I had this comic book, it was a special edition sold at Radio Shack when I was a kid. And yeah that pocket computer was just a big calculator that had a lot of keys.
this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2024
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I had that computer, and it was much more than a calculator, unless you mean a modern programmable one. This one could be programmed in BASIC. It also had a receipt-sized printer you could get.
There was a book series called Micro Adventures that featured a kid named Orion who used a TRS-80. There were BASIC programs in the books that you could run if you had a TRS-80.
These were my first exposure to programming! I did those on a DOS system.
Or rather it was a pocket compute-er. It's very primitive compared to a modern computer but it's still a computer.
The first computers took up entire rooms and they could only do about as much as a calculator. There was a point in time that having a computer do multiplication and long division for you saved you hours of time because the alternative was have 2 or 3 people do it by hand and then compare to check for mistakes.
Some of the code cracking computers used for breaking war-time ciphers were state of the art, and their only job was to check as many combinations as possible, way faster than any human could. Which left the actual scientists to find optimizations and analyze any results.
Yes exactly.
Many years ago you could even have a job as a (human) computer. You pretty much computed/calculated stuff all day.
Me too! Wow that takes me back. Wonder if it's still floating around mom's house.
Just looked at eBay, seems there were a few.
Do you remember the Radio Shack comic? I think it was called "The Whiz Kids" or something like that. I had a few issues of that and felt like the coolest little nerd ever.
Two aliens from a super advanced civilization.
Compared to most Kryptonians they're basically Tarzan.
I always think it's funny when Superman actually learns Kryptonian science and then doesn't share it with anyone.
Right? "BuT tHeYre nOt ReAdy"
cue the global existential threat of the week
I'm imagining Superman's Krptonian family all arriving via their space pods to a family reunion where they, and the holograms of their parents, geek out over 80's human tech.
How to impress your cousin you mean
Both of those being the same thing is still legal most places.
Krypton is more like Alabama than we could have guessed.
Oh it’s a real thing. The frame seemed older than the 80s
Oh, "the late twentieth century" as someone said to me recently? It was eons ago.
Or "the 1900s," which is even more painful
But can it run Doom?
That keyboard looks painful to use...
What kind of GPU is in there?
The stamp in the top right is the entire removable motherboard. I put my cardputer on a shelf when it got here and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. M5 stack is pretty cool, and I wish I understood it more.
It was actually a joke but is it an actual usable computer? What can it do?
I think it’s mostly for prototyping your own programs, which I haven’t tried yet. It comes with a wifi ssid snooper, and a like greeting card voice recorder/replayer. It’s credit card size, half inch thick. The back half is a removable battery expansion. The stamp has a usb c for data/charging. There’s WiFi, infrared blaster, sd card slot, expansion ports for other sensors. It’s nifty for sure, maybe someday I’ll find a use for it too.
Ok, ok lets get to the meat and potatos. BUT CAN IT RUN DOOM?
It looks like none of the TRS-80s could run Doom. But they did have tons of games:
The capes have pockets?? Can't say that's a bad idea. Velcro closing pockets would be handy
I had one of these in grade nine! An uncle gifted me this calculator in my first year of high school. I was smart ... but not smart enough to know how use one of these or to realize that it might be a thing to keep. I used it for a year and it promptly disappeared after that.
So they can write 8008135 in style
heh heh heh
They have pockets in their capes?
He uses it once ... then crushes it with his hands into a small diamond that he drops into his belt later.
In the comics they are always stealing things from the news stand and stashing it there. It's Superman's 2nd greatest weakness.
Yeah, they've featured them in a number of comics. I don't recall if it had ever been featured in any other media.
The 8-Bit Guy has a nice video covering the functionality of a number of such devices. They're fascinating bits of kit -- they're like calculators you can type BASIC programs into. One of them can even be hooked up to a pen plotter to make graphs on paper -- it can even graph in 3D!
six ounces of big computing power...
I think this just broke my brain:-P.
Most folks don't know that all the Tandy's computers utilized a liquid quantum substrate as their processors.
Man that looks like an HP12-C.
That’s not a TRS-80. What are they trying to pull?
Looks like the first TRS-80 Pocket Computer: http://www.trs-80.org/pocket-computer-1/
Edit: Unless this is a joke about it being made by Sharp, not Tandy?
Tandy slapped the TRS-80 label on a lot of things that had nothing to do with the original TRS-80 design. The Color Computer line was marketed under that brand, for instance, despite being a completely different, incompatible architecture.