In 1983, 12 MB of external storage for a Radio Shack TRS-80 cost $3,495, which is $11,932 in 2026 dollars. LGR's Clint recently got his hands on one of these units, built around a Tandon TM-603 full-height 5.25-inch hard drive, powered by a 60-watt internal supply and connected to the TRS-80 via ribbon cable.
The controller board runs a Signetics 8X300 microprocessor. The unit looks factory-fresh inside despite its age, but Rifa capacitors in the PSU made powering it on a gamble. Clint did it anyway. The spinup sound is reportedly comparable to a jet engine that has been grounded for a decade.
Clint has no working TRS-80 to pair it with, so functional verification is impossible for now. He is donating the unit to a computer museum. Whether the Tandon drive still reads and writes is an open question, and the original video is worth watching for the spinup noise alone.
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