[Coco] Tandy Hard Disk Controller

[Gene Heskett]

On Friday 03 March 2006 14:40, KnudsenMJ at aol.com wrote:
>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.

Chuckle, you just made my Day, Mike.  Thanks.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
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