1982 – Sharp PC-1500A
This is basically the next iteration of my very first one, the Radio Shack TRS-80 PC-1; as noted in that post, it was a Radio Shack branded version of the Sharp PC-1211 series; this one, however, had a few new features, the main ones being a way different printer and more capacity; the printer used a ball point pen instead of a dot matrix impact; it actually “wrote” on the paper tape; and there were multiple colours to choose from, although only one could be used at a time;
The Sharp PC-1500A was introduced to me by my friend Randy Kokesch, who was working for Northland Stationers of Saskatoon, SK at the time; he had found a program for it, supplied via cassette tape, that was for dry bulk agricultural fertilizer blending calculations; great! exactly what I needed at the time; speaking of, I can’t say with certainty the year and month that I bought it, but it was somewhere between late 1982 and early 1983; can’t recall the price either, but that really didn’t matter, because to two things; one, it would save an inordinate amount of time doing calculations and pricing when my farmer customers would come in with their soil test reports and would want to know how much it was going to cost per acre for their fertilizer requirements; prior to the PC-1500A, I had to do this manually with a calculator; even when I got really good at it, the process took a while; and of course, I would no sooner come up with the results when the customer would ask “well, then how about with only “X” amount of “such-and-such”; start all over; it got very tedious; the second reason should be obvious – I was now a computer “junkie” and just had to have it!
Some specs that I fond online:
Sharp PC-1500A
Programmable: Yes, BASIC interpreter. Only one program can be stored. Use the MODE key to switch between programming and run mode.
Memory: 6kByte internal, 8kByte RAM module, permanent memory.
The MEM command shows 13948 bytes available.
Display: 26 digit 5×7 pixel black&white dot matrix LCD, total 130×7 pixel
Processor: 8-bit LH-5801
Batteries: Calculator 4x AA or DC power supply 6V minus on center
Printer and cassette interface AC adapter – additional red and green pens for printer
Dimensions: Length 8.6cm, Width 19.5cm, Height 2.7cm
One had to initialize the program with the various products one was using for the various nutrient requirements; for example, as I was a Cominco “Elephant Brand” dealer, our phosphate source had an analysis of 11-55-0-0; these numbers are the percentages of these nutrients, by weight, in this industry-standard order: nitrogen, phosphate, potash, sulphur; you would enter the products you used for each, along with their selling price per tonne, of these and the program would determine the amount of each required for the soil test requirements as well as a cost per acre; the primary piece of information desired by the customer; if a test came back requiring 80 pounds of nitrogen per acre, 35 pounds of phosphate per acre and 10 pounds of potash per acre and no sulphur, then you would enter 85, 35, 10, 0 at the respective input prompt; the number of acres were also entered; I can’t recall the exact prompts or displays, but I do remember that once the “compute” entry was made, it would take a while for this printer to “write” the results; this was the only negative of the system at the time; but it worked and even with the slow printing, was orders of magnitude faster than me doing it “by hand”;
I continued to use this system, along with the TRS-80 PC-1 for NH3 calculations, as part of everyday operations at Outlook Fertilizers, Ltd., Outlook, SK until I got my very first “real” computer in November of 2004; that was an Apple Macintosh 512K; more about that in the next post;