(And why, and maybe some other things.)
So who am I, and what is FrankenTRS (And for those coming from RACSIII.NET, you can pretty much skip this page)
WHO AM I
My name, well, at least my nickname, is Tuc. Its pronounced like how you “TUCk” in a shirt. I won’t go into my real name since that’s not important for this site. I got the nickname in school from my best friend and security question so I won’t mention their name. I’d usually have to correct teachers about the correct pronunciation of my last name, and eventually I started going by “Tuc”.
WHATS FRANKENTRS
Well, actually, its FrankenTRS. Mixed case matters thank you.
FrankenTRS is a project I came up with while I was working another project, RACSIII.NET . The premise of that blog is that I was trying to take a TRS-80 Model I that I used to run as a Bulletin Board System (Oddly enough named RACS III). I was trying to take the original hardware I had used almost 40 years prior, and get it all running again. (SPOILER ALERT : I did. 😉 )
While I was doing that, keeping everything as original as possible was important. I had a few new cables since those seemed silly to reuse, an ethernet/serial converter since there’s a good chance not many people have a 9600 baud modem let alone a home phone line and a printer buffer because I sleep close to the lab where the machine is and Dot Matrix at 2am is NOISY!
THE WHY
So while I was working on it, about 3/4 of the way through I thought to myself “Gee, I had to do everything original, wouldn’t it be nice to ‘mix it up’ a little. A bit of the old, a bit of the new, things that didn’t belong on a system, etc!”. So that’s what I’ve done. I’m building a new system that will be bits and pieces of the past, restoring old parts and adding some (Ok, maybe alot) of the new.
I NEVER PROMISED YOU A WHAT
No spoilers now on the final configuration, it’ll grow “organically” as time passes. Some things may work, some things will fail miserably. But like the RACS III blog, maybe you’ll learn a little and have a few options of things you might want to try on YOUR computer!
While doing this, I figured it’d be fun to document the trials and tribulations of it all. Do I think this will become popular, HECK NO. Will it mean anything to anyone other than me? Hope so, but not counting on it. Will there be any nuggets of wisdom? Um, if you knew me you wouldn’t ask. The story already started with me going back for the machine for RACS III. I had actually bought extras knowing that someday I’d resurrect it. Some of the sections might be short and some might be long and you may, JUST MAY, learn something! (**DISCLAIMER** – I take no responsibility if and what you learn here. ) The final piece will be showing off this MONSTERosity. (See what I did there). I’m hoping it’ll be done between March and time for Tandy Assembly in late September. No emulators, no simulators, but I can’t guarantee a little bit of “tongue-in-cheek” and “cheekyness”. Sometimes things may go well, other times it could be something we have to get back to. But overall, we’re taking an almost 40 yr old set of hardware and getting it all working together despite the time, despite cables shredding, despite dust and grime and all that fun stuff.
SO WHERE DO WE START
Well, I’ve given you the start of who I am, and whats FrankenTRS will be, so there’s only one place to start!
