Tandy Silver

[GCC Consulting]

> > John mentioned stupid decisions that were made by Tandy management.
> 
> > One biggie, in my opinion, was requiring developers to sell 
> programs 
> > with a copy of the OS.
> 
> > This decision required the user to by the OS over and over again 
> > thereby increasing the cost of the software. This might 
> make Tandy a 
> > lot of money to start.
> 
> I never saw that with the machines I was involved with.  But 
> those were primarily XENIX systems.
> 
> Was this the Model II system?

Yes this was with the model II systems.  However, when the model 12 came out it
had 2 8" drives.  This eliminated the requirement that all software disks have
the OS.  Tandy did not change the requirement.

I'm not sure the eliminated the requirement even after they started selling hard
drives.

XENIX ONLY ran from the hard drive.

> 
> Was the OS on the disk with the package.  If so that goes 
> along with the early floppy based OSes on other small 
> systems.  Some I recall had only one disk drive so everything 
> had to be there, the OS, the application and the data.
> 
> On the Model I Microsoft required a runtime for the Fortran 
> if you were distributing programs. And I also  think that was 
> true for a compiled BASIC - but I may be confusing that 
> latter with the early PC-DOS.
> 
> > Then again, what should one expect from a company who 
> decides to use 
> > non standard Intel chips in their computers.

> 
> Which chips were these?   There certainly weren't many standards in
> the early days.  I remember some of the best serial cards for the
> PC didn't use the brain-dead 8250 Intel chips.   Those were such a
> pain, particularly for those who integrated them into 
> multiport serial cards, as they could get into a state where 
> only a complete power cycle would clear those.

I'm having a "senior moment here" but I think instead of using the 286
processor, they use a 186.  It was something akin to this.  Tandy used a
slightly different version of the processor everyone else was using.

Now, don't take me wrong, I moved a lot of Tandy PC's either directly to my
clients or to hospitals here in NY.  My wife usually followed my
recommendations. Especially since most hospital IT departments only spoke
mainframe.


Richard Kreiss
GCC Consulting