Welcome back to part 12 of my fourth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we began our look at the Model 100's peripherals by looking at the various early peripherals and add ons. In this entry we move on to the Model 100's Disk Drives and Printers.
Much the Pocket Computers, the Model 100 initially didn't have any disk drives and only was designed to store data on tape. Due to the size and power requirements for a 5.25 floppy dive, making a portable one for the Model 100 would have been big and bulky with a price tag to match. However, Disk Drives were still on the drawing board, Since the Model 1 was deigned to be expandable, the idea of adding disk drives would make logical sense. The first device to bring disk drive capability to the Model 100 was the Disk/Video Interface (Catalog numbers 26-3806), Released in 1984, and retailing for $49.95.
On the back you have an copmosite video out, an RF output for TV's (With an accompanying channel slector switch), Model information stickers, a fuse, the powerswitch, and power cable.
And on the bottom you have the socket to plug in the cable that connects the 100 to the unit itself, and 4 rubber feet to prop the unit up.
The cable plugs into the ROM expansion slot of the Model 100 with the end of the cable plugging into the DIP socket.
To operate the unit, the Disk/Video Interface came with a system disk containing both a DOS and a Disk BASIC.
By inserting the disk and powering on the unit you get a Microsoft copyright notice. The DOS still needs to be loaded into the 100 in order to work and to do that you just simply either turn the 100 on and off or hit Reset, or hold CTRL PAUSE and Reset to do a cold boot. Then by entering BASIC and typing SCREEN 1 you'll get the BASIC prompt on the external display either without the menu bar, or you could type SCREEN 1,1 to have the menu bar.
You could also use it in the 100's other built in applications like the Text Editor and the Telecom menu, not only giving you a 40 or 80 column screen but also higher capacity floppy drives to load and save your documents.
However despite the disk drives and video output, The Disk/Video Interface recieved lukewarm reception and sales mainly due to the high price and the fact that it had little to offer other than the drives and video output. Still, Tandy continued to sell them alongside the 100 intil it was discontinued in 1988.
Tandy weren't the only ones providing disk drives for the Model 100, other manufactures were providing their own Disk drive solutions for the Model 100. One of the most notable of these was the PMC MicroMate, Released in 1983, for a retail price of $1195.00 dollars.
PMC are no stranger when it comes to Tandy Radio Shack computers as they previously did the North American disbution of the Eaca Video Genie TRS-80 clone we talks about before, but the PMC MicroMate was very different. While it looks like a regular 5.25 inch floppy drive, it isn't, it's actually a full all in one workstation designed to run CP/M compleate with a Z80 CPU, 128K of RAM, and of course a built in floppy Drive.
The system worked on a plug and play approach, The idea was that by using an RS232 connection, you could plug the MicroMate into a terminal and have a full CP/M workstation.
in 1985, PMC began advertising the MicroMate as an add-on for the Radio Shack’s TRS-80 Model 100 portable computer. Since the MicroMate was similar in size to the Model 100, It was advertised as offered both a means of disk storage and the ability to run CP/M programs. In addition to being a storage option for the Model 100, competing with such products as the Radio Shack Disk/Video interface or the Holmes PMD-100, the MicroMate was also one of the few ways to run CP/M programs on the Model 100.
Though saying its a disk drive interface and a CP/M add on is a bit of a stretch since really all the Model 100 as a RS232 terminal and I'm unsure of how exactly it could be used as a disk drive outside of CP/M opperation. Still, it was probably attractive to buisnesses that were using CP/M and was appealing to thouse that wanted to take their work home. Unfortuatly PMC would go bankrupt shortly after the MicroMate launched, making them rare to find today.
It would not be until the following year that a proper portable disk drive became availible with the Portable Disk Drive, released in 1985, for a retail price of $199.95.
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On the back you a propriatary RS232C connector and DC power jack.
And on the bottom you have a battery compartment to run the drive off of 4 AA batteries, the standard model information stickers and a civer ti access the DIP stwitch settings to configure the drive.
To use it, you just insert a disk, type in a small BASIC program to initallze the drive, and run the program. the Model I will then start loading the contents of the disk.
Storagewise you could store 100K per file, and while thats somewhat of a downgrade compared to the Disk/Video Interface, the Portable Disk Drive was smaller and had a decent battery life making it much more popular. Later the drive was replaced by the Portable Disk Drive 2, released in 1987, also for $199.95.
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