#classic pc

35 years ago today, at a press conference held inside New York City's Warwick Hotel, Radio Shack unveiled in TRS-80 personal computer, Model I, arguably once of the most import gadgets to be born in the latter half of the 20th century.

The Model I combined the mainboard and keyboard into one unit, in what was to be a common case design trend throughout the 8-bit microcomputer era, although it had a separate power supply unit. It used a Zilog Z80 processor clocked at 1.77 MHz (later models were shipped with a Z80A). The basic model originally shipped with 4 KB of RAM, and later 16 KB, the TRS-80 ran about $600 retail—that's including Radio Shack's 12 inch black-and-white display, which didn't come standard but was a necessary addition to the package for anyone interested in doing with the computer thing requiring a monitor. (Very necessary.)

Today, for the same amount of money, you could buy yourself a very nice iPad. I wonder where we'll be in another 35 years