Doctor Who on a TRS-80

The old Radio Shack TRS-80 (aka the “Trash 80”) is one of my earliest memories of the personal computing era. The Tom Baker era of Doctor Who is also one of my fondest memories of growing up, and certainly part of my formative years as a science fiction junkie. So put together the two, and you get a power-packed blast from the past.

Hacker gp2k00 managed to take a late model TRS-80 Model 4p and programmed it to play back the classic opening of Doctor Who using it’s old green screen monitor, drawing the frames with primitive monochrome blocks. The entire thing is streamed off of old 5-1/4″ floppy disks. In fact, it’s so much data that he has to change disks a couple of times.

It’s really hard to hear the music from the tinny little speaker in the video above, so you can listen to the clip below to hear it better:

My, how far we’ve come in the last 30 years.