I received one of these from parents when I finished the 8th grade in 1980. I think they got the base model though with 4KB of ram, it was "only" $999. I recorded programs onto a cassette tape. Fun!
On the trash 80 I had to do a lot of work to find the memory region for the display. It didn't take that long but many of the games I ported used peek and poke statement to write the screen. Doing it was fun in a way nothing today can be. Its either too simple or way too complex these days.