Loaded up one of the first 3D maze games - Dungeons of Daggorath on the TRS-80 tonight. Wire frame graphics and cryptic text commands were all the rage in 1983. #trs80 #tandy #retrocomputing #retrogaming
trs80
I've been sick the last few days; apologies, my next post will be delayed a bit. Hopefully it will be worth the wait!
#retrogaming #adventuregame #videogames #trs80 #textadventure #interactivefiction
Bob Krotts wrote a series of "naughty" games for TRS-80; I had trouble getting number 5 to work, but I have now unveiled the mystery, which involves many deathtraps and a strange application of pants.
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/03/02/misadventure-5-1982/
#retrogaming #adventuregame #videogames #trs80 #interactivefiction #textadventure
Prototype of #TRS80 CoCo #FujiNet which uses the cartridge bus –and not the CoCo RS232 serial port– booting up the FujiNet CONFIG program. Shows the splash and goes into the menu! The prototype board uses a PicoROM wired direct to the bus, all IO is sent out over the USB port. This is the same technique currently being used by the MSX FujiNet prototype too.
We don't see Tandy appearances very often any more but here are a couple. "Terror Out of the Sky" has a TRS-80 Model I and "The 'Burbs" gives the Tandy 3000 its debut Starring-the-Computer appearance.
http://www.starringthecomputer.com/newsitem.html?i=2026-02-14%2014:55
grand victory in the "epic" hero game Ocean Hunt
involving dubious infosec methods and bad grammar
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/02/12/epic-hero-1-ocean-hunt-winning/
#retrogaming #adventuregame #videogames #textadventure #interactivefiction #trs80
Epic Hero #1 continues, with another bad pun, an island British demon woman (??), cryptic messages that don't get used, and an author self-insert scene.
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/02/11/epic-hero-1-ocean-hunt-welcome-to-killedsville/
#retrogaming #adventuregame #videogames #textadventure #trs80 #interactivefiction
in which All the Adventures returns to England with Epic Hero #1: Ocean Hunt
containing a bloodthirsty merchant
an extremely bad pun leading to an existential crisis
a brief history of the Colour Genie
and a mostly unknown yet prolific author, Marc Leduc
https://bluerenga.blog/2026/02/09/epic-hero-1-ocean-hunt-1982-1983/
#retrogaming #adventuregame #videogames #textadventure #interactivefiction #trs80
Edited 35d ago
is looking to #GetFediHired!#Vale Wes Smith ❤️🩹
my 90 year-old dad died last night after a very long life, a long decline, multiple hospitalisations, and the last couple of months spent in hospital & a repat facility
lots of complex feelings for me, but I’m glad he no longer needs to struggle in difficult circumstances (largely of his own creation, but still ❤️🩹)
when he was young, he travelled the world in the Merchant Navy in the loud, hot bellies of large cargo ships amongst the enormous engines with pistons several times taller than himself. he only spent a short time in each port – a tasting menu, you might say – but he felt that he had seen the entire world by the time he got married
he worked many jobs in his long career, most of them spent bending metal to his will, often shaping machines into new forms to perform tasks for which they were never originally designed. he worked long hours to provide financially for his family – which he saw as his main duty in life – but also because he loved working with machines & solving engineering problems born of metal. grease. electricity.
he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer. he used tools to design & make other tools to make machines. I’m sure that some of my own interests & skills were influenced by growing up watching him execute his craft, hearing him talk about his work, & being dragged along to yet another industrial robot exhibition 😩😜
he was a life-long learner, and my own love of 🤔 – or at least facility with – computers & electronics & code (oh my!) were things he saw (and understood) and supported. in the late 1970s or very early 1980s he took a programming course (which was the spelling at the time 😜) at the local TAFE, and he took me along – a rare opportunity in that era. my first hands-on experience with code at 11 or 12 years old was in the form of mapping out & writing programmes down by hand on graph paper & then encoding them on a stack of mark sense cards with a B2 pencil to be fed into a card reader (and drawing that all-important diagonal line down the side of the stack with said pencil – #IYKYK 😆)
it wasn’t long until I had begged sufficiently & got my very first computer (that we absolutely couldn’t really afford), a #CoCo – the original #TRS80 #ColorComputer model in “battleship grey” with 16K RAM 😲, later upgraded to a whopping 64K 🤯 🤯
I still have that computer over 40 years later 😊
after he retired, he always had several ambitious plans on the boil (less charitable folks might call them “hare-brained schemes” 🙃), including a petrol-powered all-terrain tracked wheelchair for a friend who wanted to be able to travel off the beaten path under his own (metaphorical) steam. it would have ended up weighing about a tonne & absolutely would never have worked (safely), but he was determined to “help” a friend & excited to work on solving an interesting engineering challenge, once again bending metal and machinery to his purpose du jour
he was happiest noodling in his workshop, oil- & grease-stained hands deep inside a machine, wielding – or welding – a new tool of his own design. I always associated the smell of machines and ozone with his presence. until after he retired I never saw his hands unstained by years of ingrained, immovable grease
in his later years he discovered #3Dprinting and became a journeyman #maker of sorts. he was exceptionally proud (and a bit obnoxious) when he was able to “teach the professionals at #U3A a thing or two” about his new hobby. his idea of a conversation had always been (impatiently) waiting for you to take a breath so he could tell you the next thing he was interested in – usually unconnected to whatever you’d shared 💁♀️
he used a succession of smallish 3D printers to make many, many Japanese-inspired lanterns (into which he stuffed various strings of coloured flashing lights) and Chinese-inspired dragons, amazed & delighted that additive manufacturing was able to create interlocking objects right off the print bed – after having spent a lifetime creating sometimes-intricate interlocking components using tried-and-true subtractive manufacturing processes. he gave most of these prints away to others – whether they wanted them or not 😆
he was a fitter & turner, a boiler-maker, a repairer & maintainer, a “keeper-runnerer”, a tinkerer
and he was my father
#Vale Wes Smith ❤️🩹
1935-2025
See you at VCF 2026 – “From CoCo to Community: The Color Computer Then and Now” - This weekend in Montreal I'll be attending, presenting and showcasing my TRS-80 Color Computer retro computer collection along with more than 40 other exhibitors at VCF Montreal 2026, th
https://magicfab.ca/en/2026/01/see-you-at-vcf-2026-from-coco-to-community-the-color-computer-then-and-now/
#Events #ColorComputer #Montreal #RadioShack #RetroComputing #Tandy #TRS80 #VCF
via https://magicfab.ca/carnet
Edited 54d ago
This is outstanding engineering work written in a way to be understandable by mere humans like me.
Exploring the Evolution of the TRS-80 Model 1: A Comprehensive Comparison of Board Revisions
This TRS-80 Model I was an import from Canada. It was a hopeless case, having been stripped of its ROMs and left for dead. Its journey back to the land of the living took well over a month, and I replaced a total of 28 ICs in just the main unit itself. I'll be writing about this fella's revival, and my modifications, in the future, as well. #TRS80 #retrocomputing
