The Undiscovered 80
Oct. 18th, 2022 07:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerTaking a better look at the latest instalment of a “newsletter for the current TRS-80 user” I’ve been aware of for some time, I happened on a preview for a new version of the TRS-80 emulator that helped me get back to dabbling with “the first computer in my family.” When a recent version had added support for a low-end Color Computer variant, that had intrigued me and raised daydreams of the program eventually covering Radio Shack’s complete Z80 and 6809 lines alike. The preview went in a different direction, but I was surprised even so to see a promise of a “Japanese Model I.” I’d known the Model III could be set to display katakana characters; for that matter, I’d known there was a variant of the Apple II Plus that could do the same thing. I hadn’t known the TRS-80 had had an international variant so soon, although when I did a bit of searching I did turn up a few references to it.
In the month I’d learned about the upcoming release I’d been reading the issue of 80 Micro from exactly forty years before, and Wayne Green’s editorial had fulminated about “the Japanese sell us their stuff, but won’t buy our stuff,” then gone on to cast dark aspersions on late nineteenth-century immigration to the United States as if to make sure more than one group was offended. (He’d also warned the IBM PC offering CP/M had “set a standard Japan could clean up with,” not quite considering the cheaper option available earlier that Microsoft just happened to be able to provide to anyone else...) That juxtaposition might have been a bit more interesting in the end than trying out the new emulator option just to get a sense of how it would work, although this program offers an on-screen keyboard that lets you know what Japanese characters you’ve switched over to typing.
In the month I’d learned about the upcoming release I’d been reading the issue of 80 Micro from exactly forty years before, and Wayne Green’s editorial had fulminated about “the Japanese sell us their stuff, but won’t buy our stuff,” then gone on to cast dark aspersions on late nineteenth-century immigration to the United States as if to make sure more than one group was offended. (He’d also warned the IBM PC offering CP/M had “set a standard Japan could clean up with,” not quite considering the cheaper option available earlier that Microsoft just happened to be able to provide to anyone else...) That juxtaposition might have been a bit more interesting in the end than trying out the new emulator option just to get a sense of how it would work, although this program offers an on-screen keyboard that lets you know what Japanese characters you’ve switched over to typing.