Think of weird quirks that have applied through various stages of the I/III/4 lineup, like:

- No lowercase
- No modifier key but Shift
- Awkward cursor key layout
- Left cursor key doubled as backspace
- Poor connector quality on expansion box
- Non-standard ports

Feel free to add your own.

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On Saturday April 16 2016, Kelli Halliburton wrote:

Think of weird quirks that have applied through various stages of the I/III/4 lineup, like:

- No lowercase
- No modifier key but Shift
- Awkward cursor key layout
- Left cursor key doubled as backspace
- Poor connector quality on expansion box
- Non-standard ports

Can live with most of them except the poor design decision not to have the card edge connectors gold plated on the Model I. The Model III and IV pretty much resolved that in a rather elegant way, considering the at times penny pinching moves from Tandy
and also the technology available at the time :-)

-- RP

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On Saturday, April 16, 2016 at 7:47:32 PM UTC-4, Kelli Halliburton wrote:

Think of weird quirks that have applied through various stages of the I/III/4 lineup, like:

- No lowercase
- No modifier key but Shift
- Awkward cursor key layout
- Left cursor key doubled as backspace
- Poor connector quality on expansion box
- Non-standard ports

Feel free to add your own.

The lowercase mod worked well on the Model I although you needed to load a driver to use it.
The replacement for the Ctrl key was shift-down arrow IIRC.
The cursor keys didn't seem awkward to me.
I don't remember the left arrow ever being billed as a cursor movement key. It was always backspace.
The last revision of the EI was of very good quality.
Simple cables converted the edge connectors in the EI to standard RS-232 and Centronics printer connectors.

All-in-all, the Model I became a good machine. I still have one with EI, 48K, RS lowercase mod, RS double density mod, RS RS-232 board, 4 RS floppy drives. I recently ran it for two weeks straight, 24 hrs/day without a hiccup. I did apply silver solder
to the keyboard's expansion connector years ago. Until I did that, Deoxit would keep the connectors clean for a month or two at a time. Yes, I do wish RS had spent the extra to gold plate all the edge connectors.

Tom L


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On 4/28/16 9:32 AM, Thomas Lake wrote:

On Saturday, April 16, 2016 at 7:47:32 PM UTC-4, Kelli Halliburton wrote:

Think of weird quirks that have applied through various stages of the I/III/4 lineup, like:

- No lowercase
- No modifier key but Shift
- Awkward cursor key layout
- Left cursor key doubled as backspace
- Poor connector quality on expansion box
- Non-standard ports

Feel free to add your own.

The lowercase mod worked well on the Model I although you needed to load a driver to use it.
The replacement for the Ctrl key was shift-down arrow IIRC.
The cursor keys didn't seem awkward to me.
I don't remember the left arrow ever being billed as a cursor movement key. It was always backspace.
The last revision of the EI was of very good quality.
Simple cables converted the edge connectors in the EI to standard RS-232 and Centronics printer connectors.

All-in-all, the Model I became a good machine. I still have one with EI, 48K, RS lowercase mod, RS double density mod, RS RS-232 board, 4 RS floppy drives. I recently ran it for two weeks straight, 24 hrs/day without a hiccup. I did apply silver solder

to the keyboard's expansion connector years ago. Until I did that, Deoxit would keep the connectors clean for a month or two at a time. Yes, I do wish RS had spent the extra to gold plate all the edge connectors.

Tom L

Wow. You mean I am not the only one left with functional Model I,
Model 3, Model 4 and all three models of COCO hardware. :-)
Too bad I got rid of my Model 16. (of course, I do still have a full
set of boards for one, just no chassis,)

bill

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Kelli Halliburton <kelli217@gmail.com> wrote:

Think of weird quirks that have applied through various stages of the I/III/4 lineup, like:

- No lowercase
- No modifier key but Shift
- Awkward cursor key layout
- Left cursor key doubled as backspace
- Poor connector quality on expansion box
- Non-standard ports

Feel free to add your own.

My only complaint, and it's a small one, is that my 4P won't boot directly
from the hard drive... at least not without patching the OS (which I've
been too lazy to do) or by installing an EPROM (such as the one from
MADSoft).

Using a boot floppy isn't really inconvenient, but it'd be nice to skip a
step. Perhaps once I've upgraded to a FreHD...


--
sparcipx
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

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Kelli Halliburton wrote:

Feel free to add your own.

* Buggy cassette interface
* Buggy disk interface
* Keyboard bounce

The worst, however, wasn't a technical problem but a business
decision: Tandy doing its best to hide the existence of third-party
software and hardware by not permitting corporate stores to sell
non-Radio Shack products. This, more than anything else, caused Tandy
to lose its pre-1980 market leadership to Apple.

--
geo:37.783333,-122.416667

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My model 1 was still working last year. If it starts up when I try it would anyone be interested. Includes expansion interface and 2 of the drives. ( But I need to make sure it still starts up). Let me know. Dougegood@gmail.com

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