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Introduction The TRS-80 MC-10 Micro Color Computer was a little-known beginner's PC made and sold by the Radio Shack electronics store chain in the early 1980's. I vaguely remembered this computer in back in junior high, and as a grownup stumbled on it in June 2008 while going a Google search on the entire TRS-80 computer line. I downloaded a program that recreates its operating system on Windows PC's and am creating new programs for it in the BASIC programming language. Click on the picture for a bigger view of the mighty MC-10. A Beginner's Computer In the 1970's and 80's, Radio Shack produced a line of personal computers under the TRS-80 brand name, so-named to stand for "Tandy Radio Shack" (TRS) and the Z80 microchip that powered the first models. The line was affectionately nicknamed "Trash-80" by its owners and encompassed a wild variety of models. Among the TRS-80 offerings were a notebook-sized Portable Computer (the first known laptop PC) with a built-in LED text display and a checkbook-sized Pocket Computer with a tiny one-row text display. All the TRS-80 computers could be programmed with BASIC. The best known model was the Color Computer, a somewhat conservative but expandable desktop PC which competed with the Atari and Apple II lines and was regularly upgraded from 1980 to 1991. Also in the TRS-80 line was the MC-10 Micro Color Computer, a so-called "beginner's computer" introduced in 1983 to compete with the popular Timex Sinclair 1000, the first PC to sell under US$100 ($99 to be exact). Competitively priced at $119.95, the philosophy behind the MC-10 was that it would make a newcomer comfortable with home computing, then they would graduate to the more powerful (and expensive) Color Computer. Like the Timex, Atari and other home computers of the era, the MC-10 connected to the back of an analog TV for use as a monitor. Unfortunately, it was doomed from the start. It only had 4K of RAM, a puny amount against the wildly popular Commodore 64 (with 64K of onboard RAM), Radio Shack's own Color Computer 2 (32K expandable to 64K) and other PC's from IBM, Atari, Apple and Texas Instruments, which were all upgrading to 64K. The memory could be expanded to a heart-stopping 20K through an external plug-in 16K RAM box. There were no joystick or mouse ports, the small-scale "chiclet" keyboard made it hard to type, the one-voice sound chip slowed down the entire computer when it was called upon, and programs could only be loaded via cassette tape, whereas all other computers were making major use of fast-loading floppy disks. It was criticized in the press for being too little, too late, and was shelved after only one year because of slow sales. Nevertheless, it was still technically superior to the Timex Sinclair 1000. While the Timex had a silent, black-and-white TV output and its flat membrane keyboard made typing rather hellacious, the MC-10 could display in nine primary colors, generate audio (albeit only one voice) and be programmed in an easy to understand BASIC language developed by Microsoft (in its pre-Windows days). Today the MC-10 enjoys a small but active fan base among computer hobbyists in the form of modern emulators and new programs. Among the titles are a phonetic voice synthesizer, a poetry program that generates humorous free verse from a database of phrases, casino games, and a version of the popular online game Bejeweled. > > emulators Virtual MC-10 Emulator for Windows > > programs If you are fortunate enough to own an actual MC-10 computer: Lucky you! You can download the WAV files, record them onto a cassette, and load it using the cassette cables. Or, you can type the text files written in BASIC into the computer.
©2009 by Rich Rodriguez |
