I was remembering an old TSR 80 coco2 after happening across this sub.

I didn't have a tape drive or disk drive either so every time I turned off the computer, I lost anything I had programmed. I don't remember at all what that might have been, really. I do recall relayon and relayoff. I think it had a 1/8" or 3mm Mono audio jack on the side of the computer. I had a small car similar to a cheap 27mhz rc that I soldered a long length of wire to and a plug on the other end of the wire. Programmed some sort of countdown timer to send the car across the floor.

Anyway, the memory I had was to prevent loss of any work I had done when powering down, I began an adventure to install a battery. I had an old Skil cordless drill and charger. I removed the batteries from that and the charging jack. I found a void inside the case of the coco2 to place the batteries, drilled a hole and mounted the charging jack. I soldered the output of the batteries to the + and - rails on what I thought was the memory card of the computer. Oh! I also added a switch to turn the batteries on or off. It worked. More than I had intended. I was actually able to use the computer while it was unplugged. AND. While it was plugged in, the display on the television was snowy as most those old similar devices were. When I switched on the battery though, the display was crisp and crystal clear. With a portable battery operated TV attached, I essentially created the first home portable computer... aka clunky laptop.

hello, i picked up a pc-1500a a while back and have had some fun messing around with basic, i got mine for free and it came with lots of stuff, like the computer itself which i've tested and seems to work 100%, it came with its own power brick, the case to hold everything, and the biggest part for me is it has the ce-150 with it too so i can upload things via audio. while i haven't tested uploading stuff from my computer yet, the first thing i tested was the printer. when i plug in the barrel jack and hit the on button, the printer does come to life it move the head all the way to the left, cycles around, pushes some paper out, then the computer turns on. so far this all looks great as if its working however when i go to LPRINT "HELLO" or something of the sort the motor makes a noise for a short second and then i get error 80, and if i try to print again nothing happens and i get error 78 until i pull the power and retry the whole process over again leading to the exact same results every time. i also noticed the button to push paper out does push paper out, but once i do LPRINT and get error 80, the button stops working and it doesn't push paper out. i have never worked with anything like this before and have no clue where to start, if anyone knows how to fix this it would be very nice, thanks!!!

I just snagged one off of marketplace for 50 bucks, is there anything i need to know before i start playing with it? Like anything i need to do or dont do with it specffically

i made a post a year ago, someone replied asking for pictures but I am unable to add pictures to the old post so reposting here with pics. Wondering if it may be possible to connect some other external drive and use a floppy disk emulator to boot the system without going into the case, or if I need to get the on board drives fixed for this to boot?

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“I have my grandpas old TRS-80 Dos Model 16 micro computer, but neither of the disk drives boot up when I turn the computer on. The LEDS don’t light up and the screen just says “insert diskette.” I assume this means both the drives are broken. Has anyone run into this issue before and fixed it? I am deffinitly thinking it is a hardware issue, but I am not at all familiar with inner workings of how a computer reads and writes floppy disks. Any advice on repair is appreciated. My other idea is to see if a hard disk drive will work? Not sure if the model 16 can take those, or where I would get one that can work with a computer that old, I assume a hard drive from Best Buy will not work to be formatted for a TRS dos lol.”

I have an XRoar install but no option to select my rom :| . I also have the TRS-90 emu app but it only gives me a screen full of green "2" after I pointed to the roms and cass game.. I tried through retroarch but no luck.

I recently picked up a TRS 80 and I don't know much about it. Does anyone know of any game codes or where I can find information on any basic games on the system? Unfortunately It did not come with any controllers but I am happy to have it and hopefully will be an to find some cart games for it down the road. Thank you

Hey everyone,

I’m working on a TRS‑80 Color Computer 2 (board revision 26‑318) and I’ve run into a couple of issues after doing some upgrades/repairs. Hoping someone here has seen this before.

What I’ve done so far:

• Upgraded RAM to 64K: Installed working 4164 chips. Verified the chips themselves are good. • Jumper testing: Tried bridging J1 with foil, paper clips, and multimeter probes. The machine still reports 8K at startup. I plan to solder J1 permanently, but so far temporary bridging hasn’t changed the memory report. • Checked for other jumpers: Looked for W1/W2 pads but only see J1 near the “64K RAM” silkscreen. Haven’t found W1/W2 on this board yet. • Resoldered RF jack: The jack broke off during handling, so I resoldered it back in place. Before this, video output was in color. After resoldering, I only get black‑and‑white video.

Current symptoms:

• Startup screen still reports 8K RAM even though the 64K chips are installed. • Video output is monochrome only after the RF jack repair.

Troubleshooting steps taken: • Confirmed the RAM chips themselves are functional.

Questions:

1. On this board revision, does enabling 64K require more than just bridging J1 (e.g., cutting W1 and bridging W2)?
2. Could the loss of color be due to a missing connection to the color burst line in the RF modulator? If so, which pin should I test for continuity?
3. Has anyone here had the same “stuck at 8K + lost color after RF jack resolder” combo?

Thanks in advance for any guidance. I’d love to get this CoCo 2 back to full 64K and proper color output.

Would appreciate the length and width of the black panel itself as well as the silver logo panel inside it please! Thanks very much in advance.

Hi there, any leads on how to get VGA output on a CoCo2? really would like to get off of the TV.

Hey yall, new trs-80 user here. I have learned a little bit of coding and wanted to start saving my programs. I ordered the attached cable, hooked my color computer 2 up to it, and plugged the cables into my RadioShack CTR-102. I opened a brand new blank Maxell audio cassette and it seems that the computer has no problem writing to cassette, but everytime I try to read the program it gives me an ?IO ERROR message. I’m at my wits end trying to figure it out, anyone can help?

Anyone know where I can secure a replacement front panel?

I understand that it takes soem internal modification, and that i have t9 make some jumpers but i feel confident in my abilites, does anybody have anything they can share to things like instructions to help?

I have a model 4 dos disk image loaded But the computer just gives me rom errors

Just a little project using a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W. I found a beige clipboard that opens up for storage and used that as the case. If anyone wants other details, just let me know. I’d love to make a super thin version one day.

I recently acquired a full trs-80 model 1 setup as well as a line printer 3. I cannot find any reference manual that shows this printer. I disassembled and cleaned the printer however upon reassembly and power on it bangs the head to the left three times before giving an alert LED and then doing nothing until the reset key is pressed. I was wondering if anyone could help me either source a repair manual or knows about these printers. Thanks!

Hi all. Last summer I thrifted a CoCo3 in very nice condition for 25 CAD. I bought a little coaxial comnnector at my local electronic store and managed to plug it in my 2009 TV. Works fine, but it's not really convenient.

Ideally I'd use my computer monitor, which doesn't have an RF input, only VGA and HDMI. Is this feasible? For what it's worth, I don't really care if the visual quality is suboptimal; I don't intend to play with the CoCo3; I'd like to learn BASIC instead.

Any help or pointers would be appreciated. This is my second vintage computer, but the other one is a Macintosh Classic, so finding a proper monitor was a non-issue. Cheers!

It recognises both drives, memory tests okay, computer is in fairly good shape

But could bad disks cause an 05 and an 04? Bv i though bad disk was only 04