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Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for November 25th, 2024

For the USA, the TRS-80 PC-1 was the “The Trash Computer That Became Your Phone”; the rest of the world could enjoy the hardware identical Sharp PC-1210/1211/1212 years earlier

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/11/25

Earlier this year, I bumped into [Wayback/Archive] The Trash Computer That Became Your Phone – YouTube which discusses the Tandy  TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-1, . The video includes a lot of history about Tandy Corporation, Charles Tandy and Radio Shack including quite a few bits I didn’t know yet.

It was part of the Tandy Pocket Computer, and succeeded by the Z80 powered TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-2 (which was actually a rebadged Sharp PC-1500).

The TRS-80 Pocket Computer PC-1 itself was also a rebadged Pocket Computer, this time a Sharp PC-1211 powered by a duo of 4-bit CPUs so totally incompatible with the PC-2. Actually none of the Tandy Pocket Computer line were compatible with each other (nor with the desktop TRS-80 which itself was incompatible TRS-80 Color Computer). With the PC-4 and on Tandy even switched to Casio as manufacturer, then back to Sharp for the final PC-8.

Anyway: this video was a trip down memory lane and reliving my 2012 blog post The calculators that got me into programming (via: calculators : Algorithms for the masses – julian m bucknall), and I was glad that by now there are more videos covering the calculator I started with, for instance via [Wayback/Archive] sharp pc-1211 – YouTube:

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Posted in Conference Topics, Conferences, Event, History, Z80 | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Hopefully this has made it into a set by now: LEGO IDEAS – This Is Fine

Posted by jpluimers on 2024/11/25

Often it can take a long time for first getting 100 votes, then via milestones 1000, 5000, 10000 and a long review phase to become an actual set.

Hopefully by now [Wayback/Archive] LEGO IDEAS – This Is Fine has become a set or at least someone used Bricklink Studio designer and uploaded the model or instructions.

Edit 20241125:

Nope, LEGO decided they didn’t want to make money of this set as communicated in their [Wayback/Archive] LEGO IDEAS – This Is Fine: Official LEGO Comments

Unfortunately, the LEGO Review Board has decided that we will not produce this project as a set.

But others did:

Looking at the price difference between these two, LEGO could have made quite a bit of money.

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Posted in LifeHacker, Power User, Toys/playing | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »