[HN Gopher] What happened to Tandy computers ___________________________________________________________________ What happened to Tandy computers Author : erickhill Score : 83 points Date : 2022-09-27 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (dfarq.homeip.net) (TXT) w3m dump (dfarq.homeip.net) | atan2 wrote: | I loved my Tandy. It's nice to see it in the front page of HN, | but the shallow content and the thousands of ads in the middle of | the article made it for a really depressing read. | outworlder wrote: | And every single ad requires more processing power and memory | than any of the Tandy computers had. | [deleted] | empressplay wrote: | My second computer was an MC-10 bought on clearance. My route out | and about on my bike usually took me to the local Radio Shack | store where I'd spend an hour or two playing with the CoCo's, | Tandys and such. | | I currently have a Model 1 (part of my Holy Trinity) a 1000, an | MC-10, a PC-1 and a CoCo 3... I really need to find another Model | 100 (or 102)... had to sell the last one :( | classichasclass wrote: | This sort of glosses over all the other computers Tandy made or | rebadged. It only briefly refers to the original TRS-80s, and | doesn't seem to mention anything else like the CoCos, the Pocket | Computers and the Model 100 family. At least for a period of time | those were nearly as important as the PCs, particularly the M100. | I worked with an elementary school teacher who had a whole room | full of networked CoCo 2s (using the cassette interface rotary | network) and a CoCo 3 as the server. The fractions math trainer I | wrote for them was still in use years later. | russellbeattie wrote: | My first computer was a TRS-80 CoCo2 because it was the one I | used in elementary school. (You must be at least 10 years older | than me!) Loved that computer and still have it in a box in my | garage. I've always been deeply insulted by anyone who called | it a "trash 80". Usually they were the kids who had a Commodore | 64, which admittedly was a better machine, but still! | | I'm still bitter 40 years later. Jerks! | Mountain_Skies wrote: | You might be interested in the github project to recreate the | DLOAD server protocol on modern hardware. | https://github.com/TJBChris/dload_server | jhallenworld wrote: | Tandy models 2, 12, 16 and 6000 were great business machines: | they had 80x24 screen, buffered keyboard (just like IBM PC), | and had lots of software support (Xenix, TRSDOS, CP/M, RM/COS). | | IBM PC was basically the same thing, but cheaper and had even | higher quality keyboards and screens. | | CoCo had a nice CPU, but otherwise was junk. I bought a CoCo3 | recently, and have been playing with OS-9. If only there had | been a popular 6809-based computer with better hardware than | the CoCo. | mosburger wrote: | My junior high school library had Tandy Model IIIs that I | learned to program on (alongside the Apple IIs). The | elementary school had a mix of CoCo 2s and Apples. | bsder wrote: | > If only there had been a popular 6809-based computer with | better hardware than the CoCo. | | That wasn't really the issue, the C64 wasn't much better yet | became the best selling computer of all time. | | At Tandy, the owner died right in the late 70s. And then, I | seem to recall that Tandy had not one but _two_ embezzlement | scandals at points when the company needed to have vision | because the underlying business economics were shifting. | fsckboy wrote: | I read what he wrote differently | | >> _If only there had been a popular 6809-based computer | with better hardware than the CoCo._ | | > _That wasn 't really the issue, the C64 wasn't much | better_ | | the 6809 was a really nice "ultimate" evolution of the | 8-bit CPU. The C-64 was just another primitive 6502. So I | think GP meant "I wish there was a 6809 I could get that | wasn't the CoCo, because I want a 6809!" rather than | meaning that the hardware doomed the CoCo or something. | jejones3141 wrote: | In a way it did. Tandy offloaded every possible function | onto the processor to lower part count and hence cost, | resulting in the infamous bit banger serial port and the | equally infamous high resolution mouse adapter, which | made the CPU time the discharge of a capacitor to figure | out where the mouse pointer was, so you learned quickly | to keep the mouse at the top left, minimizing that time, | unless absolutely necessary. DMA for disk I/O? Only with | third party hardware. | bsder wrote: | The M100 never really seemed to find its niche with people. It | was simply too expensive for what you got on top of not being | able to play games on your color TV--both of which limited the | mass appeal. | russellbeattie wrote: | I wrote about this last week - It may not have been a mass- | market success, but the Model 100 was a must-have in | newspaper offices well into the 90s. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32918980 | madengr wrote: | We had that same rotary network in school (1986). It was neat | that you would download to multiple machines at once, then | upload from individuals. Of course we'd play Telengard and | Battlezone when not programming, or using the hex editor to put | 4 letter words in Battlezone. Fun times. I have a Model 100 I | need to dig out and play with. I'd still like to have a Model | 3. | bluedino wrote: | The neighbors had a Tandy 1000. One of the lower models, I don't | remember which one. It didn't have a hard drive, only had 384KB | of memory (not sure, it didn't have 640k so it wouldn't run some | DOS games I brought over), but it did have a 720kb 3.5" disk | drive (which couldn't read my 1.44MB disks) | | We mostly played around with Deskmate and GWBASIC, but my friends | mother was taking computer science classes and gave me a floppy | with Turbo Pascal 2.0 on it. That was a big deal. | | I had a 386SX at home which was pretty low end, but this computer | was quite a bit older than that, but she did buy it new. I | remember the guy from the store coming over there to set it up, I | want to say they paid $599 for it. | troymc wrote: | Ah yes, Turbo Pascal 2.0! My brother and I got it as a shared | birthday gift. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what | happened to GOTO, which we had used a lot when programming with | GWBASIC. | vikingerik wrote: | That's an oddity; there was no Tandy 1000 model that came with | 384 KB RAM and a 3.5" drive. The SX and SL had that amount of | RAM but a 5.25" drive. The TX and TL had a 3.5" drive but 640 | KB RAM. | | Was DeskMate in ROM? That would narrow it down to an SL or TL. | robotmechadog wrote: | Tandy 1000 Ex/HX had 256k... adding the MemoryPlus DMA | upgrade board got you to 384k. The HX had a 3.5" drive and | DOS in rom. I remember impressing my friends by booting to | cmd without a floppy inserted. "Wow you have a hard drive?" | Lol no. | [deleted] | bluedino wrote: | ROM, and like I said so t remember the exact amount of RAM, I | just know it wasn't 640k. And it only had a single 3.5", no | 5.25" drive. I had both drives in my 386 so tradings software | disks was always tricky. | sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: | If they're misremembering the RAM size, could be the RL. I | had one, and I recall it came with 512KB RAM expandable to | 768KB via installing a couple DIPs into sockets. | vikingerik wrote: | The RL came with a hard drive, so bluedino's wasn't that | one. | a_zaydak wrote: | I still have a Tandy2000. I learned to code on it as a kid. I | still boot it up every now and again to play some King's Quest. | bitwize wrote: | Near as I can tell the only graphical game released for the | Tandy 2000 was a special edition of Microsoft Flight Simulator | that also supported the Tandy 1000 and 1200HD. The 2000 was in | their business line, not quite PC compatible but it ran DOS and | was supposed to run applications like MultiMate, dBASE, and | Basic Four. | | The Tandy 1000 line did support Sierra games very well. | troymc wrote: | > The Tandy 1000 line did support Sierra games very well. | | Very true! I wonder if the Sierra games (e.g. King's Quest, | Space Quest) were some of the "killer apps" for Tandy | computers, i.e. the apps which made people want to buy a | Tandy computer. Radio Shack certainly sold Sierra games and I | always wanted the latest one for Christmas. | | In the business world, things like spreadsheets were the | killer apps, but I certainly didn't care about spreadsheets | as a kid. | bitwize wrote: | > Very true! I wonder if the Sierra games (e.g. King's | Quest, Space Quest) were some of the "killer apps" for | Tandy computers, i.e. the apps which made people want to | buy a Tandy computer. | | Before VGA and Sound Blaster came along, almost certainly. | The Tandy 1000 line supported 3-voice sound and more | colorful graphics in a manner almost identical to the PCjr, | just in a less jank package. So they looked and sounded | better on a Tandy than on most contemporary 80s PCs. Sierra | games not only were sold at Radio Shack, but Tandy cross- | promoted them in their store, even to the point of running | special Sierra/Tandy demos on in-store machines to attract | buyers. | hollywood_court wrote: | I knew one of the Tandy children. He lived in the Virgin Islands | and was known as "the water mon." He sold 5 gallon bottles of | water out of a white van. It would be hard to guess that he was | from money and had money. | froggertoaster wrote: | I used to use my Tandy to check my email, along with my brothers | Mad and Sad. | drewzero1 wrote: | Don't worry, your computer's in a better place. | iancmceachern wrote: | We had a Tandy 1000RLX growing up. The X meant it had a 40 mb | hard drive. Loved that thing. | ridgered4 wrote: | My first PC was a Tandy1000RL. It was used and fairly obsolete | by the time I got it, but I squeezed every drop I could get out | of that thing. I learned DOS on it, and learned to reinstall | DOS and deskmate after I accidentally blew away the OS with a | misplaced deltree command. I spent quite a bit of time trying | to make games in QBASIC. | | I played a lot of old games on it, mostly purchased from corner | stands in the super market and the occasional box title from | Ames department store. They just sold the disk in a sleeve with | a short description of what I was purchasing. I was constantly | frustrated by my lack of VGA graphics, sound blaster and | sometimes available conventional memory. Tandy graphics (which | I learned later was really just a souped up version of CGA) | were not that commonly supported so I was often stuck playing | games in 4 color CGA mode. I eventually upgraded the RAM from | 512KB to 768KB, which cost me $75! | | The annoying double density 720K floppy drive was a non stop | hassle requiring me to learn pkzip and zip spanning to split | the contents of the then common high density disks on a school | PC so I could then get the contents onto my hard drive. I had | to go to my uncle's house if I wanted to get data off a 5.25" | disks, and when he did the copies as a favor for me he usually | returned a high density 3.5" that I still couldn't use | directly. | | I have no idea why I have such fond memories of that thing but | I do. | loloquwowndueo wrote: | " the reason there's about a 90% chance you are reading this on a | PC with an Intel or Intel compatible processor" | | Here I am, reading this on a phone with an ARM-based CPU :) and | some quick market share stats I found actually point to about 50% | web traffic happening on mobile devices. So not 90%, no :) | agentultra wrote: | I feel like this story crossed into Halt and Catch Fire a few | times. | | A friend of mine had one of these machines in the early 90's as a | hand-me-down. It was his own computer! Unheard of at the time for | me and most families I knew that had a computer. They were | shared! | pjungwir wrote: | My family bought a Tandy 1000 around 1985. I was eight years old | and quickly started writing batch scripts and rudimentary BASIC | games. My friend had a Tandy too and, being a musician, talked | all the time about their "three-voice sound." We taught ourselves | BASIC together by decoding the spiral-bound reference manual that | came with the computer. Without any tutorial-style material it | was rough going, but we persisted. I remember him trying to | explain for loops to me and I was just n-o-t getting it. And I | always wondered what GOSUB was for. "Why would you want to go | somewhere then just come back again?" After several years it | finally clicked when I independently invented function calls. ;-) | troymc wrote: | I remember that spiral bound reference manual. Learning from | that was like learning English by reading the dictionary. Thank | goodness there were examples. I also never understood the point | of GOSUB for a long time. | tiahura wrote: | My dad bought one in '85 and kept it for 2 days. He thought it | was junk (he was a mechanical engineer and used Apollo | workstation as his daily driver. | | He returned it and bought an Amiga. Best decision ever. | icedchai wrote: | In middle school I had a friend with a Tandy 1000EX. I had an | Amiga 500. He refused to believe the Amiga was a superior | platform! Early 90's computer wars were so childish. | soylentcola wrote: | Had similar experience with our Commodore 128 (even had a | spiral-bound brick of a manual too). Between that and just the | old LIST command, I was able to poke around in loads of games | and programs and see how they worked (or, say, give myself a | million gold in Telengard). | | I did grasp GOSUB fairly easily but I never understood why I | could load some programs from disk, but when I typed LIST, I | would just see a single line with SYS (and a number). Didn't | realize until later that this was just a way to call machine | language code that had been loaded directly into memory. | | How the hell was I supposed to learn from that?? | timbit42 wrote: | Well, the C128 had a built-in ML monitor which could | disassemble assembly. | incanus77 wrote: | Radio Shack may have been selling IBMs by 1995, but by 1998, they | were in a big partnership with Compaq instead. I worked at one | then while in college and earned great commissions on them; they | were the big ticket. The Radio Shack strategy at that time was | shifting towards licensing big name products such as Compaq, | Sprint PCS mobile phones, and Sprint cordless landline phones. | They even had Scotty from Star Trek promoting a battery club! | | See this catalog: | https://radioshackcatalogs.com/flipbook/1999_radioshack_cata... | | Ultimately they got completely blown away by the rise of big box | stores such as CompUSA and Best Buy, though. | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | Tandy actually had a comic series for kids which advertised their | computers. | | https://www.atarimagazines.com/whizkids/showpage.php?issue=c... | rob74 wrote: | > _The problem was, Tandy didn't really have a succession plan | [for the Tandy 1000]._ | | Sounds familiar... sitting back and treating their successful | models as cash cows killed at least one other home computer | pioneer: Commodore. The original Amigas (A1000/A500/A2000) were | successful (more in Europe than in the US, but still), but they | were never able to come up with a worthy successor until it was | too late. | hinkley wrote: | Living through that era, I recall that Linus Torvalds talked a | lot of smack about the 80286. The 386 was just so much better | for implementing Unix on that they didn't even want to deal | with it. | | So there seems to be this uncanny valley between 8086 and 386, | where a lot of people either dragged their feet or jumped | forward as soon as they could. | | My transition to a 386 was very abrupt, facilitated by a | Christmas present that could not run on an 8086 machine. But | one of the first things I installed on it was Windows, and I | went from "How will I ever fill up a 40MB hard drive?" to "oh | wow it's almost half full already" in a matter of weeks. I | suspect a lot of people were experience 'sticker shock' with | respect to file size inflation as well, leading to more foot | dragging. | rob74 wrote: | I can fully understand Linus that he didn't want to adapt | Linux to work on a 16 bit CPU. When he started with it, those | were on their way out already, so it would have been pretty | pointless... | fredoralive wrote: | I guess its the lack of a killer app for the 286? Was there | much software for DOS that actually needed a 286 as a | minimum? I get the impression they were often just used as | "fast XTs". | | Some of this is due to various limitations that make using | the new features of the 286 in DOS a pain (or putting major | DOS compatibility limitations on OS/2 1.x, which is probably | partly why no-one used OS/2 at the time). | | The 386 had features that were actually used like 32 bit | support and a protected mode that could actually work | alongside DOS. Plus its around this time you got Windows 3.x | in 386 Enhanced Mode, which is around the point Windows | actually becomes a thing people use. So you get a lot more | apps that basically require a 386, rather than the generic | mass of DOS software that runs on just about anything | beforehand. | Narishma wrote: | I don't get this comment. The 286 was extremely successful. | It wasn't until the 1991 or 1992 that 386 started outselling | it. | icedchai wrote: | I grew up during that time. In the late 80's, early 90's | teenage BBS world, 286's were considered lame. You could | understand someone being stuck on a 8086/8088: they | couldn't afford to upgrade. But for a few more bucks, you | could get a 386SX instead of a 286 and do way cooler stuff. | timbit42 wrote: | The person at Commodore who didn't have a plan for the future | of computing was Irving Gould. He didn't use computers and | wanted to extract as much value as possible into his own bank | account. His henchman who executed it was Mehdi Ali. They cut | research and engineering to save money, ensuring anything in | the labs would never make it to market in time to be | competitive. They fired Thomas Rattigan, the man who got the | Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 projects going. The Amiga 500 sold | more units than the other Amiga models combined and kept the | company going long enough to release the A3000 and A1200/4000 | before it bankrupted. The only person who got what they wanted | was Irving Gould. He got to die with a few more millions in his | bank account. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Everything got crushed by the IBM PC, including IBM. Largely | because it was open (enough) and could be reverse engineered. | | Apple is the only other notable survivor of the era, by its | fingernails and $150 million from Microsoft in the late 90s to | give the appearance of competition and appease regulators. | Arstechnica has a great piece on this: | | https://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/ | | Specifically these graphs. By 1990 it was all over in PCs. Unix | workstations held on for another decade until Linux on Intel | dealt them a deathblow, aka Coup de Grace. | | https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/artic... | | Of course, most of these companies made bad decisions that led to | their downfall. Which TFA details. But the super-competitive | environment made bad decisions fatal rather than recoverable. | cmer wrote: | Fun Tandy story. | | It was the 80s. My parent bought a Tandy 1000 SX for their | business. It worked fine for a while, until one day it started | randomly crashing, and occasionally showing a little dot bouncing | around the screen. | | They took that thing to countless computer stores to have it | fixed. Nobody could figure it out. Everybody said it was working | just fine. | | My dad got so fed up he bought a new computer and told me that if | I could fix it, I could keep it. | | And of course I figured it out! Turns out, it was infected with | the Ping Pong [1] virus. One of the very first viruses. Certainly | the first I had ever witnessed, or anybody I knew for that | matter. That day, John McAfee got me a free computer! | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping-Pong_virus | nope96 wrote: | I love that there is still an active Tandy user group! | | https://www.glensideccc.com/cocofest/ | zaphar wrote: | My first computer was a Tandy 1000HX. Without it I would probably | never have gotten into the career I have now. Nothing but fond | memories of that thing. | derrikcurran wrote: | I could have posted this comment verbatim! (Except mine was a | TX.) I was poor growing up and couldn't afford a computer and | it changed everything when I got the Tandy. My mother was a | hairdresser. She got to talking to one of her clients about me | and, long story short, her client gave me the Tandy along with | a bunch of manuals and programming books. She also came to our | apartment and got me started on it. Even showed me the | internals. I owe a great deal to that woman! | natebc wrote: | Ditto but mine was a TL with TWO 1.44MB floppy drives that I | later crammed a massive 10MB hard drive into and dangled a | 300 baud external modem off of! | | IIRC that thing was like $1500 in 1987 dollars. I have no | idea at all how my parents could afford it but I'm sure glad | they did. Every single dollar I've earned as an adult was | because of that purchase. | zaphar wrote: | Ours was literally bought with tax return money. We could | never have afforded it otherwise. | smm11 wrote: | I was at a newspaper in 1992 and we all used Tandy TRS-80 | computers writing to huge floppy discs. Our finished copy would | find its way to Compugraphic Unisetter machines for output. | | Inside of a year I was at a place using Aldus Pagemaker on Macs | to paginate. | Rapzid wrote: | Tandy 3000 is where it all started for me. My fam got it late in | about 95.. A hand me down from my dad's friend. | | We had a vic(?) in 92/93 but I don't recall my dad ever doing | anything with it and I only ever got a simple sample program | running from the huge manual. After much trial and frustration; | was 7-8. | | So Tandy. DOS, a commander like compressed launcher... Everything | had to explode before it ran haha. Loaded with stealth fighter | and some other games. Monitor had to be banged to get the colors | right every so often. | | Sierra games. Ran up huge help line bill. Father was PO'd; we | didn't have a lot of means haha. | | 486 came with second marriage. Got video game programming in | 21!days box bundle from Sam's publishing for Xmas. Nothing worked | properly on windows 3.1 ootb back then. Really turned me off | programming for a long time. | | Ah the memories. | throwaway20148 wrote: | Little piece of Tandy errata: They had their own subway line in | downtown Fort Worth[1]. It was there before they built their | headquarters, The Tandy Center, but they kept it running and it | terminated in a parking lot that also had a little farmers market | that my family used to sell watermelons at when I was a kid in | the early 90s. If we sold all of the melons early we would take | the train into the Tandy Center for the fun of it. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_Center_Subway | ck2 wrote: | > _And I will argue the reason there's about a 90% chance you are | reading this on a PC with an Intel or Intel compatible processor | in it has a lot to do with Tandy_ | | Nope. The reason you are reading this on PC/intel is because of | clone motherboards and CPUs which made home computers affordable | and small-shops/hobbyists could build their own. | | Name brands were twice the price, the Apple universe was four | times the price. | | Cheap clones is why x86 is alive and well today. | jhbadger wrote: | I think both are true. The important thing with the Tandy 1000 | is that it had decent graphics and sound and so was attractive | to the home buyer who probably wanted to play games. These | eventually made it to the cheap clone market via sound and | graphics cards, but when the Tandy 1000 was released, IBM | compatible PCs were seen as business machines and not really | game machines. In the late 1980s you'd be better off with an | Amiga or even an 8-bit machine if you wanted to play games than | with most IBM compatible machines. | klik99 wrote: | My dad had a Tandy 1400LT - no hard drive, just whatever disk was | inserted - I played Space Quest 2&3 and Leisure Suit Larry (I | wouldn't let my own kids play that one at that age, but I | honestly had no idea). I was upset it wouldn't play Space Quest | 4. This triggered a latent memory of my first experience | programming BASIC on it, putting me at 8-9 years old. I wish | there was a laptop that difficult to use and durable today - my | own kids ended up busting a raspberry pi 400 I got for them to | mess around on. | mosburger wrote: | My first computer was an Tandy 1000EX (in... 1986?), and this | article is spot-on. The sound and graphics were miles ahead of my | friends with IBM and Apple PCs at home (but not quite as good as | the Commodores). And, as the article points out, they didn't keep | up with standards. I made the mistake of going with nostalgia and | "upgrading" to a Tandy 1000TX in 1992 when I headed off to | college, and everyone else was running Windows (my old Tandy | could run Windows 3.0, but not 3.1). I ended up needing to do my | homework on my roommate's Wang (another dinosaur) PC. | | Still nostalgic for my first Tandy 1000, but I regretted my | decision to get the second one, and ultimately sold it a year | later to buy a no-name 486 PC. | HideousKojima wrote: | My parents had a Tandy when I was young, so from about '90-'96 | (we got a Windows 95 desktop around that time). I distinctly | remember my first video game, _Donald 's Alphabet Chase_ | (starring Donald Duck) but didn't discover until years later | that it was developed by Westwood, of _Command and Conquer_ | fame. | | We also had a typewriter as our printer, which had a single | line preview/edit mode when using as a typewriter, and a | daisywheel printer sort of mechanism when printing from the PC. | tstrimple wrote: | This was my first computer too! But I didn't get my until '95 | (I was 12) as a hand-me-down from an uncle. It's the computer | that I learned how to learn on. I learned DOS by myself from a | DOS For Dummies book which let me figure out how to install and | play games on the computer. I also picked up Basic which | started my adventures in computer programming. This single | opportunity set me down the path of learning and making a | living from technology for the rest of my life. I've no idea | what I would be doing today if I never received that computer. | bsharitt wrote: | I'm not old enough to have grown up on Tandy computers(though I | recall my parents having what may have been a CoCo when I was | very young), I do have have a 1000TX and CoCo 2 as part of my | retro computer collection. I really kind of like that 1000TX in | my collection. Not only is it one of my favorite XT | compatibles(technically it has a 286, but still effectively has | an XT rather AT architecture, so it ends up basically being a | fast 8088) in my collection, that Tandy graphics and sound also | give a bit of a soul of an 8-bit home computer and was pretty | well supported by games of the era, especially compared other | niche graphics and sound technologies. | lordnacho wrote: | I remember the brand, though I never came near one. Friends all | had various other machines. | | Sounds like they missed the memo about Moore's Law. It really was | a special time for home computing in the 1990s, every time I went | to see a friend with a new machine it would be miles better than | one from just a few months earlier. Sounds went from a bunch of | beeps to what we now think of as ordinary. Graphics went from | green text on a black screen to proper 3D. The father of a friend | of mine had a high end machine that he used to do research, super | precious about it. Not long after I had a gaming machine that was | much better. | | You can see why your average business manager might think to keep | the outdated models around as entry level machines, and then | people got so disappointed they never came back. | hinkley wrote: | In the era before 3D graphics became the default for games, it | was often the case that people would justify upgrading a | machine in order to be able to handle spreadsheets better, but | coincidentally it now also ran video games better as well. | | I have no idea how many times business software served as a | handy excuse for fun, but it was a lot. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-27 23:00 UTC)