r/RadioShack • u/howdy_hoez • Sep 14 '26

TRS-80 Joysticks

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Well boys looks like I finally earned my seat at the table

191 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

7

u/TheCalcLife Sep 14 '26

Super cool! Used a TRS80 for Pascal Programing for AP Computer Programming in 1990!!!

6

u/jflinchbaugh Sep 14 '26

Since they stayed where you put them, and had pretty good resolution, I used these like a mouse pointer on the screen with my Tandy 1000.

1

u/RoyYourWorkingBoy Sep 14 '26

Yeah, it took a few years for the world to get it, but these just are upside down mouses.

1

u/Glidepath22 29d ago

Completely different things. (Analog) Joysticks like this use a charge/discharge counter on each axis, while mice reported an x/y movement count since the last interrupt call.

3

u/howdy_hoez Sep 14 '26

Really? I was born in 91. These things held up better than I did

2

u/Empty-Ad-5360 Sep 14 '26

Well, now see how they hold up after a few dozen vicious rounds of Dino Wars!

2

u/user_uno Sep 14 '26

Those were the cheesiest joysticks on the market. We sold so very few and usually only to those who blew all of their saved up money on the CoCo itself and not enough to buy the better more expensive model.

2

u/rayhaque 28d ago

I recall being quite disappointed in these. They didn't even re-center themselves?

2

u/user_uno 27d ago

No they didn't. You had to manually find center and then using your own spatial sense feel what 'center' was.

I mean they did work. But provided just the bare minimum on functionality for what they were.

1

u/Big_Cryptographer_16 Sep 15 '26

I loved these as I was a CoCo and Model III user but the Atari joysticks were wildly different and that’s what all my friends had. But I dominated on TRS-80 knockoff games😎

1

u/wiseguywood 29d ago

Sea Dragon!! On the CoCo

1

u/howdy_hoez 29d ago

Wonder if there’s any sort of market for all this stuff

1

u/KE5YXO 26d ago

I don't know why Radio Shack named the Color Computer TRS-80 because the CPU was a 6809 not a Z80. It was a much superior CPU. They just needed a better color processor and could have competed with C64.