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Interview with Steve Leininger, Designer of the TRS-80- Model I Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FloppyDays Sponsors: 8-Bit Classics  Arcade Shopper   0                                 Floppy Days Tune 1 min 13 sec              Vintage Computer Ads 1 min 42 sec              Intro 9 min 03 sec             bumper - Peter Bartlett  9 min 11 sec              New Acquisitions 17 min 11 sec             bumper - Ian Mavric  17 min 19 sec            Upcoming Computer Shows 21 min 53 sec            bumper - Myles Wakeham 21 min 58 sec            Meet the Listeners 28 min 37 sec            Interview with Steve Leininger 1 hr 20 min 29 sec    Closing This particular episode has a special meaning for me, personally.  You see, as I've mentioned on earlier episodes, the TRS-80 Model I from Tandy/Radio Shack was my first home computer (even though my first programmable device was a TI58C calculator).  I recall the joy and wonder of playing with the machine (it wasn't called the Model I at that time; just the TRS-80; as it was the first of the line) in the local Radio Shack store in 1977 and 1978 and the incredible rush of owning one in 1979; after my wife purchased a Level I BASIC machine for me as a gift for college graduation.  That machine only had 4K of RAM and 4K of ROM (Tiny BASIC), as it was the entry-level machine, but it was a thing of beauty.  I felt like I could do anything with that machine, even though my justification to the wife was that we could track our checkbook and recipes on it.  I think she knew better, but went along with it anyway.  The computer came with everything you needed, including a tape drive and black-and-white monitor, which was good for a poor recent college graduate.  I quickly, as finances allowed with my new engineering job, upgraded the computer to 16K of RAM and Level II BASIC (a powerful Microsoft 12K ROM BASIC) and enjoyed the machine immensely, even using it in my job supporting the build-out of a new nuclear power plant back in those days. I eventually sold off the Model I, in favor of a computer that had color graphics and sound (the Atari 800), but have always continued to have a huge soft spot for that first computer. When I started the Floppy Days Podcast, one of the people that has always been on my bucket list to interview has been Steve Leininger, who, along with Don French while at Radio Shack designed the TRS-80 Model I, among other things.  A few years back, I had the opportunity to participate in an interview with Steve for the Trash Talk Podcast, when I was co-hosting that show, but an ill-timed trip to the hospital for my son meant that I was not able to participate.  While my son's health is of paramount importance, of course, I always wanted to get another chance to talk with Steve.  Not only was Steve the designer of one of my favorite home computers of all time, but he also was a fellow Purdue University Boilermaker, who graduated just a year before I started there.  The thought that I could have met Steve on campus if I'd been there just a year earlier was very intriguing to me, and fueled my desire to talk with Steve even more. In the last episode (#141 with Paul Terrell) I talked about VCF Southeast in Atlanta in July of 2024.  After I had made plans to attend that show, I was flabbergasted to find out that Earl Baugh, one of the show organizers, had somehow managed to contact Steve and get him to come to the show!  I have to thank Earl for the work he did to make that happen.  Here was my opportunity to certainly meet Steve, and perhaps even talk with him!  I prepped some questions, just in case I was able to get an interview. While at the show, I met Steve and asked him if he would be willing to do a short interview for Floppy Days while at the show.  Amazingly, he was very kind and agreed to do that.  We found a quiet room and I was able to talk with Steve for almost an hour.  This show contains that interview. Another note on this: as you'll hear in the interview, the connection to Steve is even stronger than I realized!  He not only went to my alma mater, but also grew up in some of the same towns that myself and my wife did.  We personally peripherally know some of his relatives.  Things like this really do make you think the world is small! One other, final, note: This interview even ties into the recent and continuing interviews I've been publishing with Paul Terrell.  As you'll hear in upcoming episodes with Paul, and in this interview with Steve, Steve actually worked at the Byte Shop before getting the first job with Tandy, and in fact his work at the Byte Shop directly led to him getting hired by Tandy to design the Model I. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview as much as I enjoyed getting it.  I am overjoyed I finally got the chance to talk to one of my vintage computer heroes, Steve Leininger! New Acquisitions C64 Sketch and Design by Tony Lavioe - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4dZGtt2  Compute's Mapping the IBM PC and PC Junior by Russ Davies - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3yQmrlP  The Best of SoftSide - Atari Edition - https://archive.org/details/ataribooks-best-of-softside-atari-edition  ZX81+38 - https://github.com/mahjongg2/ZX81plus38  magnifying glasses - sponsored link https://amzn.to/4cBQYla  Japanese power adapter - sponsored link https://amzn.to/3XjeUW5  Upcoming Shows VCF Midwest - September 7-8 - Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center in Schaumburg, IL - http://vcfmw.org/  VCF Europe - September 7-8 - Munich, Germany - https://vcfe.org/E/  World of Retrocomputing 2024 Expo - September 14-15 - Kitchener, ON, Canada - https://www.facebook.com/events/s/world-of-retro-computing-2024-/1493036588265072/  Teletext 50 - Sep 21-22 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, UK - https://www.teletext50.com/  Portland Retro Gaming Expo - September 27-29 - Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR - https://retrogamingexpo.com/  Tandy Assembly - September 27-29 - Courtyard by Marriott Springfield - Springfield, OH - http://www.tandyassembly.com/  AmiWest - October 25-27 - Sacramento, CA - https://amiwest.net/  Chicago TI International World Faire - October 26 - Evanston Public Library (Falcon Room, 303), Evanston, IL - http://chicagotiug.sdf.org/faire/   Retro Computer Festival 2024 - November 9-10 - Centre for Computing History, Cambridge, England - https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/72253/Retro-Computer-Festival-2024-Saturday-9th-November/  Silly Venture WE (Winter Edition) - Dec. 5-8 - Gdansk, Poland - https://www.demoparty.net/silly-venture/silly-venture-2024-we   Schedule Published on Floppy Days Website - https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSeLsg4hf5KZKtpxwUQgacCIsqeIdQeZniq3yE881wOCCYskpLVs5OO1PZLqRRF2t5fUUiaKByqQrgA/pub  Interview Steve's Workbench at radioshack.com (archived) - https://web.archive.org/web/19980528232503/http://www.radioshack.com/sw/swb/   Transcript of Interview-Only Randy Kindig: All right. I really appreciate your time today, Steve.  Steve Leininger: Thank you for having me, Randy.  Randy Kindig: So let's start out maybe just by talking about where You live today, and what you do? Steve Leininger: I live in Woodland Park, Colorado, which is 8, 500 feet, right out in front of we got Pike's Peak out our front window. Randy Kindig: Oh. Oh, that's nice.  Steve Leininger: Yeah we get snow up through about June, and then it starts again about September. But it's not as much snow as you would imagine.  Randy Kindig: I've got property in Montana, and I lived out there for a couple of years,  Steve Leininger: so there you go.  Randy Kindig: We probably got more snow up there.  Steve Leininger: Hey, you asked what I did.  I'm involved with Boy Scouts, a maker space with a church based ministry firewood ministry, actually. Some people call it a fire bank. So we provide firewood to people who can't afford that.  Randy Kindig: Oh.  Steve Leininger: So it's like a food bank, but with fire, firewood.  Randy Kindig: I've never heard of that. Steve Leininger: We source the firewood. We cut it down and we split it. Lots of volunteers involved; pretty big project.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay, cool. I also wanted to mention, I'm a fellow Boilermaker.  Steve Leininger: There you go.  Randy Kindig: I know you went to Purdue, right?  Steve Leininger: I did go to Purdue.  Randy Kindig: Did you ever get back there?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, and in fact they've got a couple learning spaces named after us. Randy Kindig: Oh, okay.  Steve Leininger: We've been donating to our respective alma maters. My wife went to IU.  Randy Kindig: Oh, is that right? Oh my.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, oh my and me. Yeah, the fact that the family who's all IU, their family tolerated me was, quite a remarkable thing.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  I find it interesting because I think you graduated in 76, is that right? Steve Leininger: 74.  Randy Kindig: Oh, 74.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. I was there from … Randy Kindig: Oh yeah, you actually were gone before I started.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I was there from 70 to 73. 70 to 70 four. When I graduated in four years, I got both my bachelor's and master's degree by going through the summer. I managed to pass out of the first year classes because of some of the high school stuff yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. I started in 75, so I guess we just missed each other.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Yeah. You're the new kids coming in.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. . So I, I found that interesting and I wanted to say that. Do you keep up with their sports program or anything like that? Steve Leininger: Yeah, they play a pretty good game of basketball in fact, I ribbed my wife about it because she was from the earlier days, the Bobby Knight days at IU that were phenomenal.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. For those of you listening, I'm talking with Steve Leininger, who was the primary developer, if not the developer, of the TRS 80 Model I.. Steve Leininger: I did all the hardware and software for it. I'll give Don French credit for sticking to it and getting a project started. And for refining, refining our product definition a little bit to where it was better than it would have been if I would have stopped early.  Randy Kindig: Okay. And I have talked with Don before. I've interviewed him on the podcast, and I met him at Tandy Assembly. But I'm just curious, when you were hired into Tandy and you were told what you were going to do; exactly what were you told?  Steve Leininger: They had a 16 bit microprocessor board that another consultant had developed. And they were trying to make a personal computer out of this. It was the Pace microprocessor, which was not a spectacular success for National, but it was one of the first 16 bit processors. But they had basically an initial prototype, might have been even the second level of the thing. No real documentation, no software, ran on three different voltages and didn't have input or output. Other than that, it was fine. I was brought in because I was one of the product one of the engineers for the development boards, the development board series for the SCAMP, the S C M P, the National Semiconductor had a very low cost microprocessor that at one point in time, I benchmarked against the 8080 with positive benchmarks and ours was faster on the benchmarks I put together, but as I was later told there's lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. But so they said take a look at using that, their low cost microprocessor that you were working with. And it really wasn't the right answer for the job. Let's see, the Altair was already out. Okay. That was the first real personal computer. The Apple, the Apple 1 was out. Okay. But it was not a consumer computer. Okay. They, it was just, it was like a cookie sheet of parts, which was very similar to what was used in the Atari games at the commercial games. Okay. pong and that kind of stuff at that time. And I had been working, after Purdue, I went to National Semiconductor. There's a long story behind all that. But in the process, some of us engineers would go up to the Homebrew Computer Club that met monthly up at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. We're talking Wilbur and Orville Wright kinds of things going on. Yeah. Everyone who was in the pioneering version of computing had at one time been to that meeting. Randy Kindig: It's very famous. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were basically a couple guys working out of their garage at the time. I was still working at National Semiconductor, but I also had a Moonlight job at Byte Shop number 2. The second computer store in all of California. Randy Kindig: And So you worked with Paul Terrell. Steve Leininger: I actually worked with one of, yeah, Paul, I actually worked for Paul's I don't know if it was a partner, Todd, I don't even remember the guy's name. But I just, it was.  Randy Kindig: I was curious because I'm talking to Paul right now and getting interviews. Steve Leininger: Yeah. I, I'm sure we met, but it wasn't anything horribly formal. Since it was the number two shop, it still wasn't the number one shop, which Paul worked out of. And so we had an Apple 1 there. I actually got the job because I when I When I went in there, they were trying to troubleshoot something with what looked like an oscilloscope that they pulled out of a tank, and so it had, audio level kind of bandwidth, but could not do a digital circuit. And I said what you really need is a, I told him, a good tectonic scope or something like that. He said do you want a job here? I ended up moonlighting there, which was, as fortune would have it, was a good deal when the folks from Radio Shack came down to visit. Because when they came down to visit the sales guy wasn't there. We'll let the engineer talk to them, they almost never let the engineers talk to them.  Randy Kindig: So you had to talk with them.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. It was John Roach, Don French, and it was probably Jack Sellers, okay and Don was probably the; he was the most on top of stuff electronically because he was a hobbyist of sorts. The other two guys: Mr. Sellers ran the engineering group. John Roach was the VP of manufacturing. And they were basically on a parts visit. They do it once a year, once, twice a year. And they also did it with Motorola and a couple other places. But I told him about this microprocessor and that I was writing a tiny BASIC for it. Okay. Tiny BASIC was a interpreted basic that a guy named Li-Chen Wang actually had the first thing in Dr. Dobbs, Dr. Dobbs magazine. We're talking about, we're talking about things that you don't realize are the shoulders of giants that turned out to be the shoulders of giants. And in fact, we reached out to Mr. Wang as we were working on it. We thought we had the software already taken care of because I'm jumping ahead in the story, but we were going to have Bob Uterich, and you'd have to chase that back. We had him signed up to write a BASIC interpreter for us, but because he'd already done one for the 6800, and it was included in Interface Age magazine. on a plastic record. You remember the old plastic records you could put in a magazine?  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I did see that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, so this was called a floppy ROM when they did it. Yeah. So if you had the right software and everything you could download the software off of the floppy ROM and run it on 6800. I think he used the Southwest Technical Products thing. And so we'd signed him up to do the BASIC. This was independent of the hardware design I was doing. And he went into radio silence on us; couldn't find him. And so we get to, in parallel, I was using the Li-Chen Wang plan to do at least a demo version of BASIC that would run on the original computer. And when the demo went successfully on Groundhog Day in 1977. This is the time frame we're talking about. I I started work on July 5th, the year before it. With Tandy? Yeah. Okay. We rolled into town on the 3rd, and of course they're closed for the 4th. And on the 5th I started, and there was the wandering around in the desert at the beginning of that, and Don's probably talked about how I was moved from there to their audio factory and then to the old saddle factory. Tandy used to be primarily a leather company before they bought Radio Shack in 1966 or something like that. And anyway, when the software didn't come out, I ended up writing the software, too. So I designed all the hardware and all the software. I didn't do the power supply. Chris Klein did the power supply. And, a little bit of the analog video circuitry, but it was very little part of that. Because we were just making a video signal. I did all the digital stuff on that. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: So the software ended up being what was the level one ROM, right?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, the level one ROM started out as the Li-Chen Wang BASIC. But he had no I. O. in his software, so I was doing the keyboard scanning. I had to do the cassette record and playback. Had to implement data read and data write Peek and poke, which is pretty simple. Put in the graphic statements. Yeah, oh, and floating point. Now, floating point, luckily, Zilog had a library for that, but I had to basically, this was before APIs were a big deal, so I basically had to use their interface, To what I had written and had to allocate storage, correct? We're talking about 4K bytes of ROM. I know, yeah. Very tiny, and to put all the I. O. in there, and to make it so that you could be updating the screen, when you're doing the cassette I put two asterisks up there and blinked the second one on and off, you remember that?  Randy Kindig: Oh yeah. Steve Leininger: Sort of as a level set.  Randy Kindig: Yeah.  Steve Leininger: And someone said, oh, you should have patented that thing. And actually I have seven or eight patents, U. S. patents, on different parts of the computer architecture.  Randy Kindig: Oh, do you?  Steve Leininger: But not the blinking asterisk, which is probably a patentable feature.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, I wish I'd had that on other machines, that I ended up having. So that would have been nice, yeah. I liken what you've done with what Steve Wozniak did, for the Apple II. You're somebody I've always wanted to talk to because I felt like you were one of the important pioneers in their early years. What do you have to say about that? Do you feel like what you did was ... Steve Leininger: in retrospect, yes. And I have a greater appreciation for people like the Wright Brothers. If you think about the Wright Brothers they took all their stuff from their Dayton, Ohio, bicycle shop down to Kill Devil Hills. We now know it as Kitty Hawk. But they would take the stuff down there by train, and then they would have to put it in horse driven wagons. Think about that. And people would ask them, what are you going to use the airplane for? It's what are you going to use a home computer for? Yeah, to maintain recipes and to play games.  Randy Kindig: Do your checkbook.  Steve Leininger: Do your check, home security. There's a whole lot of stuff that we talked about. And other giants entered the field: Multiplan, which became Lotus 1 2 3, which became Excel. Not the same company, but the idea, could you live without a spreadsheet today? Very difficult for some things, right?  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Yeah, it's ubiquitous.  People use it for everything. Yeah. Yeah. So you've been, I talked with David and Teresa Walsh. Or Welsh, I'm sorry, Welsh. Where they did the book Priming the Pump. Steve Leininger: That's very that's pretty close to the real thing.  Randy Kindig: Is it? Okay. They named their book after what you did and said; that you primed the pump for home computers. Can you expand on that and tell us exactly what you meant by that?  Steve Leininger: It again goes back to that shoulders of giants thing, and I forget who said that; it's actually a very old quote, I can see further because I'm standing on the shoulders of giants. And I think the thing that we brought to the table and Independently, Commodore and Apple did the same thing in 1977. There were three computers that came out inexpensive enough that you could use them in the home. They all came with ROM loaded BASIC. You didn't have to load anything else in. They all came with a video output. Some had displays. Some Commodore's was built in. One of ours was a Clip on and you had to go find one for the apple. For the Apple, yeah. Apple had a superior case. Apple and Radio Shack both had great keyboards. Randy Kindig: apple was expandable, with its... Steve Leininger: yeah, Apple Apple was internally expandable, yeah. And, but it cost $1,000. Without the cassette. Without the monitor. It wasn't the same type of device.  Randy Kindig: I was a college student. And, I looked at all three options. It was like the TRS-80; there are Radio Shacks everywhere.  You could go in and play with one; which was nice. And they were inexpensive enough that I could actually afford one. Steve Leininger: And, Radio Shack can't duck the, if you did something wrong, you had to fix it.  Randy Kindig: That's right. Let's see here. So initially the idea was to have a kit computer by Tandy? Steve Leininger: Yeah. I'm not sure whose idea that was. It made some kind of sense. Because that's the way the Altair was, and Radio Shack did sell a number of kits, but in the process of still kicking that around, saying it could be a possibility. I was one of the ones that said it could be a possibility. Within the same group that I did the design work from, they also would take kits in that people had built and troubleshoot the things if they didn't work. We had a couple engineers that would see if you connected something wrong or something.  If you didn't, sometimes it was a matter that the instructions weren't clear. If you tell someone to put an LED in, yeah. You specifically have to tell them which way to put it in. And might be an opportunity to tweak your timing. Yeah. Anyway, we get this clock in, and it was a digital clock. Seven segment LEDs probably cost 50 bucks or more. Which is crazy. But It says, put all the components in the board, turn the board over, and solder everything to the board. And, pretty simple instructions. This had a sheet of solder over the entire bottom of the board. Someone figured out how to put two pounds of solder on the back of this thing. And, as we all got a great chuckle out of that, You realize, oh, you don't want to have to deal with a computer like this. You really don't. And Lou Kornfeld, who was the president at the time, didn't really want the computer. But he said, it's not going to be a kit. All right. That, that, that took care of that. great idea. Great idea.  Randy Kindig: Were there any other times when you thought the computer might, or were there any times, when you thought the computer might not come to fruition? Any snags that you had that made you think that maybe this isn't going to work?  Steve Leininger: Not really. I was young and pretty well undaunted. Randy Kindig: Pretty sure you could,  Steve Leininger: yeah I, it wasn't any, it wasn't any different than building one at home. I'd been building kits since, night kits, heath kits, that kind of stuff, since I was a kid. And home brewed a couple things, including a hot dog cooker made from two nails and a couple wires that plugged into the wall. Don't try that at home.  Randy Kindig: No kidding.  Steve Leininger: But, it's funny if you If you look it up on, if you look that kind of project up on the internet, you can still find a project like that. It's like what's it called? Anvil tossing, where you put gunpowder under an anvil, shoot it up in the air. What could possibly go wrong? Don't,  Randy Kindig: It's very well documented in books like Priming the Pump, Stan Veit's book, which I assume you're familiar with, and Fire in the Valley, what your involvement was with the Model 1. But there was some mention of your involvement with the Expansion Interface and other TRS 80 projects. What else did you work on while you were there?  Steve Leininger: The Color Computer, the Expansion Interface. The model three to a little.  Randy Kindig: Okay.  Steve Leininger: Little bit. The model two was the big one. And point I just got tired of the management there.  Randy Kindig: Did you? Okay.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. I my mind was going faster than theirs, and they made the conscious decision to do whatever IBM has done, but do it cheaper. That, to me, that's not a. Didn't say less expensively either, so the whole thing just troubled me that, we're not going to be able to do anything new unless IBM has done it. And at about the same time the Macintosh came out and a superb piece of work. Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Okay. So what education training and previous work experience did you have at the time you got hired by Tandy that made you uniquely qualified for that project that they were looking for?  Steve Leininger: I'd been playing around with electronics since I was in the third grade. Actually, electricity.  Randy Kindig: The third grade, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. My, my mom got me a kit that had light bulbs and bells and buzzers and wire from, I think it might have been the Metropolitan Museum. They had a kit. They, they've got a, they still today have an online presence. It, of course the materials have changed, but the kit had all these parts and it had no instructions. And I don't know if that was by design or it didn't have instructions, so I had to learn how to hook up wires and light bulbs and bells and switches to make it do things. And, in the process, I found out that if you put a wire right across the battery terminals, it gets hot. And, interesting stuff to know. Pretty soon, I was taking this stuff in to show and tell in the third grade. Look, and I was very early in electronics. It's electricity. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then my mom would take me to the library. She was quite a voracious reader, and I'd go to the library. technical section specifically the Dewey Decimal 621, which was electronics and things like that. Randy Kindig: you still remember that.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And in the 590 series, there's some good stuff too. And I would usually take out a stack of books, even though I was a horrible reader because I'm dyslexic and ADD. So I have an attention span and reading problem. But the technical stuff I was reading about pipeline architecture processors while I was still in junior high. And not that was important to where I ended up, but it was important because I understood the words and data flow, and stuff like that. And between that and building the kits and things like that, I When we moved to Indianapolis, my dad moved jobs down to Indianapolis. Randy Kindig: Oh, you lived in Indianapolis?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. So I moved from South Bend down to Indianapolis. So I probably passed your house as . Actually we came down through Kokomo, but but yeah.  Randy Kindig: I actually grew up in that part of the state. Just south of South Bend.  Steve Leininger: Okay. So yeah La Paz, Plymouth,  Randy Kindig: yeah, Warsaw, Rochester.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I was born in Rochester.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. So that's where I grew up in that area.  Steve Leininger: Okay, there you go. My dad's from Akron.  Randy Kindig: Are you serious?  Steve Leininger: I am serious.  Randy Kindig: Akron's where my wife grew up. And I was just 10 miles from there.  Steve Leininger: The general store there, Dan Leininger and Sons, that's my great grandfather. Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: I'll be darned. Okay. Okay.  Steve Leininger: So now it all makes sense.  Randy Kindig: That's amazing.  Steve Leininger: Anyway, we started a garage band. This is before Apple's garage band. And I made my own amplifier. It basically had the sun sun amplifiers back end on the thing and a Fender Showman front end on it. Completely home brewed really loud amplifier. And I had a friend who had a guitar amplifier that was broken, and he had taken it down to the music store there. And after six weeks of not getting it back, they said we've had trouble with our technician and all that. I asked if I could go down and look at it, and in 15 minutes I had his amplifier fixed. And they said, do you want tom so you want a job? All right. Yeah, because I'd been doing, I'd had a paper route before and I don't think I was doing anything since we'd moved and ao I started working in a music store and they ended up with two music stores and then an organ store next door and I started repairing that kind of stuff. And this was the end of my first year in college. Went to the extension in Indianapolis.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. And Was that I U P U I?  Steve Leininger: IUPUI, yeah. Yeah. I, yeah, I U P U I.  Randy Kindig: Huh. I went there as well.  Steve Leininger: Yeah and learned Fortran there, got all my first year classes out, and then moved on up to the campus. And because we'd always go to the library, and because my mom would often take me to the library, the newsstand not too far from the library, and she'd get a couple magazines, but she let me get an electronic magazine. And, I didn't understand these things, pretty soon you start understanding the pic, you start understanding it. This is a resistor, I built a little shocker box based on a design in probably elementary electronics. And It's like a handheld electric fence.  Randy Kindig: Oh, wow.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Think hot dog cooker. Anyway, so I learned some electronics that way. A lot of that was self taught. I learned quite a bit more by working in the music store, again, this was before I was taught any formal electronics. And actually when I moved up to campus on Purdue, I thought I was going to be a world class guitar amplifier designer. That's where I thought. And it turns out my analog gut feelings aren't, weren't as good as other people's. Paul Schreiber does a much better job with electronics, with analog electronics than I do. But digital electronics, I understood this stuff. I would hang out in the library and I'd read the trade magazines. So I was up to date on, I was way more up to date than a typical professor would be on current electronics. And in 1973, which was the end of my junior year, Electronics Magazine had an article on the Intel 8008. And I said, Oh, I understand this. See, I'd already been taking assembly language. Now they didn't teach assembly language programming in the electronics school. They had Fortran, but there was no way to get from Fortran to ..they weren't teaching programming languages. I had to go to the business school where I learned assembly language on the school's CDC 6600 mainframe.  Randy Kindig: Really?  Steve Leininger: Yeah.  Randy Kindig: Through the business school?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And for those of you who have never tried assembly language programming, it looks like a foreign language until you just internalize it in your brain: there's ADD, A D and A D C for ADD with carry, and there's a whole bunch of different things. There's different ways to move data around, but you're only doing a few really basic things, and if you do it fast enough, it looks like it's instantaneous. That's the way even your phone works today. It's because you're doing it fast enough. It fools you.  Randy Kindig: Yep. Wow. Do you ever look back at these days, at those days, with amazement? As far as how far the industry has come?  Steve Leininger: Oh yeah. And, it's funny because you wouldn't, you couldn't probably, but you wouldn't start over again. I had to learn, I had to learn digital video. Actually the giant that I, whose shoulders I stood on there was the late Don Lancaster. He had a book called TV Typewriter Cookbook. And actually that came out a little bit later, but he had a TV typewriter series in Radio Electronics Magazine. And basically alphanumeric display. If you think about it, just the glass teletype, the keyboard display and a serial interface at the time that the RadioShack computer came out was selling for 999. Another 400 on top of what we were selling the whole computer for. Because we had a microprocessor in there. We didn't have a whole lot of options. We didn't have a whole lot of fluff. In fact Motorola said, send this to your schematics and your parts list and let's see if we can minimize your circuit. And after two weeks they sent it back. He said, you did a pretty good job here. . .  Randy Kindig: Okay. Huh. You still stay in touch with people at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: A few of them. It's actually been more lately. Because it's almost more interesting now. It's like the, I don't know whatever happened to Atwater and Kent, of the Atwater Kent radio. But, that's an old school radio that now you've got people that rebuild them and got them all polished up and all this kind of stuff. But for a while they ended up in the dump. I'm sure, there are some trash 80s that ended up in the trash.  Randy Kindig: I'm sure.  Steve Leininger: Yeah but I've gotten rid of lots of PCs that don't meet my needs anymore, right? Randy Kindig: Sure. Yeah, we all have, somewhere along the way. It seemed like you were really quiet there for a long time and that you were difficult to get in contact with. Steve Leininger: I wasn't really that difficult. I didn't maintain a social media presence on the thing, but things that I had my own consulting company for quite a while. I actually came back to Radio Shack two more times after I left. One was to come back as a technologist there. The politics still didn't work out well. Then I came back as a contractor to help them with some of their online things. I actually had a website called Steve's Workbench. Steve Leininger: And you can find it on the Internet Archive. The Wayback Machine. And it had some basic stamp projects. And we were going to do all sorts of other things. But I managed to upset the people at RadioShack. com. They didn't have a big sense of humor about someone being critical about the products that they'd selected. And I, I did a... I was going to start doing product reviews on the kits, how easy it was to solder, whether it was a good value for the money and all that kind of stuff. And I gave a pretty honest review on it. And Radio Shack didn't appreciate the power of an honest review. It's what makes Amazon what it is, right? You go in there and if there's something that's got just two stars on the reviews, Yeah, you really got to know what you're doing if you're going to buy the thing, right? And if you see something that's got a bunch of one star and a bunch of five star reviews Yeah, someone's probably aalting the reference at the top end. And so I mean they had such a fit that when they changed platforms For RadioShack. com, they didn't take Steve's Workbench with it And I basically lost that position. Radio Shack should own the makerspace business right now. They at one time, one time I suggested, you ought to take a look at buying Digikey or maybe Mouser. Mouser was right down the street from us. They already had their hands into Allied, but these other two were doing stuff, more consumer oriented, but they didn't. They were making, they were flush with money from selling cell phone contracts. And they thought that was the way of the future until the cell phone companies started reeling that back in. At a certain point, you don't want to be paying your 5 percent or 10 percent royalty to Radio Shack for just signing someone up.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Okay. I didn't realize you had ever gone back and worked for them again.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, twice,  Randy Kindig: and so I'm curious, did you meet any other famous figures in the microcomputer revolution while you were working at Tandy?  Steve Leininger: At Tandy, let's see.  Randy Kindig: I'm just curious.  Steve Leininger: Yeah, Bill Gates, of course. I went out when we were working on level two BASIC. And Bill Gates I think was probably a hundred- thousand- aire at that time. And, working in a, thhey had a floor in a bank building in Seattle. He took me to the basement of his dad's law firm, and we had drinks there, and I went out to his house on the lake. This was not the big house. I've never been there. It was a big house on the lake, but it wasn't the one That he built later on. So I knew him early on run across Forest Mims a couple times. And of course, he's the shoulders upon which a lot of electronic talent was built and some of the stuff is lost. Jameco is actually bringing him back as a… Jameco is a kinda like a Radio Shack store online. It's yeah it is, it's not as robust as DigiKey or Bower, but they've held their roots.  Someone I've not met Lady Ada from Adafruit would be fun.  Randy Kindig: Yeah. Would, yeah.  Steve Leininger: I, that, that's another thing that, if we had something along those lines, that would have been cool, but the buyers weren't up, up to the task and they when you don't want criticism at a certain point you've got to quit doing things if you don't want to be criticized.  Randy Kindig: Sure. When you finally got the Model 1 rolled out and you saw the tremendous interest, were you surprised in the interest that it garnered?  Steve Leininger: I wasn't. I wasn't. In fact, there's a quote of me. Me and John Roach had a discussion on how many of these do you think we could sell? And, this is actually quoted in his obituary on the, in the Wall Street Journal. I, Mr. Tandy said you could build 3, 500 of these because we've got 3, 500 stores and we can use them in the inventory. And to take inventory. And John Roach thought maybe we could sell, up to 5, 000 of these things in the first year. And I said, oh no, I think we could sell 50, 000. To which he said, horseshit. Just like that. And that, now I quoted that to the Wall Street Journal, and they put that in his obituary. Yeah I don't know how many times that word shows up in the Wall Street Journal, but if you search their files you'll find that it was me quoting John Roach. So … Randy Kindig: I'll have to, I'll have to look for that, yeah, that's funny. So you were not surprised by the interest,  Steve Leininger: no, it, part of it was I knew the leverage of the stores I'd been working, when we introduced the thing I'd been working for the company for just over a year. Think about that. And it wasn't until just before probably, it was probably September or October when Don and I agreed on the specs. I'd keep writing it up, and he'd look at it. Don actually suggested that, demanded, he doesn't, in a, but in a good natured way, he made a good case for it, that I have, in addition to the cassette interface on there, that I have a way to read and write data. Because if you're going to do an accounting program, you got to be able to read and write data. I actually figured out a way to do that. There were a couple other things. John Roach really wanted blinking lights on the thing. And my mechanical, the mechanical designer, there said that's going to cost more money to put the LEDs in there. What are you going to do with them? And, Mr. Roach was, you know, familiar with the IBM probably the 360 by then? Anyway. The mainframes. Yeah, mainframes always had blinking lights on them.  Randy Kindig: Exactly.  Steve Leininger: And since it's a computer, it should have blinking lights. And Larry said, Larry the mechanical guy said what are you going to do with them? I said, I can't, I said I could put stuff up there, It's… Randy Kindig: What are they going to indicate?  Steve Leininger: Yeah. And then, he said, I'll tell you what, I'm going to make the case without holes for the lights and just don't worry about it. That was the end of the discussion. Mr. Roach was probably a little disappointed, but yeah, no one else had them,  Randy Kindig: it's funny to think that you'd have blinking lights on a microcomputer like that. Yeah. Yeah. Is there any aspect of the Model one development you would do differently if you were doing it today?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I would, I would've put the eighth memory chip in with the, with the video display so you get upper and lower case. Randy Kindig: Yeah, there you go. Okay.  Steve Leininger: Might've put buffers to the outside world. We had the, the microprocessor was buffered, but it was, it was very short distance off the connector there. Otherwise, there's not a whole lot I would have changed. Software could have been written a little better, but when one person's writing all the software the development system that I had was a Zilog development system. And 30 character percent a second. Decorator, line printer. The fact that I got it done is actually miracle stuff.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, and you got it done in a year, right?  Steve Leininger: And it was all written in assembly language. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Got it all done in a year.  Randy Kindig: That's a good year's work. Steve Leininger: It is.  Randy Kindig: Building a computer from scratch, basically, and then getting it...  Steve Leininger: and back then we had to program EEPROMs. We didn't have flash memory. Okay. Didn't hardly have operating systems back then. Not that I was using one. There was something in the Zilog thing, but yeah we were so far ahead of things, we were developing a product rather than a computer. And maybe that's the whole difference is that we had a product that you pull it up, plug it in, and it says these are TRS 80 and it wasn't the Model 1 until the Model 2 came out.  Randy Kindig: Yeah, exactly. It was just the TRS 80. Yeah. So I have to know, do you have any of the old hardware? Steve Leininger: I've got a Model 1. I don't use it except for demonstrations now. I actually have two. I've got one that works and one that's probably got a broken keyboard connector from taking it out of the case and holding it up too many times.  Randy Kindig: Were these prototypes or anything?  Steve Leininger: They are non serial production units. I've got the, I've got a prototype ROM board that's got the original integer basic that I wrote. I don't have the video boards and all that kind of stuff that went with it when we did the original demonstration. Let's see we had four wire wrapped, completely wire wrapped industrial wire wrapped versions that we used for prototyping the software. One went to David Lein, who wrote the book that came with the thing, the basic book. One I had at my desk and there were two others. Yeah. And they got rid of all of those. So a cautionary tale is if you do something in the future where you've got that prototype that was put together in Tupperware containers or held together with duct tape, you need to at least take pictures of it. And you might want to keep one aside. If it turns out to be something like the Apple III, you can probably get rid of all that stuff. If it turns out to be something like the Apple II, The RadioShack computer, the Commodore PET, you really ought to, enshrine that. The original iPhone. Apple did stuff that was, what was it, can't remember what it was. They had a they had a thing not unlike the... 3Com ended up getting them. Anyway the hand of the PDAs, no one knows what a Personal Oh, digital assistant. Yeah. Yeah. We call that a, we call that a phone ...  Randy Kindig: Palm Pilot. Yeah.  Steve Leininger: Yeah. Palm Pilot. That's the one. Yeah. I've got a couple of those. I've got three model 100's. I've got one of the early… Randy Kindig: Did you work on the 100s? Steve Leininger: I used it, but I didn't work on it. The design. No. Okay. That was an NEC product with Radio Shack skins on it.  Randy Kindig: Oh, that's right. That's right.  Steve Leininger: Kay Nishi was the big mover on that. Yeah. Let's see I've got an Altair and an ASR 33 Teletype. Yeah, we're talking about maybe the computer's grandfather, right? I've had a whole bunch of other stuff. I've probably had 40 other computers that I don't have anymore. I am gravitating towards mechanical music devices, big music boxes, that kind of stuff.  Randy Kindig: Oh, okay. Cool. Interesting. Steve, that's all the questions I had prepared. Steve Leininger: Okay.  Randy Kindig: Is there anything I should have asked about that?  Steve Leininger: Oh my,  Randy Kindig: anything you'd want to say?  Steve Leininger: Yeah, I, I've given talks before on how do you innovate? How do you become, this is pioneering kinds of stuff. So you really have to have that vision, man. The vision, I can't exactly say where the vision comes from, but being dyslexic for me has been a gift. Okay and this is something I tell grade school and middle school students that, some people are out there saying I, I can't do that because, it's just too much stuff or my brain is cluttered. Cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what's an empty desk the sign of? Embrace the clutter. Learn a lot of different things. Do what you're passionate about. Be willing to. support your arguments, don't just get angry if someone doesn't think the way you do, explain why you're doing it that way. And sometimes it's a matter of they just don't like it or they don't have the vision. The ones that don't have the vision, they never, they may never have the vision. I've quit companies because of people like that. But When you've got the vision and can take it off in your direction, it could just end up as being art. And I shouldn't say just art, art can be an amazing thing. And that behind these walls here, we've got a pinball machine and gaming conference going on. And it is nutcase. But is there stuff out there you look at and say, Oh, wow. Yeah. And I do too. Keep it a while going. Randy Kindig: Very cool. All right. That's a great stopping point, I think. All right. I really appreciate it, Steve taking the time to talk with us today.  Steve Leininger: Thanks, Randy.  

CoCoTALK! Episode 243 - CoCo New Year! Happy 2022 00:00:00 -Start/Intro 00:01:44 -Start of the show! 00:02:05 -Panel Introductions 00:07:30 -A special presentation by D. Bruce Moore & Rick Adams 00:20:20 -We paid the sound bill! 00:27:00 -Terry Steen, Dont watch/listen to this part, and no one tell him! 00:27:40 -Terry Steen, just skip to here! 00:29:25 -Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 00:31:45 -Game On! discussion - Dragon Slayer 00:44:30 -Game On! discussion - Thexder 00:58:25 -Game On! Challenge LIVE report 01:14:14 -Game On! Game for next week, With(out) Nick Marotta! But... Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 01:16:10 -Thank you Patrons! 01:17:45 -Are you on Discord? Join Here: Discord.CoCoTalk.Live 01:18:18 -Commercial Break 01:20:18 -Who's new to Discord? 01:20:25 -Who's new to Discord? (Take 2!) 01:22:34 -CoCoFest 2022! 01:23:43 -Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 01:25:20 -Game On! News} Sheldon MacDonald- update on his Ice Brawlers, which I am waiting for! 01:28:42 -Game On! News} Jim Gerrie- Demon Attack, but compiled... and Tank... and Dropship... and more we dont even know about yet! 01:33:10 -Game On! News} tanam 1972/YT- Frogger port from "Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy" to MC-10 01:36:16 -Game On! News} Chris Hawkins/YT- "10 day Christmas Countdown" of Dragon games 01:3:31 -Game On! News} James Jones- Google doc on conversion of the 1K ZX-81 BASIC game to BASIC09 01:40:35 -Game On! News} Pere Serrat- AGD pack #43 released, #44 is next! 01:44:04 -Game On! News} Paul Shoemaker- Progress update on Dragon version of Poker Squares 01:47:43 -Game On! News} Paul Thayer/YT- VLOG #5 on upcoming CocoBan 01:51:51 -Game On! News} Neil Blanchard- GMC cartridge version of Ciaran Anscombs's Blockdown 01:53:13 -Game On! News} Sibling Rivalry (Tim & AJ)/YT- Episode 10, PitStop! (Hey AJ!  Tim cheated! ) 01:59:23 -Game On! News} LardDeus/YT- gameplay video/review of Dino Wars 02:01:07 -Game On! News} Retro PC- new game 'LIFT' (MC-10/Coco) 02:02:45 -End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 02:03:03 -Commercial Break 02:05:15 -News, with L. Curtis Boyle **CoCo/General News** 02:05:35 -CoCo News} Glen Hewlett- blog post and video on his mod's to Simon Jonassens' dot plot demo 02:08:28 -CoCo News} Terry Steege@Retro Tech Time/YT- Commercial for CoCoFest 2022! 02:09:09 -CoCo News} Kevin Phillipson & Michael Rywalt- Updated video on "Turbo9" 02:13:27 -CoCo News} Allen Huffman- his  of the Logicker Vintage Computing Challenge and playing with bits 02:16:26 -CoCo News} 48KRAM/TW- stream demonstrating some Christmas programs, CoCo at Time Stamp-51:00 02:18:56 -CoCo News} AC's 8-bit Zone/YT- Next in sprite series, FPGA Sprite board! 02:24:00 -CoCo News} The Coco Crew- Released Episode #79! this is pack full of CoCo goodness! 02:28:10 -CoCo News} Alfredo Santos- pictures of his old Coco's from his attic, including older 4K Coco 1's 02:33:03 -Samuel Gimes??? 02:34:08 -CoCoTalk, New and IMPROVED! 02:34:54 -Back to the CoCoTalk streaming show! 02:36:46 -CoCo News} Brian Schubring- video and the Ultimuse file for playing "Carol of the Bells" via MIDI from the Coco 3 02:44:37 -Remove... um WHO?!? 02:44:55 -CoCo News} Rick Adams & D. Bruce Moore- re-mixed version of Nightmare Highway 02:45:15 -CoCo News} Simon Jonassen- sourcecode for his "infinite bobs" demo 02:46:06 -CoCo News} John Linville/YT- "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" performed on the GMC cartridge 02:46:46 -CoCo News} The Taylor and Amy Show/YT- upgrading a Coco 2 from 16K to 64K RAM, and then play Math Bingo 02:51:10 -CoCo News} NML32/YT- first alpha release of the free Coco 3 core for the MiSTer 02:53:20 -CoCo News} Color Computer Programming/YT- released more BASIC programming videos over the holidays **MC-10 News** 02:55:22 -MC-10 News} John Linville- found MC-10 PSU's at Jameco! **Dragon News** 03:00:33 -Dragon News} Tom Erik Gundersen- early Serial number model, #388! 03:01:10 -End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:03:30 -Project Updates and Acquisitions 03:04:00 -PUA} Sloopy X. Malibu 03:07:20 -"OS-9? Never heard of it" -sloopy, just before he disappeared from this planet 03:14:34 -PUA} Rick Ulland 03:20:40 -PUA} Brian "The Music Man" Schubring 03:23:13 -Upcoming guests 03:23:53 -Outtro 03:26:46 -Encore playing of Nightmare Highway Country Remix 03:29:45 -CoCoTalk, now with better audio! 03:30:00 -Good Bye Everybody! Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelm... Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow

CoCoTALK! Episode 243 - CoCo New Year! Happy 2022 00:00:00 -Start/Intro 00:01:44 -Start of the show! 00:02:05 -Panel Introductions 00:07:30 -A special presentation by D. Bruce Moore & Rick Adams 00:20:20 -We paid the sound bill! 00:27:00 -Terry Steen, Dont watch/listen to this part, and no one tell him! 00:27:40 -Terry Steen, just skip to here! 00:29:25 -Game On! Results, With Nick Marotta! Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 00:31:45 -Game On! discussion - Dragon Slayer 00:44:30 -Game On! discussion - Thexder 00:58:25 -Game On! Challenge LIVE report 01:14:14 -Game On! Game for next week, With(out) Nick Marotta! But... Featuring Ken of Canadian Retro Things 01:16:10 -Thank you Patrons! 01:17:45 -Are you on Discord? Join Here: Discord.CoCoTalk.Live 01:18:18 -Commercial Break 01:20:18 -Who's new to Discord? 01:20:25 -Who's new to Discord? (Take 2!) 01:22:34 -CoCoFest 2022! 01:23:43 -Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 01:25:20 -Game On! News} Sheldon MacDonald- update on his Ice Brawlers, which I am waiting for! 01:28:42 -Game On! News} Jim Gerrie- Demon Attack, but compiled... and Tank... and Dropship... and more we dont even know about yet! 01:33:10 -Game On! News} tanam 1972/YT- Frogger port from "Gakken Compact Vision TV Boy" to MC-10 01:36:16 -Game On! News} Chris Hawkins/YT- "10 day Christmas Countdown" of Dragon games 01:3:31 -Game On! News} James Jones- Google doc on conversion of the 1K ZX-81 BASIC game to BASIC09 01:40:35 -Game On! News} Pere Serrat- AGD pack #43 released, #44 is next! 01:44:04 -Game On! News} Paul Shoemaker- Progress update on Dragon version of Poker Squares 01:47:43 -Game On! News} Paul Thayer/YT- VLOG #5 on upcoming CocoBan 01:51:51 -Game On! News} Neil Blanchard- GMC cartridge version of Ciaran Anscombs's Blockdown 01:53:13 -Game On! News} Sibling Rivalry (Tim & AJ)/YT- Episode 10, PitStop! (Hey AJ!  Tim cheated! ) 01:59:23 -Game On! News} LardDeus/YT- gameplay video/review of Dino Wars 02:01:07 -Game On! News} Retro PC- new game 'LIFT' (MC-10/Coco) 02:02:45 -End of Line for... Game On! News, with L. Curtis Boyle 02:03:03 -Commercial Break 02:05:15 -News, with L. Curtis Boyle **CoCo/General News** 02:05:35 -CoCo News} Glen Hewlett- blog post and video on his mod's to Simon Jonassens' dot plot demo 02:08:28 -CoCo News} Terry Steege@Retro Tech Time/YT- Commercial for CoCoFest 2022! 02:09:09 -CoCo News} Kevin Phillipson & Michael Rywalt- Updated video on "Turbo9" 02:13:27 -CoCo News} Allen Huffman- his  of the Logicker Vintage Computing Challenge and playing with bits 02:16:26 -CoCo News} 48KRAM/TW- stream demonstrating some Christmas programs, CoCo at Time Stamp-51:00 02:18:56 -CoCo News} AC's 8-bit Zone/YT- Next in sprite series, FPGA Sprite board! 02:24:00 -CoCo News} The Coco Crew- Released Episode #79! this is pack full of CoCo goodness! 02:28:10 -CoCo News} Alfredo Santos- pictures of his old Coco's from his attic, including older 4K Coco 1's 02:33:03 -Samuel Gimes??? 02:34:08 -CoCoTalk, New and IMPROVED! 02:34:54 -Back to the CoCoTalk streaming show! 02:36:46 -CoCo News} Brian Schubring- video and the Ultimuse file for playing "Carol of the Bells" via MIDI from the Coco 3 02:44:37 -Remove... um WHO?!? 02:44:55 -CoCo News} Rick Adams & D. Bruce Moore- re-mixed version of Nightmare Highway 02:45:15 -CoCo News} Simon Jonassen- sourcecode for his "infinite bobs" demo 02:46:06 -CoCo News} John Linville/YT- "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" performed on the GMC cartridge 02:46:46 -CoCo News} The Taylor and Amy Show/YT- upgrading a Coco 2 from 16K to 64K RAM, and then play Math Bingo 02:51:10 -CoCo News} NML32/YT- first alpha release of the free Coco 3 core for the MiSTer 02:53:20 -CoCo News} Color Computer Programming/YT- released more BASIC programming videos over the holidays **MC-10 News** 02:55:22 -MC-10 News} John Linville- found MC-10 PSU's at Jameco! **Dragon News** 03:00:33 -Dragon News} Tom Erik Gundersen- early Serial number model, #388! 03:01:10 -End of Line for... News, with L. Curtis Boyle 03:03:30 -Project Updates and Acquisitions 03:04:00 -PUA} Sloopy X. Malibu 03:07:20 -"OS-9? Never heard of it" -sloopy, just before he disappeared from this planet 03:14:34 -PUA} Rick Ulland 03:20:40 -PUA} Brian "The Music Man" Schubring 03:23:13 -Upcoming guests 03:23:53 -Outtro 03:26:46 -Encore playing of Nightmare Highway Country Remix 03:29:45 -CoCoTalk, now with better audio! 03:30:00 -Good Bye Everybody! Email any suggestions you have for the show to cocotalk@cocotalk.live Visit us on the web at http://cocotalk.live Join us for daily conversations on Discord: http://discord.cocotalk.live Custom artwork designed by Instagram artist Joel M. Adams: https://www.instagram.com/artistjoelm... Custom CoCoTALK! and retro merchandise is available at: http://8bit256.com Consider becoming a patron of the show: https://patreon.com/ogsteviestrow

In this episode, Jen and Alvaro talk about their new, yet to be named, Reverse Engineering Podcast. Some of the links we talked about through the show: @scanlime’s awesome reverse engineering stuff. MTVRE Meetup Halt and Catch Fire Security conferences: DEFCON , blackhat, REcon “Hardware/mechanical” reverse engineering example: Auto-syphon reverse engineering Boost Converter with Water Ethereal/Wireshark packet analyzer. Alvaro’s apgForm php script. Ken Shirriff’s great blog. Various places to buy components in the SF Bay Area: Fry’s, HSC Surplus, Weird Stuff Warehouse, JameCo, and Evil Mad Scientist Labs Next episode will be with guest Dmitry Grinberg! http://dmitry.gr/ Have comments or suggested names for the show? Find us on twitter @unnamed_show,  or hit us up at on the comment form. You can find Jen on twitter @rebelbotjen and http://rebelbot.com as well as Alvaro on twitter @alvaroprieto and http://alvarop.com.

Discussion: In this video, I’ll explain what parts you'll need to complete this Arduino Crash Course. Immediately below this discussion section, there is a summary checklist of links for these parts. You're welcome to check it out! The links take you to Jameco, a United States based electronics supplier. I'm actually one of their affiliates. So, if you decide to click any of those links below, you’ll be helping to make me a multi-millionaire and continue to buy fuel for my yacht. So that would be awesome. All joking aside, you might already have a lot of this stuff laying around. It just depends on how much you've been into electronics thus far. The first thing you'll need is an Arduino UNO. As you may or may not know, Arduino has all types of derivatives out there. An Arduino UNO There is a company named Arduino that made the board. That is the official Arduino, but Arduino is open-source hardware. In other words, the Arduino company made the board’s schematics and everything publicly available. Therefore, anybody can take access that information and replicate the board. Anyone can duplicate it, modify it, and even legally sell it. That’s why there are so many derivatives, or clones, out there of an Arduino UNO board. They are basically the exact same thing as your official Arduino UNO. Sometimes you’ll find that maybe one or two customizations have been made. My recommendation to you is to get an authentic, official Arduino UNO from the Arduino company while working through this course. The reason is because that prevents any discrepancies and concerns about hardware when following the tutorials. If you're following everything in the lesson, and something is amiss, then you can at least know it's not the hardware. You’ll know that you have the same hardware with which I’m working. Again... that’s just my recommendation. Now, if you already have an Arduino clone or derivative, feel free to use it. It will probably work just fine. The next thing you'll need is a USB cable to plug your Arduino into your computer. Basic procedure is to write code on the computer and then transfer that code, uploading it to the Arduino board. An AB USB cord The USB we’ll be using in this course is an A-B type. One end looks like your typical USB that just plugs into a computer, and the other end is almost square - or maybe more like a little house, depending on your imagination. This other end is what would typically go into the back of a printer. You will also need light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. An LED It’s best to get at least 10 of the five millimeter type. Any color of mix of colors is fine. I usually use red or white. Next on the list are resistors. Resistors Resistors, as the name suggests, resist the flow of current in a circuit. The bigger the number of the resistor, the more current they resist. When it resists current, the resistor takes that electrical energy and transforms it into heat energy. Therefore, it’s important to note resistors can get hot. Just file that away as a quick mental note for later down the line when we begin setting up circuits. You may not notice it that much for the lower level things we will be doing. However, I wanted to make you aware just in case. This is the list of required resistors: ten 220 Ohm resistors and two 10,000 Ohm resistors (also referred to as 10 K resistors). You’ll also need a potentiometer. Potentiometers It really doesn't matter what size you get. I’ll be using a 10 K potentiometer for this course. If you have one around, you can just use that. A potentiometer is similar to a resistor, but it's resistance can vary. That allows you to create something called a voltage divider. We won't get into that now. Just know that you need a potentiometer of any size. Next, you'll use a solderless breadboard. No, we won’t be cutting bread - although food does sound really good right now…. But I digress, a solderless breadboard is a circuit board where you can connect electrical components together without having to solder them. It has a bunch of little holes in it, and in the holes are all these little copper clips. A solderless breadboard The holes are aligned in a bunch of rows and columns. The columns are electrically connected, but the rows are not. So, you stick the leads of your electrical components, such as an LED, into the holes for the metal clips. This will complete the circuit, connecting the electronics. This is an example of how you'll use the breadboard. Don’t worry, it’s a lot easier than it sounds. For prototyping, like we'll be doing, it's a great tool since it permits quick and easy setup and changes to your circuit. The next required items are jumper wires. Jumper wires These fit down into the little holes on a breadboard and into the little holes on the Arduino board. (We'll be talking about the Arduino board more later, but those are called the headers.) Anyway, the jumper wires allow you to extend your electrical connections, giving you some extra space with which to work. You'll need 12. Two momentary push-buttons are also on the course list. A push button This button is normally off. That means if you're not pressing the button, no electrical connection is made between either side of the button. The button is off until you push it. When you’re holding the button down, though, an electrical connection is made. Once you remove your finger, the button pops back out again, breaking the electrical connection. They come in all different styles. However, if you follow the links below, you'll get an idea for what to look. Finally, you'll need some alligator clips. Alligator clips These help you connect leads together if, for some reason, we need to connect them in a way a little different than using the holes on the solderless breadboard. It may seems like quite a bit of equipment, but it’s really not that bad. I kept convenience in mind when creating this list. All of these items are relatively cheap. There are a couple of other things you'll need, though. I assume that you already have a computer running Windows, Mac, some type of Mac software, or Linux. Of course, an internet connection is also required because you'll have to download the Arduino software. I’ll explain the Arduino software in a later lesson. There are few things that are optional. These are not covered in this crash course, but they would be fun to have in order to experiment with your code. This is the optional equipment. You could get a photoresistor, a temperature sensor, maybe some additional potentiometers, and an RGB LED. RGB means red, green, blue LED. It's kind of an all in one, and they are pretty neat use. I believe that's it for the required and optional equipment. Again, the parts list is below. I’m looking forward to jumping into the course with you. See you in the next video! Hardware List for the Arduino Crash Course Below is the list of items you will need to get you through the course. The quantities of each provide a little leeway in case your cat eats an LED or you loose a resistor in your shag carpet. I have made every effort to keep this list minimal to provide the lowest cost to entry. NOTE: The links below take you to Jameco, of whom I am an affiliate. The cost to you is the same, but I get a small commission for purchases that helps me keep the site running and allows me to buy giant yachts. I use Jameco for a bunch of stuff - I like and trust them. I also use Digikey, Mouser, Adafruit, Makershed and Sparkfun. Required: Arduino Compatible Board USB Cable to plug in Arduino (A/B type - one end is typical USB, the other is what would go into a printer) LEDs AKA Light Emitting Diodes (10) 10K potentiometer (1) 220 Ohm Resistor (10) 10K Ohm Resistor (2) Jumper Wires (12) Solderless Breadboard (1) Pushbutton (2) Alligator Clips (3) Another option is to buy our Kit-on-a-Shield for Arduino:   Click here to learn more.   You'll need this stuff too: Now there are certain things I am assuming you have access to that you will also need, these include the below items. A computer running Windows, Mac OS, or Linux An internet connection to download the Arduino Software Optional stuff: While the list above will meet all your needs, sometimes having a little extra stuff to play with makes for a more fun and diverse learning experience. Below are items you can easily experiment with alongside this course: Photo Resistor Additional potentiometers RGB LEDs - red, green and blue all in one LED matrix Temperature sensors Arduino Kit just for this course from Jameco: I have had the pleasure of working with Jameco to create a kit that provides all the needed items for the Arduino Crash Course. You can check it out here.

George and Jeremy enjoy a fireside chat about shopping for your Workbench and Shack. Antenna Analyzer Project Information - http://hamradio360.com/community/partsmaterials-list/build-project-parts-listlinks/ Everything Ham Radio Podcast  - http://www.everythinghamradio.com/ QSO Today Podcast -  http://www.qsotoday.com/podcasts/4z1ug Holiday project - 3D Printed Trees - http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:197668 https://www.youmagine.com/designs/christmas-tree-with-space-for-led-light#activity New PackTenna linked dipole feedpoint prototype board arrived - http://www.packtenna.com Tools Time to progressively upgrade! Powerwerx - https://powerwerx.com Powerpole crimper - https://powerwerx.com/crimping-tools Irwin Automatic Wire Stripper - https://www.amazon.com/IRWIN-VISE-GRIP-Self-Adjusting-Stripper-2078300/dp/B000OQ21CA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1479526683&sr=8-1&keywords=irwin+wire+stripping+tool Lighted magnifying loop Soldering Iron - Hakko FX-888D - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/HAKKO-FX888D-23BY-/94-1275 Good wire cutters such as Xcelite - http://electronics.mcmelectronics.com/search?cataf=&view=list&w=xcelite+cutter&x=0&y=0 Upgrade all of your hand tools to Xcelite! - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/search.aspx?M=01001245 Digital caliper w/ CR2032 Battery - $40-$50 - https://www.amazon.com/iGaging-ABSOLUTE-Digital-Electronic-Caliper/dp/B00KDUD67G/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1479735338&sr=8-7&keywords=digital%2Bcaliper&th=1 Meters Tenma 72-7780 - $60 - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/72-7780 EEVBlog Brymen - $135? - https://www.eevblog.com/product/bm235-multimeter/ Lab Power Supply Rigol DP711 30V, 5A $300 - https://www.rigolna.com/products/dc-power-supplies/dp700/ Tenma 72-8345A 36V, 3A - $150 - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/72-8345A Tenma 72-8350A 20V 5A - $160 - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/product/72-8350A#review Test equipment Digilent Analog Discovery II - http://store.digilentinc.com/analog-discovery-2-100msps-usb-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer-and-variable-power-supply/ Rigol scope $400  Rigol DS1054Z Digital Oscilloscope 50 Mhz DSO 4 Channels - http://www.tequipment.net/Rigol/DS1054Z/Digital-Oscilloscopes/?Source=googleshopping&gclid=CjwKEAiA6rrBBRDsrLGM4uTPkWASJADnWZQ48jklPQOV8YJ4GQNF5VuTGsVrW-jmDSOai1nCShefXRoCLeHw_wcB RF Spectrum Analyzer - Rigol spectrum analyzer Rigol DSA815-TG 9kHz to 1.5GHz with preamplifier and tracking generator - $1500 - http://www.tequipment.net/RigolDSA815-TG.html?v=0 Rigol DSA705 100kHz to 500MHz Spectrum Analyzer - $700 - http://www.tequipment.net/Rigol/DSA705/Spectrum-Analyzers/?v=0 Bird 43 Power Meter and Slugs - $400- ??? - http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/meters/1739.html Diamond Antenna Dual Band Power/SWR Meters - http://www.universal-radio.com/catalog/meters/2315.html RigExpert AA-54 Antenna Analyzer - http://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-011715 Kits HamRadio 360 Workbench Antenna analyzer WinKeyer USB - www.hamcrafters.com  $75 http://www.hfsigs.com/  BITX Kit radio   $45 NanoKeyer - K3NG Arduino based CW Keyer https://nanokeyer.wordpress.com/nanokeyer-info/ https://blog.radioartisan.com/arduino-cw-keyer/ ~$40 Elecraft DL1 20W Dummy Load Kit - http://www.elecraft.com/mini_module_kits/mini_modules.htm#dl1 Elecraft W1 140 Watt Meter/SWR Bridge 160M-10M $99 - http://www.elecraft.com/mini_module_kits/mini_modules.htm Emtech Z Match antenna tuner - https://steadynet.com/emtech/ BITX 40M QRP Kit - http://www.hfsigs.com Books Make Electronics - Learning through Discovery:  https://www.amazon.com/Make-Electronics-Learning-Through-Discovery/dp/1680450263/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479528305&sr=1-1&keywords=make+electronics+2nd+edition ARRL Antenna Book ARRL Handbook - http://www.hamradio.com/detail.cfm?pid=H0-015330 Arduino Projects for Amateur Radio:  https://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Projects-Amateur-Radio-Purdum/dp/0071834052 The Art of Electronics 3rd Edition - https://www.amazon.com/Art-Electronics-Paul-Horowitz/dp/0521809266/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479528234&sr=1-2&keywords=electronics+3rd+edition Arduino for Ham Radio https://www.amazon.com/Arduino-Ham-Radio-Electronics-Microcontroller/dp/1625950160/ref=pd_sim_14_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=BYWTZHEQZ91JW7KKFH0Q Parts Coax connectors and adapters (N, UHF, BNC, SMA) Audio connectors and adapters Well stocked nut and screw selection - #4, #6, #8 screws, washers, nuts Ebay 347pc NUT BOLT SCREW AND WASHER ASSORTMENT KIT SET $5.99 Parts bins to put it all in DC, Hookup Wire Coax Free Stuff! CadSoft Eagle - https://cadsoft.io Autodesk Fusion 360 - http://www.autodesk.com/products/fusion-360/overview SolderSmoke Podcast - http://www.soldersmoke.com ARRL - The Doctor is In Podcast - http://www.arrl.org/doctor The AMP HOUR Podcast - http://theamphour.com https://archive.org/details/73-magazine The MagPi - Official Raspberry Pi Magazine https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/ 3D Printing Today Podcast - http://threedprintingtoday.libsyn.com RF Poster:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/llnl/9403051123/sizes/l/ Places to go for cool stuff MCM Electronics - http://www.mcmelectronics.com/ Adafruit - http://www.adafruit.com/ Seeedstudio  - https://www.seeedstudio.com Sparkfun - https://www.sparkfun.com Banggood - http://www.banggood.com DealExtreme - http://www.dx.com Ebay - http://www.ebay.com/ Digikey - http://www.digikey.com/ Newark - http://www.newark.com Mouser - http://www.mouser.com Jameco - http://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/StoreCatalogDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10001&langId=-1 Anchor electronics - http://anchor-electronics.com Pimoroni - https://shop.pimoroni.com TEquipment.net - http://www.tequipment.net  

Episode 3 of the Bally Alley Astrocast covers the cartridge game Crazy Climber and the BASIC game (released on tape) Missile Defense. Chris and I discuss what we've been up to lately. Arcadian newsletter issues 1 and 2 (November and December 1978) are covered in detail.  We discuss a bit of feedback. Chris, Paul and I go discuss the very first ad for the Bally Home Library computer (from September 1977). I read from a few letters that JS&A (the mail order company that originally sold the Bally Home Library Computer) sent to customers. The show ends with a one-minute rendition of the Happy Days theme song. Recurring Links  BallyAlley.com - Bally Arcade / Astrocade Website What's New at BallyAlley.com Orphaned Computers & Game Systems Website Bally Alley Yahoo Discussion Group Bally Arcade / Astrocade Atari Age Sub-forum Bally Arcade/Astrocade High Score Club Bally Alley Astrocast Facebook Page Introduction  The Sister Bar - Barcade (Facebook Page) We Know Video Games - Local Albuquerque Videogame store (Facebook Page) The Adventures of Robby Roto - Bally Midway arcade game from 1981 that uses the Astrocade chipset (The International Arcade Museum) The Adventures of Robby Roto - Video Review (YouTube) The Adventures of Robby Roto - Arcade Flyer (Front) The Adventures of Robby Roto - Arcade Flyer (Back) Reverse-Engineering Robby Roto: A 1980s Embedded System Masquerading as an Arcade Game, by Stephen A. Edwards (January 2005) The Adventures of Robby Roto - 7-11 Slurpee Cup Tom Meeks Bally Alley Yahoo Group 'Comments' - Tom Meeks, the product manager for Astrocade, Inc., comments about, among other topics, Robby Roto (November 26, 2001) Astrovision Name Change - A short explanation of why Astrovision changed its name to Astrocade. Astro Bits. Electronic Games, 1.1 (Aug. 1982): 11. Print.) Creating a Hi-Res Astrocade - These five in-depth "packages" (documents) were created by Michael C. Matte in 1986. These documents explain how to upgrade a Bally Arcade/Astrocade from the "Consumer Mode," which uses the low-resolution display (160x102 pixels), to "Commercial Mode," which uses the high-resolution mode (320x204 pixels) used in arcade games such as Gorf and Wizard of Wor. Hi-Res Astrocade Pictures - Pictures of an Astrocade motherboard that was modified by John Perkins in the early 1980s so that it could access Hi-Res mode. Sea Wolf II Parts Catalog - This arcade game uses the Astrocade chipset. Sea Wolf II Schematics - This archive includes five schematics for the Seawolf II arcade game released in 1978. William Culver Feedback - Comments and replies left in the AtariAge forums. Z-GRASS / UV-1 Area on Bally Alley.com - General information about the ZGRASS hardware system and programming language. Animating the Death Star Trench - by Neesa Sweet. Larry Cuba and Tom Defanti had both worked with ZGRASS for the unreleased Bally Add-Under. ZGRASS was based on the earlier GRASS programming language. GRASS was used to create animation for the original 1977 "Star War" movie. The Very Best of Fantastic Films: The Magazine of Imaginative Media. Special Edition #22, February 1981.   Cartridge Review - Crazy Climber Crazy Climber Manual - (2011 Bally Arcade/Astrocade) Game Manual Crazy Climber (1980 Arcade Game) - Nihon Bussan Co. Ltd. (The International Arcade Museum) Crazy Climber Packaging - Pictures of the Crazy Climber cartridge, "box," and manual. Crazy Climber Source Code - This is the complete source code for the homebrew version of Crazy Climber, released by Riff Raff Games in 2011. This game was programmed by Michael Garber. Crazy Climber Video Review - Video review by Nice and Games. War Packaging - Pictures of the cartridge, "box," and manual for War, Michael Garber's first Astrocade homebrew game. Beyond Dark Castle - Michael Garber's first game, Beyond Dark Castle, was published in 1989 by Activision on the Commodore 64. (Lemon64.com) The Addams Family Video Review - Michael Garber wrote the Turbo-Grafx-16 CD-ROM game, The Addams Family, released in 1991. Nice and Games YouTube Channel - Video reviews for many classic systems, including several videos for the Astrocade. Tape Review - Missile Defense  Missile Defense Instructions - New Image Missile Defense Screenshots JS&A's First Ad for the Ballly Home Library Computer JS&A Home Library Comuter Advertisemen (B&W) - The very first ad for the Bally Arcade / Astrocade (at the time, called the Home Library Computer). This B&W ad was printed in the September 1977 issue of Scientific American. JS&A Home Library Comuter Advertisemen (Color) - The very first ad for the Bally Arcade / Astrocade (at the time, called the Home Library Computer). This color ad was printed JS&A's first catalog. Purchase Scientific American, July 1977 - A digital copy of the Scientific American magazine can be purchased directly from Scientific American's website. Scientific American (1845 - 1909) - All issues of Scientific American from 1845-1909 can be download for free. Success Forces Book (JS&A Ad) - Book, published in 1980, by Joe Sugarman, the president of the JS&A group. This ad appeared in Popular Mechanics in October 1980. Success Forces Book - Purchase Joe Sugarman's book from Amazon.com. Bally Fireball Pinball (JS&A Ad) - Professional Home Model version of Bally Pinball (Popular Science, May 1977) Bally Fireball Pinball (Video) - Video of the Professional Home Model version of Bally Pinball. IBM 5100 Information - Wikipedia's article on IBM's 5100 computer that was introduced in 1975 and cost about $9,000. In JS&A's ad for the Bally Home Library computer, they favorably compare it against this earlier system. Bally Check Self Diagnostic Hardware (Pictures) - Bally Check (AKA as BalCheck) plugs into the 50-pin connector at the back of the Bally Arcade / Astrocade and is used to test the units for defects. Released by Richard Belton. Bally Check 2K Z80 ROM Source Code - Source code for the Bally Check diagnostic hardware. Bally Check Self Diagnostic Hardware (Documentation) - BalCheck Support Circuitry, BalCheck information and BalCheck Instruction Manual (with source-code). Dick Ainsworth Interview - Wrote the Bally BASIC user manual, programmed the Bally BASIC Program Sampler tape (which contained eight programs) and the Speed Math / Bingo Math cartridge. Dick Ainsworth 'Comments' - A compilation of posting that Dick Ainsworth made to the Bally Alley Yahoo group in 2002. Ainsworth & Partners, Inc. - Dick Ainsworth, Personal Page. Arcadian Newsletter  Arcadian 1, no. 1 (Nov. 6, 1978): 1-8. - The first issue of the Arcadian newsletter. Arcadian 1, no. 2 (Dec. 4, 1978): 9-16. - The second issue of the Arcadian newsletter. Music-Cade by Ed Horger - In the Arcadian segment, a "Toy Organ Keyboard" is mentioned. I remembered this previously unpublished article form the Bob Fabris Collection. It contains suggestions, ideas and methods on how to hook up a music keyboard to a Bally Arcade/Astrocade. Includes a machine language 3-voice music program. Blue Ram Modem Interface Owner's Manual (with optional Printer Port) - An add-on for the Blue Ram unit that allowed the addition of a modem and printer. The Blue Ram Utility was used to control the modem. Chessette by Craig Anderson - A two-player chess game written in Bally BASIC. Published in Cursor 2, no. 4 (November 1980): 74-75. Connecting a Printer to the Bally Tape Interface - "The Bally BASIC audio cassette interface was originally designed to have a third 1/8" jack into which a printer could be plugged." The Bally BASIC Hacker's Guide by Jay Fenton, published in about 1979, gives the required details on how to modify the interface for use with a printer. The finished modification provides a TTL level RS232 standard ASCII at 300 baud. Keyboard Attachment - Basic instructions and schematic on how to hook up a Jameco 610 keyboard to the Bally tape interface (Arcadian 2, no. 8 (Jun. 23, 1980): 69.) Blue Ram Keyboard Owner's Manual - These are directions on how to assemble the Blue Ram Keyboard. 3x5 Character Set Review - This article is by Al Rathmell. It was submitted to the Arcadian newsletter on September 15, 1982. Arcadian RDOS 1.0 by Stu Haigh - This is a CP/M compatible resident Disk Operating System written in 1980. This code is designed to interface into the Cromemco software system and is provided with an autoload feature that will load track zero, sector zero of Drive A starting at RAM location 0080. Control will then be passed to the just loaded code at location 0080. The code uses a 5501 as a COM. controller and a 1771 Flex Disk controller. It will support four 5 1/4", or two 5 1/4" and one 9", or two 9" disk drives. Three Voice Music with Bally BASIC - Article by George Moses and program (probably by George Moses and Brett Bilbrey) from the "AstroBASIC" manual. Game Over Tutorial by Tom Wood - This tutorial, from January 1979, provides a machine language subroutine usable to BASIC users so that they can print "GAME OVER" in large letters on the screen using a subroutine that is built into the Bally's 8K System ROM. BASIC Zgrass--A Sophisticated Graphics Language for the Bally home Library Computer - Article by Tom DeFanti, Jay Fenton, and Nola Donato. Published in Computer Graphics, 12, no. 3, (August 1978): 33-37. ZGRASS Documentation - Various documentation on ZGRASS, including the user's manuals. Bally On-Board ROM Subroutines - Originally called Executive Software Description and submitted to the Arcadian by Tom Wood on October 7, 1978. This was later republished by the Cursor newsletter without credit being given to Tom Wood. This booklet explains what the On-Board ROM routines do that are built into the Bally Arcade/Astrocade 8K ROM. This manual is used as a reference for BASIC programmers so that they can save a few bytes when programming and also take advantage of the faster routines that machine language offers. Peek 'n Poke Manual by Brett Bilbrey - An introduction to Astrocade machine language programming in Bally BASIC. Although the manual doesn't credit Brett Bilbrey, he gave all this information in 1980 to Fred Cornett of the "Cursor Group." Bally Videocade Cassettes Catalog - This catalog contains these 13 cartridges, including some that were not released. Classic Letters from JS&A National Sales Group  February 28, 1978 letter to JS&A Customer - From William Mitchell; JS&A National Sales Group; Marketing Director. "Enclosed you will find your Bally Home Library Computer." JS&A urges their customers to order the add-on soon to receive free items such as a modem and diagnostic cartridge. October 11, 1978 letter to JS&A Customer - From William Mitchell. "We trust you have your Bally Home Library Computer and have found it quite satisfactory." JS&A asks their customers if they want to wait for the Bally add-on module. October 19, 1978 letter to JS&A Customer (Robert Simpson) - From William Mitchell. "As you are well aware, there has been a delay in the shipment of your Bally unit. The delays have been caused by almost every problem imaginable and have lasted almost one year now." End-Show Music  Happy Days Theme ("AstroBASIC" Program) - This is the theme music for the "Happy Days" television show. Peggy Gladden converted this song to "AstroBASIC" and the program was included on the Michigan Astro Bugs Tape 2. Happy Days Theme (MP3) - This is the theme music for the "Happy Days" television show. This is an mp3 recording of Peggy Gladden's "AstroBASIC" program. Michigan Astro-Bugs Club, Tape #2 (Tape Picture) - This tape contained a compilation of programs for "AstroBASIC." Michigan Astro-bugs Tape #2 Compilation - Eight AstroBASIC programs by various authors. This is the complete tape working as intended; you choose a game from the menu and it will load automatically.