Somehow I have a copy of the July 1985 issue of The Rainbow Magazine on the spares/docs bookcase behind my desk at work.
The Rainbow. If you know, you know 
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#trs80
4 posts4 participants0 posts today
the finale of Marooned, including one of the most absurd puzzles I have ever run across
with the asterisk this was an unfinished game, and I get into why I think it was left in the state it was
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/07/17/marooned-diamonds-to-dust/
My playthrough of the rescued-from-oblivion 1980(-ish) game Marooned continues, albeit erratically; it turns out an unpublished and unfinished game would have even more bugs than the worst published game, who knew?
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/07/15/marooned-into-the-glitchiverse/
New blog post! I'm tired of my TRS-80 Colour Computer needing an old school RF connection to get video out. How about crudely jamming in a composite mod from an *entirely different* obscure computer? That'll work. #coco #trs80 #retrocomputing https://www.leadedsolder.com/2025/07/15/tandy-trs80-coco-composite-mod-aquarius.html
Leaded Solder · CoCo1 composite videoWhen I got the CoCo, one of the big problems was the super-smeary, snowy video on the RF-out. Even though composite video is generated internally by the video circuitry of the computer, Tandy didn’t end up breaking it out to an actual port. Lots of other 8-bit machines of the era are in the same boat. Luckily, adding a composite video port to the CoCo is very straightforward! So straightforward, in fact, that I did it twice.
Today for All the Adventures I have a most unusual post as a game by Kim Watt (likely from 1980) was left in a non-functional state by the author and now is fixed and playable for the first time.
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/07/12/marooned-playable-for-the-first-time/
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I'm not really *planning* on doing any TRS-80 stuff, but found a few books that look interesting:
Seems like the most practical book, but the scan is annoying 2-page layout, I'm making a new cbz of it right now:
https://archive.org/details/TRS-80_Assembly_Language_1981_Prentice_Hall/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/Assembly_Language_Subroutines_1982_Prentice_Hall/mode/2up
https://archive.org/details/TRS-80_Assembly_Language_Programming_1980_Radio_Shack/page/n7/mode/2up
And some BASIC:
https://archive.org/details/TRS-80_Programs_1980_Tom_Rugg/mode/2up
All the Adventures reaches a TRS-80 game with code that suggest an author enamored with Scott Adams. He tries to copy, but with a much different method, leading to bizarre side effects.
Also, a near brush with "moon logic" and keys coming out of a bathtub faucet.
https://bluerenga.blog/2025/07/09/herrick-venture-1-escape-1983/
Continued thread
The detachable keyboard on the XEGS let me put another keyboard on the stack! I was afraid I was going to have to go build some custom shelving. #FujiNet #Atari #A8 #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #AppleII #TRS80 #Commodore #C128 #C64
Testing so many different #FujiNet versions it’s starting to look like a music studio or crazy electric music organ with keyboards stacked on keyboards. Not enough room for the #Atari #A8! Yet! #RetroComputing #VintageComputing #AppleII #TRS80 #Commodore #C128 #C64
We had Asimov, those of us in the CoCo world
Having to desolder 60+ keys, cracking open each switch, and polishing the tarnish/dust from the contact points is probably one of my least favorite parts of vintage computer repair, but sometimes you gotta do it!
IS BASIC from the #Enterprise128 is the foremost advanced #BASIC dialects for #8Bit #HomeComputers. But it is very(!) slow. The "Creative Computing Benchmark" took nearly 5 minutes to run (comparable to the #SinclairZXSpectrum and the #TRS80 Model 100) but produced excellent results: "accuracy" is quite good (comparable with #BBCMicro) and "random" is the best of all computers measured in the contest from 1984:
More from my repaired/modded TRS-80 Model III. After getting everything done, I added the FreHD ROM (https://www.vecoven.com/trs80/trs80.html) and have it booting off an SD card. So many games available to me now!
Don't have an official #FujiNet CoCo cartridge? No problem! Just use the official #FujiNet RS232 cartridge and a CoCoEPROMpak installed inside a #3DPrinted CoCo cartridge instead!
I just stumbled upon this upgrade I would have leapt at a few years back when I was building up my "new" Tandy 1000HX:
Tandy 1000 EX/HX 3-in-1 V2 Adapter --- 640K RAM + 2x Serial + Parallel + XTIDE Upgrade by Rob Krenicki
https://www.ebay.com/itm/197473626636
It looks like the creator of this device, who posted the project to GitHub, has made his last production run, sadly. Several are available still on eBay.
It doesn't look like the RAM expansion has the DMA chip, but that really doesn't much matter. What a great unit. I upgraded my own 1000HX to this spec -- but did it the Hard way (note the capital H).
eBayTandy 1000 EX HX 3-in-1 V2 Adapter NEW! RAM + Serial + Parallel XTIDE Upgrade | eBayThis is a drop-in upgrade for the Tandy 1000 EX or Tandy 1000 HX desktop computer. The Ultimate upgrade for the Tandy 1000 Enthusiast who wants it all! Tandy 1000 EX/HX 3-in-1 Version 2 Upgrade. Fully assebled and tested Tandy 3-in-1 V2 device.
Discovered cord from power supply I've been using on my #TRS80 MC-10 has been having a chemical reaction to plastic of the MC-10 case and melting the case. 
Best way I could think of to keep that from happening again was to put the little wall-wart in a small box. But I don't happen to have a tiny box handy. No problem! I found this nifty web site that you give it dimensions and it spits out a pdf or svg box template you can print and cut out!
Continued thread
There's an ebay guy that sells scans of technical manuals. He had the PC4 Sevice Manual. So I got a copy.
Not a lot to the manual, these things weren't really going to be repairable with 198X equipment.
This manual also covers the matching cassette interface, though, and I was interested in that.
Hoped the interface was just some caps and resistors, but nope there's a whole IO chip in there. Outputs Kansas City format tape!
n 6th grade, my middle school had one of these. It was the first computer I programmed. It had 4k RAM and BASIC.
O blog “Abort, Retry, Fail” fala tudo sobre a Tandy (com e sem Radio Shack)
Retrópolis - A cidade dos clássicos · O blog “Abort, Retry, Fail” fala tudo sobre a Tandy (com e sem Radio Shack) - RetrópolisQuem já frequentou o site Abort, Retry, Fail já percebeu que todo post lá é um capítulo de livro. E quando tem uma série com várias partes, bom, é simplesmente um livro em formato digital. Pois então, Bradford Morgan White (o Sr. Abort, Retry, Fail) resolveu contar a história da Tandy. A série tem o