[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Frank Pittel]

I remember when Tandy started selling the PC compatibles. The problem was that they
weren't completely compatible. There were a lot of issues with running a lot of "pc"
software and didn't offer any additional functionality.

The Other Frank

On Sat, Jan 04, 2014 at 09:50:48AM +0000, Nick Marentes wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
> 
> 
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