Hacker News Reader

Comment by classichasclass | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

My first computer was a TRS-80 Color Computer. My second computer was a Commodore 64.

Other than the CPU, the Commodore 64 was better in every way. Graphics, lowercase, SID for sound, real interrupts for data, keyboard... so many other reasons.

The Commodore 64 was better than the TRS-80 Color Computer. Much better.

You are correct; my memory was faulty.

I was remembering the VIC-20 which was the contemporary of the TRS-80.

Yes, the C64 was quite a bit better. But it came out roughly 2-3 years later, and was triple the price of a CoCo2 until the first round of price cuts (at which point it was still double).

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.

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!

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.

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

You might be interested in the github project to recreate the DLOAD server protocol on modern hardware. https://github.com/TJBChris/dload_server

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com