The Model I TRS-80 (1977-1981) was the inexpensive computer of the proletariat. Schools and the well-off went with the Apple II.

Then Radio Shack came out with the later TRS-80 models (as pictured) attempting to move into the business market. Never got traction.

The IBM PC was the serious business computer. I don't think you could say it was superseded by the Mac. The Mac was for artist types and relatively expensive.

Then the PC clones came along and the Mac was marginalized.

    The IBM PC was the serious business computer.

IBM PC's lost of TRS-80 Model 16's all the time until ethernet came along. Remember multi-user SMB customers needed to have multiple people working on the same systems.

IBM PC's were stand alone for quite some time. We had many "bake offs" between Model 16's and a couple of IBM PC's with arcnet or other hodge-podge solutions and win most of the time.

When you have an office with 8 people in it and 4 people need to get into A/R and several need access to G/L for financials the TRS-80 Model 16's with Xenix (UNIX) were great solutions.

I don't say this as a FanBoi I say it as someone who was there and sold and supported them for a long time. What Tandy failed to do was understand the shift in the market to networked systems and they died almost over night when IBM PC's became more affordable AND networked with reasonable software allowing multiple people to work on the same stuff.

This is exactly spot on. I was of that generation and I remember it fondly. The only people we knew who had Apple IIs were rich kids. This was just a fact; at that time it was too early for there to be any real fanboyism yet. We couldn't even afford PCs. So it was TRS-80 and Commodore 64 for us all the way (my paper route money financed the TRS-80, the Commodore, Atari, &c. were generous Christmas gifts).

    The IBM PC was the serious business computer. 
    I don't think you could say it was superseded 
    by the Mac. The Mac was for artist types and 
    relatively expensive.

Yes, I think that is a serious overstatement. I've never even seen a mac before I got my first job when I was 18 (in 2001) but everyone had PCs (I/my parents had a clone since 1987).

It's not surprising as I don't think Macs have ever owned more than about 10% of the market.

I wrote video games for Big Five Software (Miner 2049er was our big hit), and we actually used Model 16s with a compiler we wrote to compile to cartridges for the Atari 400/800. At the time, it was an awesome computer. We even had a 5MB hard drive. A drive so massive at the time, that it actually had a KEY on the front to lock it.

Thanks for that! I spent untold hours playing Miner 2049er on my Apple ][.

spent quite a lot of time on Miner 2049er here ! other big atari titles at that time were Jumpman and Pogo Joe.

> By 1983 the IBM PC was the microcomputer of choice, and it was in turn to be superseded by the Mac in 1984.

That's a completely different picture from where I lived. The Mac was a curiosity that you'd come across every now and then but pcs were everywhere.

It really wasn't clear throughout the whole market what the "right" computer was -- for businesses, sure, PC, but there were a lot of people still using "word processors" with CP/M, various old machines, etc. And there were crazy quasi-video-game systems sold to schools, like the Commodore PET.

My first computer was a ColecoVision ADAM, around Christmas 1984, which was really a horrible choice -- never shipped in large quantities, and discontinued a month later (which is why it was cheap). An older or less capable machine with a larger userbase would have been a whole lot better. I hate that I missed out on Apple II, C64, and TRS-80 culture.

Fortunately I went to a crazy gifted/talented pull-out program once a week which had a lab full of Mac 512k (and later, plus and SE) (for a public school in Pennsylvania!), and even better, there was a modem. I went out of my way to be there as much as I could (skipping regular classes to "work on projects" there, etc.). Eventually I got a dumb terminal and modem of my own. Mmm, VAX/VMS and Cyber 205.

Most businesses cared very much about the TRS-80 systems. They were cheaper alternatives to very expensive mini-computers (VAXen etc.) and much more useful then the IBM PC's without any networking.

We installed a lot of these machines for many years while PC's were just beginning to be "interesting".

I loved how the old systems would prompt for memory size on boot. Ok, maybe not loved, but at least had my nostalgia spurred.

My personal favorite of that era is the TRS-80 model 100, of which I own several. I give them to my kids when they turn 10. Best notebook keyboard of that era (and periodically, since then).

Do you remember why they asked for memory size?

It was the ROM asking you how much memory you wanted to allocate for BASIC variables. You could tune this for various programs and/or if you were planning on running machine language programs you wanted to have BASIC get out of the way and leave your program more memory.. :)

Sadly, my high school, in 1989, was teaching BASIC on TRS-80s, the same computers and language I had mastered in the 3rd grade. It seemed like computers were not progressing; I had no idea so much had changed because that was all I had exposure to.

That's right, in 1984 I was learning to program on a TRS-80 in a public middle school in a random small town, and dreaming of an Apple.... by this time the "Trash 80" was definitely not state of the art!