[Coco] Tandy Electronics??!!

[Dave G4UGM]

I always remember it as being "quite popular" but as the business only lasted two years or so, I guess it either wasn't as popular as I remember or just not profitable. As a 6809 "geek" and a programmer who was also a Radio Ham, the vast majority of stuff on the market just didn't interest me. Stuff like the ZX81, Spectrum and even the C64 were pretty much sealed packages which didn't contain a 6809 either. The Dragon was more on my horizon as it was a 6809 and there were rumours that it could be made to run flex so I was more "aware" of it... 

A lot of the hacking in the UK around that time was BBC-B based, but again it never really got me excited. I was really into machines with a BUS and slot in cards. I eventually bought an Atari STE as I wanted to write MIDI programs, and I could't afford an IBM PC and a MIDI card, and I wanted to handle SYSex dumps >64K which was a pain on a BBC... It was of course not a BUS based machine but it did have a sort of SCSI port and MicroWire hidden inside...

Dave
G4UGM

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Coco [mailto:coco-bounces at maltedmedia.com] On Behalf Of Bill
> Loguidice
> Sent: 02 January 2015 17:25
> To: CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Tandy Electronics??!!
> 
> "Quite popular" is relative, of course. In the UK, you pretty much had ZX
> Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Amstrad machines with the vast
> majority of the support, prior to the rise of the Atari ST and Amiga.
> Everything else was strictly second or third tier items. Certainly the Dragon
> 32/64 did better than the Tano Dragon did here in the US, but that's not
> much of an accomplishment.
> 
> -Bill
> 
> ===================================================
> Bill Loguidice, Managing Director; Armchair Arcade, Inc.
> <http://www.armchairarcade.com>
> ===================================================
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> 
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 11:53 AM, Dave G4UGM <dave.g4ugm at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > I think the Dragons were quite popular in the UK. They pop up pretty
> > often on E-Bay UK, and I own one along with a CoCo II both of which I
> > bought on E-Bay and an Atari STE I have owned from new.
> >
> > My first 6809 was a NewBear 6809 system on a single card. I can't find
> > any reference to it on the web and I gave mine away a long time ago so
> > no pictures.  it used the same BUS and form factor as the 7768 .
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newbear_77-68
> >
> > I think after that for a while I had a Fortronic 6809 system like
> > this:-
> >
> > http://nosher.net/archives/computers/prac_comp_1981-03_026
> >
> > I didn't pay anything for it though. Apparently the one I had was
> > produced for a Post Office counter automation project, and I got it as
> > the project was cancelled. I had it for about three years until it was
> > "recovered" by Fortronic as the Post Office wanted to restart the
> > project, new 6809's were longer available and the needed every one
> > they could find while the re-wrote the software for a current micro....
> >
> > After that I had an Acorn Computers 6809 Eurocard system.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Eurocard_systems
> >
> > not sure how many were made, but not many.....
> >
> > Dave
> > G4UGM
> >
> 
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