TRS-80 MC-10
Encyclopedia
Microcomputer
A microcomputer is a computer with a microprocessor as its central processing unit. They are physically small compared to mainframe and minicomputers...
is a lesser-known member of the TRS-80
TRS-80
TRS-80 was Tandy Corporation's desktop microcomputer model line, sold through Tandy's Radio Shack stores in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The first units, ordered unseen, were delivered in November 1977, and rolled out to the stores the third week of December. The line won popularity with...
line of home computer
Home computer
Home computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s, produced by Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation
Tandy Corporation was a family-owned leather goods company based in Fort Worth, Texas. Tandy was founded in 1919 as a leather supply store, and acquired RadioShack in 1963. The Tandy name was dropped in May 2000, when RadioShack Corporation was made the official name.-History:Tandy began in 1919...
in the early 1980s and sold through their RadioShack
RadioShack
RadioShack Corporation is an American franchise of electronics retail stores in the United States, as well as parts of Europe, South America and Africa. As of 2008, RadioShack reported net sales and operating revenues of $4.81 billion. The headquarters of RadioShack is located in Downtown...
chain of electronics stores. It was apparently designed as a low-cost alternative to Tandy's own TRS-80 Color Computer
TRS-80 Color Computer
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was a home computer launched in 1980. It was one of the earliest of the first generation of computers marketed for home use in English-speaking markets...
to compete with entry-level machines that had previously dominated the market, such as the Commodore VIC-20
Commodore VIC-20
The VIC-20 is an 8-bit home computer which was sold by Commodore Business Machines. The VIC-20 was announced in 1980, roughly three years after Commodore's first personal computer, the PET...
and Sinclair ZX81
Sinclair ZX81
The ZX81 was a home computer produced by Sinclair Research and manufactured in Scotland by Timex Corporation. It was launched in the United Kingdom in March 1981 as the successor to Sinclair's ZX80 and was designed to be a low-cost introduction to home computing for the general public...
.
Due to its limited feature set, the MC-10 was of value primarily to hobbyists and as an introduction to computer programming
Computer programming
Computer programming is the process of designing, writing, testing, debugging, and maintaining the source code of computer programs. This source code is written in one or more programming languages. The purpose of programming is to create a program that performs specific operations or exhibits a...
. It was not a commercial success and was discontinued only a year after its introduction.
A clone of the MC-10, the Alice
Matra Alice
The Matra & Hachette Ordinateur Alice was a home computer sold in France beginning in 1983. It was a clone of the TRS-80 MC-10, produced through a collaboration between Matra and Hachette in France and Tandy Corporation in the United States....
, was marketed in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
through a collaboration among Tandy, Matra
Matra
Mécanique Aviation Traction or Matra was a French company covering a wide range of activities mainly related to automobile, bicycles, aeronautics and weaponry. In 1994, it became a subsidiary of the Lagardère Group and now operates under that name.Matra was owned by the Floirat family...
, and Hachette
Hachette (publishing)
Hachette Livre, , is a French publisher, the flagship imprint of Lagardère Publishing. It was founded in 1826 by Louis Hachette as a bookshop and publishing company. Hachette has its headquarters in the 15th arrondissement of Paris....
.
Description
About the size of a hardcover book, the MC-10 came equipped with four kilobyteKilobyte
The kilobyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. Although the prefix kilo- means 1000, the term kilobyte and symbol KB have historically been used to refer to either 1024 bytes or 1000 bytes, dependent upon context, in the fields of computer science and information...
s of RAM, a Motorola MC6803
Motorola 6800
The 6800 was an 8-bit microprocessor designed and first manufactured by Motorola in 1974. The MC6800 microprocessor was part of the M6800 Microcomputer System that also included serial and parallel interface ICs, RAM, ROM and other support chips...
eight-bit microprocessor
Microprocessor
A microprocessor incorporates the functions of a computer's central processing unit on a single integrated circuit, or at most a few integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable device that accepts digital data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and...
, a built-in serial port, and graphics capabilities similar to those of the original Color Computer
TRS-80 Color Computer
The Radio Shack TRS-80 Color Computer was a home computer launched in 1980. It was one of the earliest of the first generation of computers marketed for home use in English-speaking markets...
(provided by the same Motorola
Motorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
MC6847
MC6847
The MC6847 is a video display generator first introduced by Motorola and used in the TRS-80 Color Computer, Dragon 32/64, Laser 200 and Acorn Atom among others. It is a relatively simple display generator compared to other display chips of the time. It is capable of displaying text and graphics...
video display generator).
Like most early home computers, the MC-10 included a BASIC interpreter in ROM
Read-only memory
Read-only memory is a class of storage medium used in computers and other electronic devices. Data stored in ROM cannot be modified, or can be modified only slowly or with difficulty, so it is mainly used to distribute firmware .In its strictest sense, ROM refers only...
and used regular audio cassettes for bulk storage. Text and graphics were displayed on a television set
Television set
A television set is a device that combines a tuner, display, and speakers for the purpose of viewing television. Television sets became a popular consumer product after the Second World War, using vacuum tubes and cathode ray tube displays...
via a built-in RF modulator
RF modulator
An RF modulator is a device that takes a baseband input signal and outputs a radio frequency-modulated signal....
. Less common for machines in its class was the integrated RS-232
RS-232
In telecommunications, RS-232 is the traditional name for a series of standards for serial binary single-ended data and control signals connecting between a DTE and a DCE . It is commonly used in computer serial ports...
serial port
Serial port
In computing, a serial port is a serial communication physical interface through which information transfers in or out one bit at a time...
, which allowed the MC-10 to use a wide variety of line printer
Line printer
The line printer is a form of high speed impact printer in which one line of type is printed at a time. They are mostly associated with the early days of computing, but the technology is still in use...
s and modem
Modem
A modem is a device that modulates an analog carrier signal to encode digital information, and also demodulates such a carrier signal to decode the transmitted information. The goal is to produce a signal that can be transmitted easily and decoded to reproduce the original digital data...
s without additional hardware.
Even so, at the time of its release in 1983, the MC-10's specifications were underwhelming. Disk drives, full-travel keyboard
Computer keyboard
In computing, a keyboard is a typewriter-style keyboard, which uses an arrangement of buttons or keys, to act as mechanical levers or electronic switches...
s, medium-resolution graphics, and complete 64-kilobyte memory banks were becoming popular features for home computers; the MC-10 offered none of these, severely limiting the functions it could perform and the range of users to which it could appeal. Even hobbyists did not seem drawn by its low price tag, although Tandy did little to spread the word that the machine existed in the first place.
The MC-10 was discontinued in 1984, along with the 16 kB memory upgrade and small amount of cassette-based software that had been released for it. It never achieved a wide following.
Specifications
- VDG: MC6847MC6847The MC6847 is a video display generator first introduced by Motorola and used in the TRS-80 Color Computer, Dragon 32/64, Laser 200 and Acorn Atom among others. It is a relatively simple display generator compared to other display chips of the time. It is capable of displaying text and graphics...
- Text: 32×16
- Low-res: 64×32, 8 color (4bpp)
- Low-res: 64×64, 4 color (2bpp)
- Med-res: 128×64, 2 color (1bpp)
- Med-res: 128×64, 4 color (2bpp)
- Med-hi: 128×96, 2 color (1bpp)
- Med-hi: 128×96, 4 color (2bpp)
- Hi-res: 128×192, 2 color (2bpp)
- Hi-res: 128×192, 4 color (2bpp) (required memory-pak)
- Hi-res: 256×192, 2 color (1bpp) (required memory-pak)
- I/O Ports:
- RS-232C serial interface (300-9600 baudBaudIn telecommunications and electronics, baud is synonymous to symbols per second or pulses per second. It is the unit of symbol rate, also known as baud rate or modulation rate; the number of distinct symbol changes made to the transmission medium per second in a digitally modulated signal or a...
; 600 baud from BASIC) - Cassette interface (1500 baud)
- Internal RF modulator
- Memory expansion interface
- RS-232C serial interface (300-9600 baud
Although the memory expansion interface connected directly to the CPU bus and could have been used for many applications, the edge connector
Edge connector
An edge connector is the portion of a printed circuit board consisting of traces leading to the edge of the board that are intended to plug into a matching socket. The edge connector is a money-saving device because it only requires a single discrete female connector , and they also tend to be...
involved had an unusual number of pins and was difficult to obtain.
The RS-232C serial interface had extremely limited usefulness. Although the 6803 CPU conveniently includes a built-in UART, it was not connected to and did not assist the RS-232C interface in any manner. In part, this was because a single 3.58 MHz TV colorburst crystal was used to generate video and clock the CPU, and this clock rate did not correspond to any standard baud rate when divided for the UART. As a result, programs had to shift all bits individually into and out of the RS-232C interface, creating artificial and especially critical timing considerations.
The cassette interface had similar difficulties, plus a few. Although Micro Color Basic included an undocumented CLOADM command for loading machine-language programs and an undocumented VARPTR function for manipulating variables as memory, there was no corresponding CSAVEM command (documented or otherwise) to permit machine language programs to be saved to tape.
Software
A limited amount of software was available on cassette for the MC-10, including Lunar Lander, Checkers, and a machine-language Pinball program. However, as most programs written in Basic for other TRS-80 models were compatible with the MC-10, many books with BASIC programs were available for the user who was willing to type in the code.External links
- MC10 archive - Information for the MC10 microcomputer enthusiast
- Inside the Radio Shack MC-10 – Provides technical information
- Mike's Virtual Computer Museum
- 8-Bit-Nirvana
- Another Computer Museum
- The Trailing Edge
- Old-Computers.com
- OldComputers.net
- My MC-10 Web Page
- TRS80 MC10 Club
- More pictures of TRS-80 Model MC-10 - More TRS-80 Model MC-10 pictures on Flickr.