Good Ol' Tandy Days

[Scott Walker]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-
> bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com
> [mailto:filepro-list-
> bounces+scottwalker=ramsystemscorp.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf Of
> Bill Campbell
> Sent: Wednesday, May 09, 2012 3:43 PM
> To: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com; Linda Hapner
> Subject: Re: Good Ol' Tandy Days
> 
> On Wed, May 09, 2012, Richard Kreiss wrote:
> 
> >I gave an 8 inch floppy to a friend who taught computer science at
> >Brooklyn College. He showed it to one of his classes and told them that
> >it held 450kb of data. This was in the days of 1mb 3 1/2" disks. They
> were shocked.
> 
> I thought the 8in floppies on the Model II were 640k, and a whopping 1.2m
> on the double sided ones on the Model 16/6000s.
> 
> The max RAM one could get in the Model 16/6000s was 512K.  Bob Snapp made
> some jury-rigged RAM cards for this which piggy backed chips to get them
> to 1024k.  I first met Jim Asman when Bob told him to come to me in
> Seattle to buy the boards as Bob wouldn't ship them into Canada.
> 
> The original hard drive for the Model II was an 8in drive with 8 meg
> storage and came with chirping bird sounds.  If one powered it up before
> removing the shipping strap on the bottom, it would toast the $4,500
> drive.
> 
> The last mainframe I ran was a Burroughs B-4500 which had all of 200k
> *BYTES* of IC RAM, and ran an average of 20 programs in the mix at any
> time.  It would run circles around the comparably prices IBM 360s of the
> time.
> 
> >Now one can put 64gb in your pocket and it could get lost.
> 
> >We have gone from writers asking who needs or would ever use 35 mb hard
> >drive to buying a 1 plus tb drive for less then 100.00 for an internal
> >drive.
> 
> When I managed the Radio Shack X-department at 19th and K in D.C., a woman
> came in asking for a machine with 128k RAM so I knew she came from the
> local Apple dealer.  I asked her what she wanted to use the computer for,
> and she said she wrote mystery novels.  I sat her down with a Model II
> running Scripsit, showing her how easy it was to deal with multi-page
> documents, how nice the keyboard was, etc. never mentioning the 64k RAM.
> She bought the Model II, Scripsit, Daisy Wheel II that afternoon (about 6
> grand), and I took it to her Georgetown apartment later that day.  She had
> not bought the external HD enclosure even though I told her that she would
> undoubtably clobber her floppy without one.  A week later she came in
> saying I was right, bought the externl drive, and I managed to get her
> work off the non-bootable floppy.
> She then referred several other local authors to me who bought similar
> systems including a pair for Kitty Kelly and her husband.
> 
> As I've said before, Tandy was in a position to dominate the small
> computer business in the early '80s having good products, a distribution
> system second to none, and some very knowledgeable sales people.
> Unfortunately they hadn't a clue how to deal with professional computer
> sales and marketing people.  It might be interesting to get people like
> me, John Esak, JP, and Tom Podnar, together to write a case study of how
> to kill a business.
> 
> Bill
> --

I opened and ran the computer center in Charlotte NC for 2 years before I
could not stomach Tandy any longer.  They treated the Computer Center
managers like store clerks (although very well paid clerks).  Previously I
had been a salesman for Burroughs.  Burroughs had an excellent training
program, but their small systems products at the time (B80/B800/B90/B900)
were not very competitive in the marketplace.

In defense of Tandy, the microcomputer market was a bloodbath once IBM hit
the market.  Think about it...on one side you are competing against IBM, who
can command a higher price for an inferior product based on their name
alone, and a bunch of competitors who can assemble a competing product from
industry standard parts.  You are kind of getting hit from both sides.  I've
always said the middle is a dangerous place to be!

Think of the hundreds of companies who tried to compete in that market and
how few survived.  Name the big players in the pc market of the early '80s
who are still in it?  Not even IBM!  Don't forget, Apple was almost bankrupt
at one point.  Tandy had a chance but not with their management's mentality.


Regards,

Scott