The Dick Smith System 80 / Video Genie / PMC-80/81, was a TRS-80 Model 1 clone, popular in Australia and New Zealand...

Originally shared by Laura Ess

The Dick Smith System 80 / Video Genie / PMC-80/81, was a TRS-80 Model 1 clone, popular in Australia and New Zealand in the late 70s/early 1980s. TRS-80s were expensive to buy from Tandy/Radioshack (now absorbed into DSE in Australia) so the System 80 was a cheap alternative as a personal computer.

The System-80 was my first personal computer. I bought mine in 1979,  and for a monitor I had a Sony B&W three-in-one portable TV. The image was wavy but back then even a tiny blurry screen seemed a miracle! The System-80 boasted a massive 16kb of RAM and a 12 KB built in BASIC. I had mine extensively modified, with: cursor keys, sound board, programmable character set (including LOWER CASE) and a joy stick (which emulated cursor keys)! Later I added an expansion unit with a printer, and four chained 8" floppy drives.

Like the TRS-80, the graphics display was a primitive B&W grid created by 2x3 dot characters. It may have been extremely basic, but the games were fast and fun. Playing MS Flight Simulation version 1 however was more an exercise in abstraction than simulation. At one point I hooked up two of these together by using external tape player plugs and played a game of Battleships.

Like the the TRS-80 again, it survived until outclassed by the Commodore 64 (better graphics and colour) and the Apple II.
http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/system-80/