 years in which I advanced to manage the largest mall store in the district of 25 stores at Southlake Mall in Merrillville, IN where I had one of the separate full computer departments embedded in my store and large computers like the Model II with it's 8" floppy drives! I owned first a Model I, then a Color Computer, then the Model 100 when I returned to college! I used to type up my notes from my college classes, and one day another student saw my typed notes and offered to buy them from me going forward! The screen was frustrating working with larger documents, but the keyboard was great.

@LA3DPrinterRepair 2 жыл бұрын

Fantastic anecdote; thank you for sharing!

@IrishCarney 10 ай бұрын

Radio Shack offered a device called the Disk / Video Interface for the Model 100 line. It looked like the CPU box of an ordinary PC - white box with one or two black disk drives. The Model 100 connected to it with a ribbon cable and it would house a monitor on top of it. With an ordinary TV you could only get 40 characters wide on that screen but with an actual composite video monitor you could get enough crisp detail to show 80 characters in a line - the gold standard at the time. I always thought of that as the ideal setup. Take notes in class on your laptop, then attach it to your DVI back at the dorm to clean them up and also write serious long papers via the big screen.

@brianmi40 10 ай бұрын

@@IrishCarney I would type up my college class notes (always could type faster than write) on the 100 and had offers from other students to buy them! The keyboard was pretty decent. Due to the limited lines of the onboard LCD you'd def need the monitor for any serious editing!

@IncendiarySolution 5 жыл бұрын

Santa? Can you hear me?

@gstcomputing65 3 жыл бұрын

You ought to see the look on the other executives faces when it comes to appointment time. They whip out their Samsungs and iPhones. I pull out my Radio Shack Model 100. With 8K of raw computing power, I know that look of shock on their faces is due to their jealousy of my full-size qwerty keyboard.

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

You might want to make a point that you can _also_ place a call with your 100. 😉

@AlTheEngineer 3 жыл бұрын

I have a 102, still very usable as a distraction-free writing tool! In fact, I'd say it's amazing, 20.5 hours of battery life on 4 AA's, great keyboard and with a serial to USB OTG cable, you can easily send your text files to your Android phone :) Yep from 1983 and still very much usable today! BASIC is cool too, you can make some cool programs specific to your use-case! Less usable today, but can certainly be used to teach basic programing skills to someone!

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

Yeah, the battery life on these things is amazing and puts today's laptops to shame. Plus NiMH AAs are dirt cheap if you know where to look. These days, laptop batteries are fixed and can only be replaced by taking the thing apart!

@AlTheEngineer Жыл бұрын

@@NuGanjaTron we've totally and royally screwed up battery tech in my humble opinion. Companies figured out how to make you buy a new machine every time you needed a new rechargeable battery .... and it really sucks that people allowed this to happen. I think it should be borderline ILLEGAL to seal the battery into a laptop or a cellphone given our tech advancement today ... we can literally have hot swap-able 2mm thin batteries in every cellphone and every laptop, but NOPE! They decided to laser seal them in and or glue them in because they know the average consumer will just buy a new device when the battery gets weak ... Apple has been a leader in this, and I totally blame them for every terrible trend in the mobile and PC world today. Full touch screens on phones, no physical buttons, no removable batteries, no headphone jacks, no expansion slots on laptops, no ports on laptops, no chargers in the box ... and now ... no SIM card trays on iPhones ... all of these are cost cutting measures which they sell to the consumer as "advancement in tech" ... idiots gobble this crap up, but we all know its a money grabbing scheme ... Imagine if Ford or Chevy locked your tires up and you had to get a WHOLE NEW CAR every time you needed new tires or if they locked your engine oil up and you needed a new car every time you wanted to replace your car's engine oil ... yeah, it wouldn't fly; but for some reason ... when it comes to electronics, its A-OK to make them basically disposable ...

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

@@AlTheEngineer Agreed. As long as there a "tech-savvy" suckers queueing overnight outside the Apple store for the latest iPhone 58 1/2, there's no reason for manufacturers to change a winning (for them) formula. And then they even have the gall to tell you it's environmentally friendly and sustainable to throw away your "old", still working, devices to make you feel all warm & fuzzy inside. What a crock. The only "advancement" there is in the industry's profits.

@AlTheEngineer Жыл бұрын

@@NuGanjaTron you're absolutely right. As an engineer I love tech, grew up learning about every possible tech I can get my hands on back in the late 80s and early 90s. But now ... honestly most tech is so boring and simply e-waste before it even makes it back to your home from the store ... Nothing about today's tech is environmentally friendly.

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

@@AlTheEngineer I agree tech these days is boring; it's bland, sterile, insipid and impersonal. Like space food you're forced to swallow from a tube. The tech owns you and not the other way round, since it's a sealed black box designed to keep you out. Remember the Apple ][ manual? It came with full schematics!!! I suspect Woz feels the same way now...

@rdgr 5 жыл бұрын

Looks a lot like John Roach, CEO of Tandy Corporation, later renamed to RadioShack Corporation

@fireball0762 3 жыл бұрын

in college i saw someone with this computer i was very jealous

@ike212111 3 жыл бұрын

Shut up and take my money! Internet ready out of the box!!!

@gettingpast4391 4 жыл бұрын

These made great war dialers in the 90s....

@far2manygadgets38 5 жыл бұрын

Good grief, I had forgotten how cumbersome personal computing was before GUI's and the internet. Hey Google, what's a dinosaur? "A dinosaur is a group of extinct animals or a Tandy Model 100."

@joeltunnah 4 жыл бұрын

far2many gadgets, school kids still use Ti calculators with essentially the same type of interface, and with BASIC programming. It’s not hard to use once you get the hang of it.

@prestoncheapbtheadphoneste3010 2 жыл бұрын

I swear, he said, “ model 100” at least, 100 times.

@AllGamingStarred 3 жыл бұрын

this is amazing for the time but seems frustrating in concept. definitely not for daytime use lol

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

Frustrating as in... ?

@AllGamingStarred Жыл бұрын

@@NuGanjaTron small screen? LCD's aren't the easiest to look at for a long time and don't have much width

@jackilynpyzocha662 2 жыл бұрын

Could it be set up to a large monitor?

@leeosborne3793 2 ай бұрын

Yes, you can obtain video output from a device plugged into the RS232 port.

@luisreyes1963 4 жыл бұрын

A quaint look at obsolete technology sold through a retailer that no longer exists.

@activelow9297 2 жыл бұрын

Radio Shack will live forever.. in our hearts.

@NuGanjaTron Жыл бұрын

In the not-too-distant future, folks will probably laugh at the iPhone too. And I doubt any will still work by then.

@gabrielsanjuan2087 3 жыл бұрын

Yo tengo una de esas computadoras y l quiero vender

@americancitizen748 4 жыл бұрын

Can I download ASCII porn with this computer?

@jacintshort1910 5 жыл бұрын

It's outrageous that at that time they promoted that kind of shity computers with 1/2 byte of memory. And the people BOUGHT that!

@SeaJay_Oceans 4 жыл бұрын

In 1983, TRS-100 24k was $1,399, equal to $3,603.66 dollars in 2019. RAM was expensive, and the price drop in RAM played a big part in the success of the Commodore 64 with 64K RAM, as well as the Atari 800 XL.

@jacintshort1910 4 жыл бұрын

@@SeaJay_Oceans Ok but I was referring how useless were the personal computers produced through '75-'85 period. And they costed thousands of dollars. And the people PAID that for that shit.

@shermancouch9964 4 жыл бұрын

It wasn't junk. It was ahead of its time. Consider that two years AFTER the model 100, portable computing meant carrying a suitcase sized computer like the Kaypro or the original Comaq 30 pound "luggable". Most of these computers were too big to be airline carry-on baggage. The model 100 was truly ahead of its time. The keyboard was incredible, and every bit as good as the MacBook I'm using right now. Here's a typical mission, you could go and report on a political event or football game. Write a story while sitting in the stands, then walk to a payphone, and with the coupler to the payphone handset you could upload the news story to the newspaper. That would let you make the 11PM deadline and get the story into tomorrow's newspaper. All this was done without traveling to the newspaper site and entering the story. This was one example of how many people used the 100. It was ahead of its time. SC

@SeaJay_Oceans 4 жыл бұрын

What did you build back then that was better ?

@jacintshort1910 4 жыл бұрын

@@SeaJay_Oceans I would never pay 2.000 dollars for an 8 kb computer