• @[email protected]
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    618 hours ago

    The 8-Bit Guy has a nice video covering the functionality of a number of such devices. They’re fascinating bits of kit – they’re like calculators you can type BASIC programs into. One of them can even be hooked up to a pen plotter to make graphs on paper – it can even graph in 3D!

  • The Giant Korean
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    371 day ago

    Two aliens from a super advanced civilization.

  • JerkyChew
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    651 day ago

    I had this comic book, it was a special edition sold at Radio Shack when I was a kid. And yeah that pocket computer was just a big calculator that had a lot of keys.

    • TrenchcoatFullOfBats
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      171 day ago

      There was a book series called Micro Adventures that featured a kid named Orion who used a TRS-80. There were BASIC programs in the books that you could run if you had a TRS-80.

      • Clay_pidgin
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        31 day ago

        These were my first exposure to programming! I did those on a DOS system.

    • @[email protected]
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      61 day ago

      Or rather it was a pocket compute-er. It’s very primitive compared to a modern computer but it’s still a computer.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 day ago

        The first computers took up entire rooms and they could only do about as much as a calculator. There was a point in time that having a computer do multiplication and long division for you saved you hours of time because the alternative was have 2 or 3 people do it by hand and then compare to check for mistakes.

        Some of the code cracking computers used for breaking war-time ciphers were state of the art, and their only job was to check as many combinations as possible, way faster than any human could. Which left the actual scientists to find optimizations and analyze any results.

        • @[email protected]
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          51 day ago

          Yes exactly.

          Many years ago you could even have a job as a (human) computer. You pretty much computed/calculated stuff all day.

    • @shalafi
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      31 day ago

      Me too! Wow that takes me back. Wonder if it’s still floating around mom’s house.

      Just looked at eBay, seems there were a few.

  • @Nuke_the_whales
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    161 day ago

    The capes have pockets?? Can’t say that’s a bad idea. Velcro closing pockets would be handy

  • 👍Maximum Derek👍
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    211 day ago

    I’m imagining Superman’s Krptonian family all arriving via their space pods to a family reunion where they, and the holograms of their parents, geek out over 80’s human tech.

    • @hate2bme
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      11 day ago

      What kind of GPU is in there?

      • @[email protected]
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        31 day ago

        The stamp in the top right is the entire removable motherboard. I put my cardputer on a shelf when it got here and I haven’t gotten around to it yet. M5 stack is pretty cool, and I wish I understood it more.

        • @hate2bme
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          11 day ago

          It was actually a joke but is it an actual usable computer? What can it do?

          • @[email protected]
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            21 day ago

            I think it’s mostly for prototyping your own programs, which I haven’t tried yet. It comes with a wifi ssid snooper, and a like greeting card voice recorder/replayer. It’s credit card size, half inch thick. The back half is a removable battery expansion. The stamp has a usb c for data/charging. There’s WiFi, infrared blaster, sd card slot, expansion ports for other sensors. It’s nifty for sure, maybe someday I’ll find a use for it too.

  • IninewCrow
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    141 day ago

    I had one of these in grade nine! An uncle gifted me this calculator in my first year of high school. I was smart … but not smart enough to know how use one of these or to realize that it might be a thing to keep. I used it for a year and it promptly disappeared after that.

    • @WhiskyTangoFoxtrot
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      419 hours ago

      Tandy slapped the TRS-80 label on a lot of things that had nothing to do with the original TRS-80 design. The Color Computer line was marketed under that brand, for instance, despite being a completely different, incompatible architecture.

    • IninewCrow
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      51 day ago

      He uses it once … then crushes it with his hands into a small diamond that he drops into his belt later.

    • Blackout
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      41 day ago

      In the comics they are always stealing things from the news stand and stashing it there. It’s Superman’s 2nd greatest weakness.

    • @buddascrayon
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      11 day ago

      Yeah, they’ve featured them in a number of comics. I don’t recall if it had ever been featured in any other media.