By John Murphy
I was about one month into my new job at the Victor Valley Daily Press in 1992 when I erred.
Desiring to get to my car on the other side of a tall fence at Victor Valley High’s football field, I scaled the barrier. But first I needed to chuck my backpack over the fence to make it easier to climb. So I did and – OH CRAP! – I remembered my portable computer on loan from the paper was in the bag.
The TRS-80 Model 100 was the first handheld computer in history — a game-changer for journalists on the go from 1983 through the late 1990s. These things weren’t Dells, but they did cost about $800. That was about a paycheck for me.
I watched in horror as the backpack soared through the warm September sky and hit the concrete with a crack. Frantic, I pulled the Model 100 out of the bag and shook it. I could hear parts rolling around inside. Not good. But when I turned it on, it lit up! Thank you, Lord.
I started using a TRS-80 (Trash 80s we called them) in Victorville and didn’t stop until the early 2000s at the San Bernardino Sun. My former boss at The Sun, Paul Oberjuerge, used one too. And when we needed our machines refurbished or wanted cords for them, we called the guru of the Model 100, the late Rick Hanson of Pleasant Hill, Ca.
Hanson sold the contraptions, fixed them, and – just as vital — sold the cords needed to connect the machines to telephones so you could send your stories.
The Model 100 was not high tech. Working on deadline one night after a football game at Serrano High, I found myself in the middle of the campus, needing a place to write. But the Trash 80 did not light up like a modern laptop and the campus was dark. Deadline was approaching and I was beginning to panic.
That’s when I spied a soda machine next to a portable classroom and got the inspired idea to plop myself down next to it. There I sat for the next 20 minutes, happily composing my masterpiece by the light of the Coke machine. Then I transmitted it to the office using a pay phone and these dreadful things called couplers that I won’t even try to explain.
By the late 1990s, the Trash 80 had fallen out of favor in American newsrooms. I finally gave up the ghost in the early 2000s and gave about five of them to Goodwill.
But before I unloaded them, I pulled one out and gave it to my now daughter-in-law Felicia Lopez who was then a computer programming major at UC-Riverside. She eyed the antiquated machine, played with it a bit, and deemed it “cool.” I couldn’t agree more.
Main Street Dog 