Joystick Adapter for Tandy Color Computer

The Tandy Color Computer is indisputably a gaming machine. There are also large software archives for it on the Internet. But many games need a joystick. Unfortunately the CoCo has a different joystick connector than the Ataris and Commodores and therefore CoCo joysticks are hard to get today. I was also looking for a way to use my joysticks from the C64 or ATARI for the Tandy Color Computer. I found a build instruction for a simple adapter board on this page: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-tandy-1000-digital-joystick-adapter.html

You can buy ready-made adapters on eBay, but since the construction of the circuit didn’t look very complicated and the parts were available for a few Euros, I decided to build one myself.

Continue reading “Joystick Adapter for Tandy Color Computer”

Tandy TRS-80 Model I Level II

My new love … the Tandy TRS-80 Model I Level II from 1981 🙂

My Tandy TRS-80 Model I with Level II BASIC, expansion interface, green monitor and double floppy.

At the beginning, however, we had a somewhat bumpy start – but more on that later.

The history

Tandy … what? Such a question you only hear in Germany. Yes, indeed, the computers of the company Tandy Radio Shack were less common in Germany and are therefore hardly known today. In contrast, every child in this country knows Apple and Commodore. However, the TRS-80 Model I belongs to the so-called “1977 Trinity”, as byte Magazine called it. At that time, three manufacturers launched the first home computer for the mass market in the USA at relatively the same time: Apple with the Apple II is certainly the most famous representative, Commodore brought out the PET 2001 and Tandy put a cheaper alternative on the market, the TRS-80 (TRS stands for Tandy Radio Shack and the number 80 points to the Z80 CPU).

Continue reading “Tandy TRS-80 Model I Level II”