Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
TRS-80 Model One Emulator
By James Grahame
In 1977, Radio Shack was at the forefront of the home computer revolution. Their Model I computer was shipped as a ready-to-use system. The main board was built into the keyboard unit and shipped with a plug-in B&W monitor and portable cassette recorder for storage. The basic unit could support up to 16K of memory, although an expansion dock was available that increased memory to 48K and supported floppy drive storage. I liked the crisp 64 character x 16 line display - far better than squinting at fuzzy television displays of the era.
Here's a link to a system emulator that even includes a simulated Audio/Wave cassette recorder interface. My only complaint is that the display is green-on-black, rather than the piercing white phosphor of the original TRS-80. The screen shot is from Dancing Demon, a bizarre programmable creature program sold through Radio Shack.
TRS-80 Model One Emulator (discover-net)
There are a couple of TRS-80 Color Computer emulators on the same site. Enjoy!
