Some news for this beautiful Sunday evening

Several weeks ago I was at an auction in New Baden, Texas. Among the used tractors, broken typewriters, and old toys, I found an interesting gem: A single sheet of paper that said:

"This lot includes over 9,000 TRS-80s from the 1980's"

TRS-80 is pronounced "Trash 80", by the way.

Now, I have a place in my heart for vintage computers, and was enjoying the memories of my childhood computers while the auctioneer warmed up the audience and began in his wonderful "auctioneer language" (blah-blahbidy-blah-blahbidy, etc).

Well, the lot came up for bidding, and I thought, hey, why not, let's bid on this and see. Well, I took the first bid ($1) and to my shock, nobody else bid. Went once, twice, and thrice and I was now the happy owner of over 9,000 (9,352 to be exact, I was to later learn) TRS-80 computers.

Well, after calling all my friends with pickups and trailers, we made over 20 trips back and forth and finally loaded every one of them into my barn. When Trish saw this, she asked me what on earth was I going to do with all these ancient computers?!?! Thinking quickly, I replied that I would run DG on them, of course!!

Thus the idea was born and I was committed to the road ahead of me.

Fast forward to today, and I am pleased to announce that DG is no longer running on a measly 4 "top of the line" servers, but is now running on 7,290 TRS-80s. The rest of them either didn't boot or had problems that disqualified them from being included in such an important task as serving DG. If anybody wants around 2,000 dead TRS-80's, please let me know. You'll have to pick them up, of course; I'm not going to deliver them.

My graphics guy at NameMedia is currently working on a nice "Powered by TRS-80" button that we'll proudly display in the footer of all the pages of the site.

I know this is probably pretty disinteresting to most of you, but you know how excited I get about improvements made to DG. :-)

Have a nice evening, and I'm sorry for the delay in my posting this news. :)

Dave

*snort*

Snort.............!

Joy

Melody.........you beat me by a second, must be the new system and you are closer to Dave..

Ahhh...here it is....I was wondering when this would come up. ;o)

Like I said, "cheap entertainment"? How have you resisted all day?

I almost went to bed without checking, glad I checked. Dave you are the tops!

Wouldn't want to see the hydro bill for that.......

Trash talk!

Edited because in my excitement I forgot to finish by saying "I love it!"

This message was edited Apr 1, 2007 9:26 PM

If this is an April Fools joke, cudos to you. You just got in under the wire.

Glad to see you're keeping this grand old tradition!

You mean you don't believe the man!
Bernie

Dave, this is great news! Now that I know you love old computers I know where to ship all the ones we need to dispose of. It costs a fortune to dispose of electronic equiptment here but I have a truck driver friend that often has extra cargo space on loads going to Texas. You should expect a shipment within a couple of weeks. I'll spread the word around town and we should have a shipment every couple of weeks so that you can have enough computers to handle the rapid growth of this site!

The first shipment will be a bit small, only about 30 cpus. But I am guessing when I post this at the recycle center we will have thousands of them for you in no time at all!

What a win-win situation. You get free computers and we save a fortune on disposal fees!

Happy April Fools Day you kook!

Dave
the first TRS80 i used in the 80's used a tape for storage
did you also get all of those tape players ?

Dick

Oh you crazy man!! :-) I thought for sure that we wouldn't get our April fools day message today...but you came through again.

Sorry to say, I wouldn't even know what to do with one of those TRS 80's.....lol

Thanks,
Donna

: P pppppppppppppppppppppppt
I have a Mac Classic you could add to that pile

Could they be used to plant something in??

I was in the middle of a graphics project on the TRS-80's when the brand spankin' new XT's arrived. When given the choice I jumped at the chance to abandon all that work and start over again - fond memories :-)

--Ginny

Sheila - of course they can be used as planters! But first use them as warming mats for wintersown seed trays!

Good point, Dick -- Dave, how ya going to do backups?

Thanks for keeping the grand April 1 tradition alive. Know you've got a lot on your plate!

I worked on XT's at the HMO where I had a job beginning in the late 1980's. We got Windows 3.1 not long after I was hired, boy howdy! Never did work on a Trash-80.

This message was edited Apr 2, 2007 8:40 AM

All is well. My day is complete. Love you, Dave.

Dave, I have a couple of old ATARI 800's, The POKEY chip might help when you encounter slow downs with the Trash 80's.

Darn....I didn't get this until April 2nd....but I'm glad Dave got in under the wire. Jo

NOW my April Fool's day is complete!!!! I just knew you wouldn't let us down!!
LOL
Pati

Honestly folks, I thought it entirely possible that a guy would buy a lot of 9,000 TRS80s. I'm just grateful that my DH didn't get to hear about it.

Anybody interested in adopting a middle aged man with three garages filled with early Mustang and Ranchero parts?

I didn't think so.

Get 'er done Dave. Corky

How about a garage with about 10,000 sq. feet of 125 year old tin ceiling along with the 60ish man........I'm having as much luck as you M5.

aaacckkkkk.....goes to show how computer illiterate I am...I believed him.....

Meezer and Joy! Please advise how you got him to keep stuff contained in any size garage!

Is that a relative of the TRS 880 drum machines?

Dave, Want to buy a Texas Instrument TI-99?

I sold my TI - 99 on ebay for $25. Back when I was in high school they had an Apple II - now that was cutting edge ;)

Does anyone remember the Commadore 64? Had one after I thought myself basic on a trash 80. Man - I'm getting' old.

Hey dave if you string a few thousand of those things together.

Never mind, you won't be able to find enough working power supplies.

I am throwing my DH into the mix here, with about a 8,000 sq ft garage with any kind of equipment with a motor. Weed eaters, chain saws, lawn mowers, etc. He just evicted me from there, with my little cabinet of garden supplies, but he did buy me a separate storage building for Christmas, just delivered today. Anybody interested, go to coffee...and today's thread there is a picture posted.

Late in getting here but glad to see that even with a plateful you have squeezed in the time for the traditional April 1 story!

Beats communicating with pigeons - no more tomes from gasbags like me - lol

Hey, tomes are great, Karen. :)

I hate to say this, but I really believed you Dave..lol. Good one..

I'll be ready for next year though..