Tandy Silver

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Aug 25, 2004, Bill Vermillion wrote:
...
>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.

Those of us who had been using the Model 16/6000 with the Motorola 68000
chips saw the Intel chips as downright evil with their 64k segmented,
little endian, architecture.  When I first met Doug Michels at a TCBUG
meeting in Fort Worth, I told him I thought he was nuts doing Xenix on
Intel rather than pushing the Motorola systems.

>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!

There were some very amusing tests where the CPU fan was disconnected on
running systems.  The Pentium IV chips throttled down automatically without
damage while the AMD chips left smoking craters in the mother board.

>> 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 Tandy 4000s were pretty substantial as well.  I think they were the
only PCs I saw that had the hard drives rubber mounted to protect them from
physical shocks.  They suffered from the standard PC power supply fans
though.  I still have a Tandy 4000 here that we use with DR-DOS to burn
EPROMS.

Bill
--
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