Tandy Silver

[Bill Vermillion]

On Wed, Aug 25 09:40 , GCC Consulting, showing utter disregard for 
spell-checkers gave us this: 

>  
> > > 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.

There would still be all the old legacy systems that didn't have
them.  So you'd not want to run dual-inventory.   Whether that
would be true or not, it would be a very good excuse to use
for continuing with old practices :-)

> XENIX ONLY ran from the hard drive.

I lived in  those machines for awhile.  I never did any work
with the II/12s running the Tandy supplied DOS.  It never fit my
concept of an operating system :-)

> > 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.

'senior moment'?  Are you sneaking up on Bob,JPR and myself? :-)
I get a few more of those as each birthday whizzes by, faster than
the last one it seems.

The model 2000 used the 80186. And it was different that the
8088/8086 that others were using.  It was the next generation.
Tandy wanted to make a better PC - and they did.

That machine became the darling of the Autocad world.

And the problem with the 80186 is that Intel screwed up in making
things compatible. Intel seemed to get alternate versions a bit
off from the previous ones. The 80286 was more compatible with
the 8086 than the 80186. They seemed to alternate compatibility
with generations at times. No one ever accused Intel of making
GREAT chips.

An aside here. I saw some test against the newer AMDs against the
Intel products.  The AMD's outperformed the Intel in 'typical'
office applications - but in things that could use mulit-tasking
or hyper-threading the Intel chips beat the AMD

What was interesting is the amount of power consumed by the best
performing Intel chips.  At full tilt they were consuming
245 watts of power.  And the first PC had a 60 watt power supply!

> 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.

The Tandy 3000's were the best engineered 80286 machines on the
market.  Tandy wanted to build better machines, and for many models
they did, but 'cheaper is better' was what hit the consumer.

I've taken 3000s apart after having them running for 3 years and
they were virtually spotless inside.  They had a open-cage power
supply.  There was a 5.25" muffin fan at the front of the machine
that sucked air through a washable filter, blew it across the
memory boards, and through the power supply and to the outside
are.  All you had to do was slide the computer forward, pull
the velcro tab, slide the filter down, wash the filter, dry it, and
put it back.

Something in the back of my memory says the design was by a
Japanese M* company. [I don't recall it if was Matsushita,
Mitsubishi, or some other.  It was not Mitsumi [sp] who later did a
lot of OEM manufacturing for Tandy.  They were one of the 'cheaper'
approaches, not the 'better' approaches of the former.

Pulling filtered air through a filter and actually pressurizing the
interior of a  device has ALWAYS been the correct way. 

The PC had the fan at the end of the circulation chain and air was
pulled through every crack, cranny, or crevice in the machine.  That
meant that dirty air was drawn in over the heads in floppy drives.
It also sucked air through unfilled sockets, so inserting chips
in later gave you chips that didn't work too well as the dirt came
in, moisture could come in when the machine was off, and corrosion
set in.   The PC from IBM wasn't really designed, it was cobbled
together, and as a result we all suffered from it - and we still do
today in many areas.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com