In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

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In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

January 01, 2007, 10:33:38 PM

...Radio Shack was peddling the absolute cat's ass in computers. I was just looking for something in the garage and stumbled across my old 1983 Radio Shack computer catalogue. This 24-year-old document has become tattered and beaten, so I decided to scan the entire thing and upload it onto the internet for posterity. In short, I turned my scanner into a time machine.

You will be amazed at the specifications of these computers, but even more amazing was the prices they were commanding. Think somebody would be nuts to drop $5k on a top-of-the-line, quad-core gaming machine with the latest in dual video cards, gigabytes of RAM, Terabytes of HDD with RAID up the wazoo, Blue-Ray optical storage, and all the other goodies? Well, to paraphrase BTO: Baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

You can view the entire catalogue by visiting http://www.foxthundercats.com/images/radioshack/page1.jpg - simply replace the page1.jpg with page2.jpg and so-on up to page 64. I haven't actually put together the web page that will showcase this computing archeological gem, so you'll have to view the images manually by doing the above.

Of course, you'll need a preview:

Ain't she a beaut? And of course, no computer would be complete without external storage (note the specs for the above machine are in the image below, too - 6 MHZ, BEYOTCH!):

And of course, you wouldn't be content with showing text only, so the graphical upgrade would be a must. Imagine being able to display high-resolution images at a bling-bling 640X240 resolution! Of course you're only gonna get green images (colour not available) but what do you expect for only $699?

And of course those bulky 8" floppy disks are a pain to carry around with you and feed into the computer, so you'll want the external hard disk option with an amazing 8.4MB storage capacity (Think about it - a full-length MP3 of Inna Godda Davita encoded at 160KBPS would fill this sucker, but that doesn't matter because the thing couldn't output data fast enough to actually play the song anyway). Why at that amazing low price of $6299 you'll want two or three (you even get the secondary drives for the bargain of $4995!):

Now with those snazzy graphics and that big ol' hard drive you'll need a printer (note the weight in the specifications):

If that's too rick for your blood you can go with the affordable model:

But of course, as with many things, you can get a deal if you buy a package :

Now, who could pass up a deal like that???

Now then, all of that computer ain't much good if you can't do anything with it, so you'll need software:

...and of course you'll need a modem to view your favourite forums:

...And for the road warrior, you CAN take it with you:

And of course, all work and no play yadda yadda yadda, so you'll need games (PS3 eat your heart out):

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #1 – January 01, 2007, 10:37:44 PM

Wow!!

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #2 – January 01, 2007, 10:40:47 PM

Naturally, you'll need something to keep all that hardware off the floor. The solution? Add the word "computer" to the word "desk" and charge seven times what it's worth (plus options):

...And not everybody uses their printer for graphics, so we have an affordable text-only printer:

...But if you do need graphics, you can get yourself a nice colour plotter (not sure what use this would be with a computer that can't, y'know, display colour, but whatever:

And those mighty expensive disk drives aren't much good without media:

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #3 – January 01, 2007, 10:51:46 PM

I got a TRS-80 Color Computer II for my sixth birthday.

Zaxxon ownz j00!!11!

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #4 – January 01, 2007, 11:00:30 PM

Quote from: Thunder Chicken;121179

Well, to paraphrase BTO: Baby, you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Um....that scares me...I'm listening to that song right now

Anyways yeah...512,000 character storage!!! WOW

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #5 – January 02, 2007, 12:50:58 AM

i learned on a trash80:grinno:
remember casette drives? That was the big shabang for storage. Are they worth anything today? neighbor has one in the attic.

anyone remember COBOL or FORTRAN as well as doing BASIC?

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #6 – January 02, 2007, 12:51:29 AM

hey, i had a trash 80 too...... radio shack used to be the shiznit!!!

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #7 – January 02, 2007, 12:59:24 AM

"Deluxe Features: 12" green video display"

OoOoOoOoOoO haha

Almost makes me miss the ole commodore 64... almost

Scott

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #8 – January 02, 2007, 05:42:25 AM

wow...and people NOWADAYS wanna piss an' moan about how expensive computers are..?

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #9 – January 02, 2007, 07:15:29 AM

Quote from: jcassity;121208

i learned on a trash80:grinno:
remember casette drives? That was the big shabang for storage.

anyone remember COBOL or FORTRAN as well as doing BASIC?

Yes and yes...

They were still teaching FORTRAN when I was in college....

I remember back in HS having to use the cassettes for storage too.

Man that was a long time ago :p

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #10 – January 02, 2007, 09:30:04 AM

I learned BASIC in high school, on a Commodore 64. We had cassette drives there. I bought a C64 for home to continue learning BASIC and some machine language. My buddy had the same setup except he had the cool 200-baud modem for his. Anyone remember that? It was like a cradle for a standard phone handset...really goofy. We used to browse our local bulletin board all the time.

For some reason I have semi-fond memories of all that...

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #11 – January 02, 2007, 09:41:54 AM

I remember the PET computers in school
What was the next one better then the commodore 64 was it something like commodore 128.

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #12 – January 02, 2007, 10:34:06 AM

The computer I used way back then was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A with the tape drive. It was around about grade four. We used a program called "Logo" to draw and animate things. I was entranced. We had no end of fun with the error messages the thing would put out, too - instead of Microsoft's bland "Bad command or file name" and "file not found" it would say "Tell me how to..."

We, being a bunch of fourth-graders, saw much humour in having the computer ask us to "Tell me how to (insert random disgusting bodily function here)".

In high school it was Apple II GS machines first, then 8086 DOS boxes, then 80286 DOS boxes. We learned PASCAL on all of 'em, and to this day the only PASCAL command I remember is "CLS"

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #13 – January 02, 2007, 10:46:55 AM

Quote

We used a program called "Logo" to draw and animate things.

Interesting...I'd love to have seen that. The first real "drawing" program I used was in college. It was loaded on the university's mainframe and was accessible only from one particular room in the building. It was called Dr. Halo (vII and III). Dr. Halo II had a whopping 16 colors...vIII had 64. We thought we were in heaven when we stepped up to that one LOL. But we had to draw things pixel by pixel in a blown-up mode. Really strange. But we did also have a wax-thermal color printer for output. I still have the Cougar drawing printouts from that. This was about fall 1987 and things were still sort of falling into place for designers. The next semester we had the Mac lab installed and, as they say, the rest was history. Even though they were black-and-white, they were a dream to me. Changeable fonts...woohoo! LOL

In 1983 Ford change automotive styling forever with the new Bird/Cat. Meanwhile...

Reply #14 – January 02, 2007, 11:19:35 AM

Quote from: Thunder Chicken;121237

We used a program called "Logo"

trivia,, where did that program get its name?

more trivia
the term "BUG" came from ?