I got my hands on a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model lll with an intact CRT. I still need to test the monitor but more on that down the road. For now the important thing is I am going to bring life back into this relic with modern hardware and making the case even sexier. I'm going to make an attempt to save the original keys and put them on the keyboard I am replacing the original with, obviously they aren't exactly standard MX keycaps but I think I can do surgery on them. http://oldcomputers.net/trs80iii.html
Inside it I'll be shoving: AMD 7850k Asrock FM2+ m-itx board Rx 480 16GB Adata something (it's RAM wtf ever) some SSD idk probably an HDD or two something to power it other
If anyone (@wendell) wants the intact original internals to include the CRT if I'm too dumb to make it work or decide it won't accomplish what I want lemme know and we'll work out shipping
My first computer was a TRS80 color computer. I spent half a day typing a program into it from a rainbow magazine only to turn it off and lose everything.....
Motherboard tray mocked up (lazily) in a possible mounting location. PSU will go to the left. I'm opting to mount a modern monitor instead of the crt. As cool as the crt would be it seems like it'll be more trouble than it's worth. Additionally since this will make for a decent LAN rig I can get away with a built in 1080p display and not need an external monitor (you know how practical I like to be when packing for a LAN).
Just be careful of the crt capacitors, I read they can hold on to allot of juice for a while. Back in the day they no one would even write a book on fixing crt monitors, they just said don't mess with em. Awesome build idea! Was it me or were all TRS keyboards hell incarnate?
My dad used to fix televisions. You know, the ones with tubes? He was once knocked across the room when he touched a cap by mistake. I can still smell the aroma of sizzled steak.....