Hello to everyone! It's great to see this support for all the vintage computers. I thought I'd introduce myself by explaining how I got involved with the TRS-80 and eventually developed several products for Tandy. Hopefully some of you will know what I'm talking about.
I first saw the TRS-80 Model I at a Radio Shack in Hayward, California. It blew me away! Prior to that all I had seen were computers with switches and punched tapes. I bought one and started playing with it day and night.
In those days there were no disc drives - everything was stored on tape, so I subscribed to CLOAD magazine and learned a lot from examining their programs. I eventually licensed my first program to CLOAD. It was a BASIC program I wrote called "A Space Cartoon". It was a little bit of animation that featured an alien arriving in a space ship and running up to an outhouse on the moon. You'd have to be pretty old to remember that one! I actually did a massive rewrite of that concept to make a promotional animation for Tandy (using Graphics-90). This time the alien landed and walked into a Radio Shack store. He walked out with a computer. A lot of the stores ran this demo continuously, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I started attending some of the TRS-80 users groups that were springing up and met all kinds of interesting people, including my friend Jon Bokelman. At one of these meetings he demonstrated a prototype music synthesizer that played Bach in 4-part harmony. You have to understand that this was so unusual, people couldn't believe it. They were looking under the table to see if Jon was fooling them. I made a deal with Jon a few days later and founded Software Affair, Ltd.
Our first product was Orchestra-80, a mono music synthesizer for the Model I. We sold Orch-80 through some of the TRS-80 magazines and eventually released a stereo version called Orchestra-85.
We soon got a call from Tandy. They secretly bought one, got excited about it, and wanted to license it from us. So the Tandy version became Orchestra-90, which ran on the Model III/IV.
We also had a support group on Compuserve where you could trade music files. Based on the fact that there were so many music files in circulation, Tandy asked us to make a cartridge version for the Color Computer. This one became Orchestra-90/CC.
Around this time our company began working with my friend Larry Payne. We created some other products for Tandy such as the game "13 Ghosts" and Graphics-90. Tandy started relying on us for all their printer-related software. We made a sideways printing utility for spreadsheets, a font editor, the printer buffer and who knows what else. At one time I literally had every Tandy computer in my garage for testing.
I pitched an idea for an Orchestra-1000 to Tandy and they agreed to it. However, by that time the writing was on the wall -- Tandy would probably be dropping out of the computer business very soon.
I remember one time I was visiting Tandy headquarters in Ft. Worth and two of the top marketing managers asked me to take a walk with them. They wanted to show me something. We walked down the block to a small computer store. Sitting there was the first MacIntosh computer. It was amazing. We all looked at each other and I know they thinking "this isn't going to be good for Tandy". I honestly believe that the MacIntosh was one of the factors that convinced Tandy they couldn't compete in computers any longer.
Please respond with any comments. Thanks for listening!
Ira Goldklang's site has a lot of Software Affair programs plus some new Orch-related programs contributed by Jon Bokelman. Check it out at:
http://www.trs-80.com
I first saw the TRS-80 Model I at a Radio Shack in Hayward, California. It blew me away! Prior to that all I had seen were computers with switches and punched tapes. I bought one and started playing with it day and night.
In those days there were no disc drives - everything was stored on tape, so I subscribed to CLOAD magazine and learned a lot from examining their programs. I eventually licensed my first program to CLOAD. It was a BASIC program I wrote called "A Space Cartoon". It was a little bit of animation that featured an alien arriving in a space ship and running up to an outhouse on the moon. You'd have to be pretty old to remember that one! I actually did a massive rewrite of that concept to make a promotional animation for Tandy (using Graphics-90). This time the alien landed and walked into a Radio Shack store. He walked out with a computer. A lot of the stores ran this demo continuously, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
I started attending some of the TRS-80 users groups that were springing up and met all kinds of interesting people, including my friend Jon Bokelman. At one of these meetings he demonstrated a prototype music synthesizer that played Bach in 4-part harmony. You have to understand that this was so unusual, people couldn't believe it. They were looking under the table to see if Jon was fooling them. I made a deal with Jon a few days later and founded Software Affair, Ltd.
Our first product was Orchestra-80, a mono music synthesizer for the Model I. We sold Orch-80 through some of the TRS-80 magazines and eventually released a stereo version called Orchestra-85.
We soon got a call from Tandy. They secretly bought one, got excited about it, and wanted to license it from us. So the Tandy version became Orchestra-90, which ran on the Model III/IV.
We also had a support group on Compuserve where you could trade music files. Based on the fact that there were so many music files in circulation, Tandy asked us to make a cartridge version for the Color Computer. This one became Orchestra-90/CC.
Around this time our company began working with my friend Larry Payne. We created some other products for Tandy such as the game "13 Ghosts" and Graphics-90. Tandy started relying on us for all their printer-related software. We made a sideways printing utility for spreadsheets, a font editor, the printer buffer and who knows what else. At one time I literally had every Tandy computer in my garage for testing.
I pitched an idea for an Orchestra-1000 to Tandy and they agreed to it. However, by that time the writing was on the wall -- Tandy would probably be dropping out of the computer business very soon.
I remember one time I was visiting Tandy headquarters in Ft. Worth and two of the top marketing managers asked me to take a walk with them. They wanted to show me something. We walked down the block to a small computer store. Sitting there was the first MacIntosh computer. It was amazing. We all looked at each other and I know they thinking "this isn't going to be good for Tandy". I honestly believe that the MacIntosh was one of the factors that convinced Tandy they couldn't compete in computers any longer.
Please respond with any comments. Thanks for listening!
Ira Goldklang's site has a lot of Software Affair programs plus some new Orch-related programs contributed by Jon Bokelman. Check it out at:
http://www.trs-80.com