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It's been a whopping 45 years since the first TRS-80 Model 1 made its way into the moist hands of excited consumers. And since 45 years ago the machine was in most cases simply connected to a TV, and since TVs were just as often still only shining in shades of gray instead of colors, it's not surprising that the designers of the antique box didn't really seriously consider a multi-monitor operation back in the days.

(If they had, it would have been a real sensation ... back in the 70s). 🤓

But now buckle up, hold on, and better turn off the iPhone14. We don't want to make any misguided emergency calls, even if the onset of gasping for breath could certainly be considered a medical indication. Roller coaster: 🎢

TRS-80 Multi Monitor Support is here.

Sounds weird. Works, though. Glen Kleinschmidt has done a great job here. The idea is based on his Series 74xx VGA graphics card, which can be directly accessed by a TRS-80 using a little extra logic in hardware. In combination with a machine code driver and an integration into BASIC, this opens up completely new use cases for the machine.

A very exciting project with a lot to learn. But beyond that, Glen provides additional projects for friends of cultivated microelectronics … just click around.