This picture shows my first real Computer as I worked on it from 1982. It's a TRS-80 Model 1 with an Expansion Interface, two external floppy drives and an Epson FX-80 Printer.
The computer had 12K ROM and 48K RAM. The floppies were 40 tracks double sided single density which gives 192K space. The printer had 9 needles and made a lot of noise. I feeded it with a paper roll.
This computer ran with NEWDOS80. I modified the keyboard driver to support control keys and the whole ASCII character set. ScriptSit and the printer driver were also modified to support these features. A special character ROM did the rest. In that state the computer helped me during my studies from 1982 to 1986.
In the right front you can see a keypad with gray keys and a red LED display. It belongs to my first microprocessor SC/MP. That one was programmed by keying in the hex codes direct into the memory. What's an assembler? But that was before 1982.
Many years later a friend of mine wanted to get rid of his TRS-80 Model III. It's a German version with German ROM and German keyboard and I kept it for sentimental reasons.
These days I found David Keil's TRS-80 Emulator Page on the internet. I'm surprised how many people still know the TRS-80 and preserves the 8-Bit history. Because I still have a PC with a 5¼" 360K drive it was easy to create a boot floppy with Dave's emulator. So I reactivated my TRS-80 Model III at first.
Doing this, I encountered my first wish and created some files for the TRS-80 Emulator to support the German TRS-80 Model III. From there it was a short way to the International Keyboard support. If any of you do create a new KBD file, find a bug or have any suggestions, please send me an email.
Because English is a foreign language to me, it would be nice to tell me about any mistake. After you recovered from laughing you to death. ;-)
