Allied Electronics and the TRS-80 - More information revealed!

Those among you who have been with us from the beginning may recall our hard-hitting investigative report from three years ago, on the back cover of the 1977 Allied Electronics catalog, where we revealed the pricing info for Tandy's computing powerhouse. Well, this morning, someone flipped over that very same back cover and found even more pricing and specifications for the available system configurations for the TRS-80! Put your Mastercharge on lockdown, people. Spoiler alert: This could get expensive.

You could get the $599 Level-1 BASIC, which, despite being perfect for the computer novice, comes with the "professional keyboard". But if you're an ambitious power user, you'll need more RAM - like, 16K of it, muthafuckaaaaa!!! $899, please.

But what if you need to show proof of your l33t haxors skillz? You need to print out your exploits. that's why you probably want the fast 4K/Printer system for just $1198. It comes with a printer that will print a screen grab on 4" of paper, so you can show everyone in the chess club that horizontal line you made flash on and off.

No, wait. That one's a downgrade to 4K of RAM. Don't waste your time, man. Deliver a few more newspapers and score yourself the Level-II 16K/Printer/Disk system or be a loser. For $2385. You can do all your engineering and clinical laboratorying on it. Save whatever you program onto cassette and listen to it while you're fahr'n fahr'n fahr'n auf der autobahn to class in your Gremlin.

Wait, what's this? There are 32 K's? How is this possible? You need that many K's, plus a second mini-disk unit. No question. It doesn't matter if it's an additional fifteen hundred dollars. A war machine like that will pay for itself once you start organizing your recipes on it, or controlling your inventory. You even get a better printer. Whatever a "line printer" is.

Hey, wait a sec. Why does it have an "expansion interface"? How could you ever use more power than this? It must be for something else. Maybe a special port for the very interested power user.

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