Inside the pages of a 1981 Radio Shack catalog

Radio Shack computer catalog

When Radio Shack was "the biggest name in little computers"

Chris Wild

1981

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Once upon a time, Radio Shack was saved from bankruptcy — in the 1960s. The British Tandy corporation, at that time a leather goods retailer, bought the company in a resulting merger called Tandy Radio Shack & Leather. In 1977, Radio Shack's 3,000 stores started selling the TRS-80 (Tandy/Radio Shack, Z-80 microprocessor). Largely forgotten by the general public, the TRS-80 was, with Apple and Commodore's products, one of the pioneering personal computers of the late 1970s, and a key machine in the personal computer revolution. Byte magazine described the "1977 Trinity" of computers: Apple, Commodore and Tandy.In 1981, the year of this catalog, the TRS-80 earned the nicknamed "Trash-80." Computer designer and writer Adam Osbourne described Tandy and Radio Shack as "the number-one microcomputer manufacturer."

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When you choose TRS-80, you are choosing the most popular computer in the world!

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You can't go wrong with a TRS-80.

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