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.
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JerkyChew@lemmy.one 5 weeks ago
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.
TrenchcoatFullofBats@belfry.rip 5 weeks ago
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 5 weeks ago
These were my first exposure to programming! I did those on a DOS system.
lud@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Or rather it was a pocket compute-er. It’s very primitive compared to a modern computer but it’s still a computer.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 5 weeks ago
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.
lud@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
Yes exactly.
Many years ago you could even have a job as a (human) computer. You pretty much computed/calculated stuff all day.
shalafi@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
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.
turtlepower@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
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.
brianary@startrek.website 5 weeks ago
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.
youtube.com/watch?v=NQheo52J3BM