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.
>> 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.
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.
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).