[Coco] Tandy Hard Disk Controller

[KnudsenMJ at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/3/06 2:35:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,  
gene.heskett at verizon.net writes:

>Heh.  My impression was that they loaded a board and stuck it  in a coco 
>cartridge case, then priced it outrageously high  specifically to 
>discourage the coco from ever being used in business  environment.



I saw one of these boards once, at a Tandy sell-off booth at a Fest.
It was probably the same thing as a B&B HD interface, whose 3 14-pin  ICs 
merely changed the 6809's bus-control pulses to 8088/86 style.  The  difference 
is that Chris Burke charged only $50 for his interface, in a solid  metal case, 
and included all the drivers for BASIC and OS9, and some useful  utilities 
besides.  And by then, you could get HDs with the built-in  controller lots of 
places for under $200, by Seagate et al.
 
Tandy did seem to push the Coco for serious uses like education for a  while, 
but the Coco did push up against the TRS-80 series and later the PClones,  so 
as you say, it got discouraged.
 
There's a fine application for one of those Tandy "controllers" if you have  
a big enough back yard, but you can buy a LOT of clay pigeons (and 12g shells) 
 for $129.
--Mike K.