The TS-803 succeeded to the TS-802. Although it was basically the same CP/M machine, it had several notable enhancements.
The all-in-one case had an innovative design. The main unit and mass storage devices were mounted vertically at the right side of a large tilting 14" green display (at the time the standard size was of 12").
The keyboard was also greatly improved. It offered 16 programmable function keys and 10 pre-programmed text-editing keys. It was one of the first keyboard to offer a built-in wrist rest.
The TS-803 was also one of the rare CP/M machines to run graphics.
At the same period, Televideo also released the TS-1603, an Intel 8088 version with same design which ran CPM/86 and MS-DOS OSs.
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TS803s network by VB Woodfield:
The accounting office I worked for in the late 80's used 5 TS803's connected to a single Televideo external 40MB Winchester belt driven harddrive with built in tape drive.
The case was roughly the same size as the TS803 and could connect to 8(?) TS803s. It came with the standard CP/M and an optional enhanced CP/M OS you loaded via the tape drive and provided commands via the TS803 connected to the first network plug. I believe there was a dip you moved on the TS803 to toggle this function.
The TS803 had a non standard pinned serial port to attach a direct printer or mouse and an special connection for the network "server"
Televideo also used a proprietary format on it's 5 1/4 floppy drives.
The system disks included quite a good demo of the graphics capability in the form of a sales pitch for Televideo.
Movie star by Ernest:
The Televideo TS-803 was used in the Library scene of the movie "Pretty in Pink," and as usual for Hollywood movies, the computer was shown to do impossible things (for that time.) In particular, the computers were networked together like modern ethernet office computers, and the video images were impressive even by today's standards (ie, impossible for the day.)
We need more info about this computer ! If you designed, used, or have more info about this system,
please send us pictures or anything you might find useful.
Please consider donating your old computer / videogame system to Old-Computers.com or one of our partners from anywhere in the world (Europe, America, Asia, etc.).
Special thanks to Garry Mears from UK who donated us this computer !
i need one boot disk PLEASE!.. cant find what other options are there?
Saturday 26th February 2022
jay c (United States of America )
I drove a TS-803 CP/M computer from 1984-1986 at my first job. It was there when I came on board. Ran CP/M 2.2. Had some manuals and disks with the system.
Among other things, I wrote a program that made use of the graphics capability to plot graphics. I think I was using BASIC to pass variables and make the system call to plot points. Not very fast, but worked.
Migrated to an NEC 8 MHz turbo XT and a Novell network in ''86 or so.
Sunday 10th October 2021
Thomas (USA)
I bought a Televideo 803 towards the end of 1983 and used it for word processing until about 1989. It ran Wordstar. Incredibly, both the CP/M operating system AND the Wordstar software were on a single 5-1/4 floppy, with my work being saved on the second floppy. The machine was completely nsilent with no fan $ having a cooling tower design. You could invert the screen, which was my preference, so the typing was in black and the background was green. I connected it to a dot-matrix printer using continuous feed paper with the holes along the edges. You could tear off the edges that had the holes and turn in perfect paper. As a freelance writer, found my productivity effectively doubled with this computer as I could work right up to the point of printing. No need to retype. My next computer was a Mac SE, bought used for $2500, which was the same price I paid for the Televideo. Weren''t those the days??
Sunday 4th October 2015
Bill Schmidt
NAME
TS-803
MANUFACTURER
Televideo
TYPE
Professional Computer
ORIGIN
U.S.A.
YEAR
March 1983
BUILT IN LANGUAGE
None
KEYBOARD
Typewriter type, 117 keys with function & editing keys & arrows pad
CPU
Z80A
SPEED
4 MHz
RAM
64 KB expandable to 128 KB
VRAM
32 KB
ROM
8 KB
TEXT MODES
80 columns x 24 lines - 7x8 dot matrix
GRAPHIC MODES
640 x 240 dots
COLORS
Monochrome green
SOUND
Beeper
SIZE / WEIGHT
47 (W) x 38 (D) x 36 (H) cm / 23 kg
I/O PORTS
2 x serial, Mouse
BUILT IN MEDIA
TS-803: 2 x 368 KB 5.25'' FDD TS-803H: 1 x 5.25'' FDD, 1 x 10 MB Winchester hard disk
Special thanks to Garry Mears from UK who donated us this computer !
