A TRS-80 Model I for the PicoCalc

PicoCalc
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When I bought my first packaged computer, I weighed the TRS-80 against the PET and went with the PET. However, Radio Shack far outsold Commodore in that market and it was fun porting the TRS-80 to the PicoCalc. Let it be known that I resisted putting in random key bounces :slight_smile:

trs80 is a TRS-80 Model I emulator for the PicoCalc: Level II BASIC with up to 48 KB, and the Expansion Interface’s two disk drives, with JV1 and DMK images on the SD card. NEWDOS/80 boots, games run (with their sound, through the PicoCalc’s speakers in glorious 1-bit), and the PicoCalc’s 64 columns are the Model I’s 64, so the whole screen fits without squeezing.

You’ll need your own copy of the Level II ROM; the README says where it goes. F1 to F8 do the rest: power on, disks, a text screenshot, game key layouts, volume, and a settings page.

It’s an alpha: if something doesn’t behave as you remember a Model I behaving, I’d like to hear about it. (Yes, 32-character mode really did hide every other letter.)

4 Likes
VirtualT for PicoCalc: a TRS-80 Model 100 / Tandy 200 emulator (alpha 1)
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Very nice ! I just booted LDOS 5.0.1 with it. It seems to work fine !

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Thanks for trying it! LDOS is one I hadn’t tried, so that’s good to hear. Was the image JV1 or DMK? And if anything misbehaves, F5 saves the screen as text in /screenshots, which is the easiest way to show me what happened.

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It was a JV1 format. LDOS boot is tricky, at least the version I have, because the boot sequence reads non-existant sectors, and the boot goes on after recovering from that error - probably an old copy protection scheme that has been removed in an uncomplete way. But your release has no problem doing it :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the details! That’s the disk controller doing its job: it reports “record not found” for those missing sectors as the real FD1771 did, so LDOS can recover. Good to know it holds up with a tricky boot. If you try other DOSes or disks, I’d like to hear how they go.