[Old Student]

"And then in 77 or 78 when the Radio Shack TRS 80 computers came out and they cost more than most cars did at the time."

More like '76. I had one of the first 500 built, and they cost $600. Cars were in $2700-5000 range then, IIRC. (New, as my TRS 80 was.) 4K level-1 basic. Later I expanded it to 16K, when the price of memory dropped to where that was $100. I had the $1000 expansion box a couple of years later, a year or so after they were introduced; it was pretty flakey, and I never got a floppy drive for it, but I had 48K of memory by then.

I wanted one of the HP calculator wrist watches; those were also about $600, now you can get something like it, but much more powerful, for a couple of dollars. My, how times change.

BTW, my old TRS-80 is still functioning at my BIL's house. He had to put about $200 into repairing it after a lightning strike in the early 80's, or so I'm told.

[wagglebee]

You're right, I went back and did some research, it was the Level II model with the options that wound up being over $3000.00