Radio Shack's "schlocky" image begins not with the name or the advertising or the "Trash-80" computers but at the store. I recently went to get some replacement pens for my TRS-80 PC-2 printer. The clerk asked, "What's a PC-2?" and "Why does it need pens?" With help like that, who needs competition?
2007, Theresa M. Welsh, David Welsh, Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution:
It seems that the developers and users were much more attached to their beloved Trash-80s than anyone at Tandy.
2016, Jeffery Deaver, The Blue Nowhere, page 200:
He'd picked a computer. It was a perfect choice for a boy who takes things apart—because the little Trash-80 computer was a portal to the Blue Nowhere, which is infinitely deep and infinitely complex, made up of layer upon layer of parts small as molecules and big as the exploding universe.
