[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.
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