[HN Gopher] Tandy Corporation, Part 3 Becoming IBM Compatible
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Tandy Corporation, Part 3 Becoming IBM Compatible
Author : klelatti
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-07-11 09:35 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.abortretry.fail)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.abortretry.fail)
| NoSalt wrote:
| Does anybody else find things like this frustrating?
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-2
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-3 - NOPE
|
| - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
| - - - - - - -
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| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-2
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/tandy-corporation-part-3
| Loudergood wrote:
| Oof.
| LordShredda wrote:
| Well, it does make you load the website :^)
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Does anybody else find things like this frustrating?
|
| https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1_
|
| Well, it's right there in the name: AbortRetry _Fail_
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It was interesting that Radio Shack found a "second life" in
| making IBM Compatibles that were very much their own,
| particularly with the improved graphics described in the article.
|
| In the late 1980s when I was in high school I traded my TRS-80
| Color Computer 3 for a 286-based clone which came in a big box
| with many expansion slots and that you plugged a keyboard and
| monitor into, like a modern full-size desktop computer. One of my
| friends I shared programs with had a Tandy PC which had a built-
| in keyboard but used an external monitor like a Commodore 64 or
| my CoCo -- there was a period in which they were fiercely
| competitive and influencing the industry. They didn't survive Win
| 95.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Radio Shack rebadged lots of products from outside sources,
| with the CoCo I/II being mostly a Motorala design for the
| AgVision terminal. The CoCo 3 is notable because so many of the
| improvements were driven by in-house processes. I wondered if
| maybe some of the people who worked on the CoCo 3's improved
| graphics were behind the Tandy Graphics used by the 1000 line
| but nope, turns out they went back to what worked for them and
| copied IBM's modes from the PCjr.
|
| If you still have an interest in the CoCo 3, the port of Attack
| of the PETSCII Robots is coming along.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| For me it was all about OS-9 at the end
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9
|
| which had a decent C compiler at the very least. I was
| checking out everything I could about Unix from the public
| library and creating my own version of as many Unix tools as
| I could. In terms of OS, the Coco 3 was head and shoulders
| over anything else you could get up to that point. It even
| had a windowing system that was a lot like Plan 9.
|
| At some point though I was frustrated with there not being a
| lot of software for it and I did a data processing job for my
| Uncle Bob that paid for a new 286 machine although if I knew
| how much value it made for him I should have asked enough for
| a 386. The 286 was a massive step up in performance -- in
| high school I developed a CP/M program for a teacher using a
| Z80 emulator that was 3x faster than any Z80 could you buy!
| rbanffy wrote:
| I really love this website, and this series on Tandy is a
| delightful trip back in time.
| strictnein wrote:
| Not a huge deal, but the screenshots for Leisure Suit Larry are
| actually for Leisure Suit Larry 2. Played a lot of the first one
| as a kid. Inappropriate, but also just fun to explore the world
| and see what you could do and interact with. And you could kind
| of just exist in the game world.
| rzzzt wrote:
| Or just walk off the road at the starting screen.
|
| It took a loooot of time to memorize the entry quiz questions,
| full of trivia from a time and place for which I was nowhere
| near old enough to exist!
| geocar wrote:
| I think the quiz was LSL1. You just pushed alt-x (or maybe
| ctrl-alt-x) to skip it.
|
| LSL2 had the "little black book" with phone numbers. You
| could type 555-0724 IIRC and get in.
|
| The real answers to these things were in the box, you weren't
| really expected to know that much about dumb stuff, this was
| just novel forms of "copy protection" to make sure you got
| the game (and everything with it) instead of just a copy from
| a friend...
| dccoolgai wrote:
| Weird how you can remember these little things from Sierra
| games: 6858 was the code to disable the Star Generator in
| Space Quest 1.
| christkv wrote:
| As a European playing Sierra games in the 80s we always wondered
| what a Tandy was
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