the tandy 1000 as something sexual….maybe 8-bit graphic porn…with that illustrious 128 kilobytes of memory….
Far
It was one of Radio Shack’s early computers. I think it followed the TRS-80 series at a time IBM compatibles were taking over the market from all other competitors.
I still have my Tandy 102 Laptop. Runs for 40 hours on 4 AA batteries, 32KB of onboard data storage. Got me through high school though – teachers allowed it because I couldn’t cheat. No wifi & no spellcheck!
Old Computer Guy
The Tandy 102 was and still is a wonderful machine. Years ahead of its time. In an era where “portable” computer weighed more than a full suitcase, it was small enough and usable enough for my technophobe journalist friend to take it on his bike tour of the United States, sending his columns by acoustic modem every other day, and that was in the mid-1980s. Fun fact: the Tandy 102 was probably the last computer that Bill Gates personally wrote any commercial code for.
The bike tour was done with a Model 100, before the 102 came out. I was tech support at a Radio Shack computer store in those days and followed things on CompuServe at 1200 bps.
I still have my old Tandy 1000. You kids today have it spoiled!
I remember when we got our first hard drive installed into it. It was a whopping 20mb. Once upon a time, computers didn’t have C drives by default.
Our first one was a Lazer XT from Radio Shack. Sadly, we couldn’t convince Mum to spend the extra $200 for the colour monitor so it was the monochrome orange one. I still remember the day the tech came by and installed… something… (no idea what, I doubt it was an internal hard drive but it might have been something like that) so instead of inserting the one floppy into it, letting that run for about ten minutes, and then swapping in the second and letting that run for another seven or so to boot it up, you only had to do the second disk. I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, only seven minutes instead of neatly twenty! OTOH, seven minutes wasn’t really long enough to go do anything else like making myself a cup of tea while I waited for it to boot up.
Haha, yeah, man. Twenty minutes just to turn on your computer! Hahaha!! It was a great machine. It had a word processor AND a flight simulation game on it! I used the word processor to write horrible fantasy and to draw pictures of Darth Vader with ANSI text. Oh, and to transcribe episodes of “Knight Rider” I’d taped off the TV with my CASSETTE RECORDER (by holding the tape deck up to the TV’s speaker for the WHOLE EPISODE) into something I could reread at my leisure because VCRs hadn’t been invented yet. XD Everyone at school was very jealous of my tape recorder. At only half a foot long or so it was so small it looked like a Walkman, but it had a SPEAKER so my friends could listen along with me. Plus it had TWO HEADS so when it got to the end of the tape it would just play the other side without having to eject the tape and manually flip it!! Man, I listened to it forever.
LOL, high tech from 1982 or so. XD
Spammy McSpamster
Okay.
You win the oldest nerd award.
Emphasis on the ‘nerd’, not the old. Though you’re probably one of the older ones around here.
Kryss LaBryn
Haha, I totally am. Probably on both counts too. 😉
I had one, and we kept it till like 8 years till it was given away. If you were a 80’s kid chances are you had one or a Apple II. This was before the NES made these old computers look pathetic and expensive.
First I remember was a (Vic20, though I only saw it a few times) Commodore 64, parents had an IBM PC. My first own computer was an Amiga 600HD though.
Think we got a NES when I was like 6, 7 or 8, fuzzy on the time. By that time the Commodore 64 had stopped working for some reason.
I was born 82, so… Yeah, we got a NES kind of late.
Outside of Strong Bad I’ve never even seen mention of the Tandy until now. Suspect it might not have been that big in Europe (or outside the US, even).
The Tandy 1000 was a IBM clone computer put out by Radio Shack (part of the Tandy corporation) around ’87 or ’88. I had a Tandy 1000TL. It had a 286 processor, 16 color graphics and a 20 Megabyte hard drive. Which was smoking back then. I sold it when I bought a game – Police Quest- that required 21Meg of hard drive memory to install. I also used to sell them at Radio Shack (87-90)
I think I had the same model. I remember when I hit a storage wall — 9 MB to install Monkey Island 2, and nothing we were willing to uninstall. And I quote: “What kind of game needs NINE megabytes?”
Well, at least we still had Starflight and Bard’s Tale!
Kryss LaBryn
Oh man, Bard’s Tale was great! Remember the excellent cut-scene graphics? It would suck now but we’d never seen anything like that! (I may be thinking of BT2).
TxGator
I remember that the ‘Z’ key rocked because it would allow you to instantly summon an Earth elemental into your party!
But she only got it cos she don’t even consider using her phone’s voice recorder before Danny mentioned it.
tahrey
A minidisc or microcassette recorder would be even more professional and embarrassingly obsolete (and a digital one, somewhat borderline – they still see use because they’re less of a theft risk than a phone so better for confidential recordings), but no-one would have recognised what they were 😀
So? At least he didn’t royally screw it up like I did. How was I supposed to know she’s already spoken for and her boyfriend is standing right next to her?
232 thoughts on “Recorder”
Mkvenner
Danny 1 Billie -1.
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
80s Girl Billie still thinks it’s the 1980s.
Neat thing is, I don’t think she was even born until the decade was 3/4s over.
Brady Kj
Actually, I think she was born in 1994.
Pickle
In DOA? Or the Walkyverse?
David
I think math can answer that question pretty well.
Sparks
Oh, c’mon, Willis. Math? This is a strip about college! Why should we have to think? 😉
DudeMyDadOwnsADealership
Only Furthers the Point.
Rogue of Space
That’s my birth year! Sweet!
Witch [Soul] of Heart
If she started in 2011 fresh out of high school, she’d have been born in 1993, chances are.
I am from 94 and did the same, but didn’t start until 2012.
Princessanarchy
that would make her in her forties. Somehow I don’t think that’s correct.
Thomas
Last time I checked I was under 40, born 78…
Henry
What the hell is a Tandy 1000?
Tristan J
I’m assuming from his expression it’s either something sexual, or something Danny can make sexual.
darcos0
the tandy 1000 as something sexual….maybe 8-bit graphic porn…with that illustrious 128 kilobytes of memory….
Far
It was one of Radio Shack’s early computers. I think it followed the TRS-80 series at a time IBM compatibles were taking over the market from all other competitors.
thomas0comer
The Tandy 1000 IS porn for technophiles.
Doctor_Who
It’s a computer. I want one.
Seraph
As an antique?
Doctor_Who
To play “Animal Quest”. Haven’t seen that once since I was five.
drs
Have you looked into emulators?
Kelly
Bah! Everyone knows that to truly play Spacewar! you have to play on the original hardware!
Kaj
I still have my Tandy 102 Laptop. Runs for 40 hours on 4 AA batteries, 32KB of onboard data storage. Got me through high school though – teachers allowed it because I couldn’t cheat. No wifi & no spellcheck!
Old Computer Guy
The Tandy 102 was and still is a wonderful machine. Years ahead of its time. In an era where “portable” computer weighed more than a full suitcase, it was small enough and usable enough for my technophobe journalist friend to take it on his bike tour of the United States, sending his columns by acoustic modem every other day, and that was in the mid-1980s. Fun fact: the Tandy 102 was probably the last computer that Bill Gates personally wrote any commercial code for.
See http://www.club100.org if you want to know more!
ward Griffiths
The bike tour was done with a Model 100, before the 102 came out. I was tech support at a Radio Shack computer store in those days and followed things on CompuServe at 1200 bps.
Jen Aside
Apple II, Danno!
Blob Marley
Suck it, Apple. That’s my final answer.
Kryss LaBryn
Apple IIe. Far superior. XD
Spammy McSpamster
I still have my old Tandy 1000. You kids today have it spoiled!
I remember when we got our first hard drive installed into it. It was a whopping 20mb. Once upon a time, computers didn’t have C drives by default.
Andrusi
And they did have A drives. Frequently B drives, too!
Spammy McSpamster
We had a B by default. I think we got our a drive much later as an add-on
Kryss LaBryn
Our first one was a Lazer XT from Radio Shack. Sadly, we couldn’t convince Mum to spend the extra $200 for the colour monitor so it was the monochrome orange one. I still remember the day the tech came by and installed… something… (no idea what, I doubt it was an internal hard drive but it might have been something like that) so instead of inserting the one floppy into it, letting that run for about ten minutes, and then swapping in the second and letting that run for another seven or so to boot it up, you only had to do the second disk. I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, only seven minutes instead of neatly twenty! OTOH, seven minutes wasn’t really long enough to go do anything else like making myself a cup of tea while I waited for it to boot up.
Haha, yeah, man. Twenty minutes just to turn on your computer! Hahaha!! It was a great machine. It had a word processor AND a flight simulation game on it! I used the word processor to write horrible fantasy and to draw pictures of Darth Vader with ANSI text. Oh, and to transcribe episodes of “Knight Rider” I’d taped off the TV with my CASSETTE RECORDER (by holding the tape deck up to the TV’s speaker for the WHOLE EPISODE) into something I could reread at my leisure because VCRs hadn’t been invented yet. XD Everyone at school was very jealous of my tape recorder. At only half a foot long or so it was so small it looked like a Walkman, but it had a SPEAKER so my friends could listen along with me. Plus it had TWO HEADS so when it got to the end of the tape it would just play the other side without having to eject the tape and manually flip it!! Man, I listened to it forever.
LOL, high tech from 1982 or so. XD
Spammy McSpamster
Okay.
You win the oldest nerd award.
Emphasis on the ‘nerd’, not the old. Though you’re probably one of the older ones around here.
Kryss LaBryn
Haha, I totally am. Probably on both counts too. 😉
And, hooray! XD
fellixe
The Tandy 1000 is a technological step between Atari 2600 and Lite-Brite.
qka
Not.
Spammy McSpamster
Except I gave up my lit-brite ages ago.
It doesn’t impress the ladies (over 4)
Undrave
There’s a new version of lite brite now, uses a flat screen. Comes in blue or pink colours.
Andrusi
I’ve heard of that! They call it iPad.
Charlie Spencer
Bah-Zinga!
Rognik
It’s like a newer version of a typewriter.
Maycroft
You guys make me feel young.
Plasma Mongoose
They make me feel even older now.
Spammy McSpamster
Now it’s making me feel a little randy.
and believe me, Randy doesn’t like being touched, OR called little.
Plasma Mongoose
So that’s what you call it huh? 😛
Kryss LaBryn
If it’s any comfort I’m probably older than you by a good ten years. XD
–Yeah, I know. It’s not. XD
Kisai
I had one, and we kept it till like 8 years till it was given away. If you were a 80’s kid chances are you had one or a Apple II. This was before the NES made these old computers look pathetic and expensive.
Vincent
First I remember was a (Vic20, though I only saw it a few times) Commodore 64, parents had an IBM PC. My first own computer was an Amiga 600HD though.
Think we got a NES when I was like 6, 7 or 8, fuzzy on the time. By that time the Commodore 64 had stopped working for some reason.
I was born 82, so… Yeah, we got a NES kind of late.
Outside of Strong Bad I’ve never even seen mention of the Tandy until now. Suspect it might not have been that big in Europe (or outside the US, even).
Marr
The Tandy 1000 was a IBM clone computer put out by Radio Shack (part of the Tandy corporation) around ’87 or ’88. I had a Tandy 1000TL. It had a 286 processor, 16 color graphics and a 20 Megabyte hard drive. Which was smoking back then. I sold it when I bought a game – Police Quest- that required 21Meg of hard drive memory to install. I also used to sell them at Radio Shack (87-90)
FlyingFish
I think I had the same model. I remember when I hit a storage wall — 9 MB to install Monkey Island 2, and nothing we were willing to uninstall. And I quote: “What kind of game needs NINE megabytes?”
Well, at least we still had Starflight and Bard’s Tale!
Kryss LaBryn
Oh man, Bard’s Tale was great! Remember the excellent cut-scene graphics? It would suck now but we’d never seen anything like that! (I may be thinking of BT2).
TxGator
I remember that the ‘Z’ key rocked because it would allow you to instantly summon an Earth elemental into your party!
Crumplepunch
I had forgotten about Police Quest until you mentioned it.
I don’t actually remember much about it except I shot a guy and lost the game.
TxGator
I suddenly feel old… 🙂
tahrey
It’s one of these:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Tandy+1000
Mikehatesyou
For a nickle, it’s anything you want baby.
Jen Aside
Danny’s down with the “not in this universe” ship, too!
I think.
David Herbert
Danny, you’re not going to get in her pants acting like that. Offer her some booze.
Plasma Mongoose
“Well SHIT… I just wasted 40 bucks.”
Aizat
Oh c’mon, old school is cool.
Plasma Mongoose
But she only got it cos she don’t even consider using her phone’s voice recorder before Danny mentioned it.
tahrey
A minidisc or microcassette recorder would be even more professional and embarrassingly obsolete (and a digital one, somewhat borderline – they still see use because they’re less of a theft risk than a phone so better for confidential recordings), but no-one would have recognised what they were 😀
Joe
Oh my god, is that Danny’s idea of spitting game?
fellixe
Kinda hard to watch. I feel… pity. Yes, pity.
Aizat
So? At least he didn’t royally screw it up like I did. How was I supposed to know she’s already spoken for and her boyfriend is standing right next to her?
Zuche
Try asking someone out while her girlfriend is right behind you. That was not a good day.
John
The only thing to do at that point is propose a threesome.
If you’re already in it that deep, might as well go for the gold. Might get lucky.
tahrey
Hey, he’s figuring her for a retro nerd. Words offering her a chance to play with his Tandy would be honey-dipped.
tahrey
…especially, I guess, if he points out how big the joystick is
dchorror
It’s too early to be calling mistakes of the day.
Tristan J
Mistake of the day: Called mistake of the day too early.
Andrusi