[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Nick Marentes]

Mark J. Blair <nf6x at ...> writes:

> I don't know what they might have done differently once the Wintel cancer
metastasized. How could they have
> stayed in the computer business once PC clones were cheap, fungible
commodity items?
> 

No. The Wintel cancer was inevitable.

But Tandy were the number 1 home PC computer seller for a short while back
in the later 80's with their Tandy 1000.

If I were Mr. Tandy back then, I would have continued with the PC range
(because I knew the 8-bit computer era was going to end) but still showed
support and recognition to all the existing CoCo customers by creating a
CoCo plug in board for the Tandy 1000 PC.

This way, Tandy had a better chance of encouraging CoCo users to switch to
the Tandy PC range while not abandoning their CoCo.

Late 80's/ early 90's was still too early for a capable software emulator so
a card would have been the way to go. It should have been cheaper to create
than a full CoCo (no case/power supply/keyboard).

Apple did this for their Mac's with the Apple 2e card. Commodore did the IBM
bridgeboard card for their Amiga. There were cards for the Amiga to create a
MAC within an Amiga.

Heck, they could have created a CoCo4 on a PC card that utilized some of the
PC's hardware resources to keep the CoCo4 card costs down. MS-DOS and OS-9
sharing resources.

Oh well, lost opportunities.   :(

Nick