On Thu, 26 Apr 2018, Ed Sharpe via cctalk wrote: NEC 8201, Olivetti M10 were more of the Kyoto Ceramics machines. NEC was about 3/8" thicker, but had much more expansion capability. 8085, 8x40 LCD, Competing unrelated machines included the Epson HC-20 (painted gray and katakana character set removed for the US HX-20) 4x20 6301, and later the Workslate (spreadsheet oriented machine!)

On 04/26/2018 05:58 PM, Bill Gunshannon via cctalk wrote: THe reason for that is the 68K was available long after the Z80 (about 4 years). So the base TRS-80 had already evolved to the Mod-II by then. That and the base TRS 80 both saturated the market and also left many with a bad taste when it came to expansion... least till they sorted it out. I'd left there before long before it imploded. Allison

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018, Eric Smith via cctalk wrote: So, the Z80 ran CP/M and TRS-DOS, functioning as in I/O coprocessor for the 68000, . . . As in small business, which is "subordinate", engineering or administration? A friend of a friend was very proud of his Z80/68000 Cromemco. He was a little offended when I compared it to the Radio Shack Model 16.

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 8:23 PM, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: The HP 82324A coprocessor card wasn't an ISA bus master card. Software running on the host PC implemented some of the I/O interface. When software on the coprocessor card made some I/O accesses the coprocessor card could be frozen while software running on the host PC completed the I/O access. Hewlett-Packard Journal, April 1992 http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1992-04.pdf Page 110, A High-Performance Measurement Coprocessor for Personal Computers This article describes the second and faster version of the card based on the 68030.

D'oh! I knew that. But still, even more fragmentation...

On 04/26/2018 10:00 PM, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk wrote: At that point in time it was a field everybody knew little about. CP/M ran on the Model I and the Model III.? CP/M was a very adaptable OS. Tandy wasn't the only one who tried to do better.? Look at the NEC APC. Quad Density Double Sided 8" disks. High density color graphics with 256 colors.? Dismal failure in the market because it wasn't fully "IBM Compatible". The follow-on NEC APC/III was a great big step backwards. bill

The first personal computer I ever came in contact with was the TRS-80 Model 1 (Level II) at a friend of my father's in Long Island around 1979. I learned to program basic at his house and practiced during the summer at my junior high school that had a few Model 1's for kids to work with. The school let me come in and play. With my Bar Mitzvah money in 1980 I bought my first computer, TRS-80 model III (I think it cost me $1200). I learned a LOT on that machine. I belonged to LICA (long island computer association) and one of the guys there operated a TRS-80 business computer. I can't remember what model, (II, 12, 16, etc) but it ran Xenix. He had 2 modems and two phone lines at his house connected to it and granted access to club members. I built a micromint 300 baud acoustic coupler kit, connected my TRS-80 Model III to the phone and over to his Xenix machine. I was hooked and learn a LOT about *nix style operating systems spending HOURS tying up the only phone line in our house connected to it. Really formative years for me. When I left for college, I brought with me the TRS-80 4P. Nice little machine, did all my papers on it. All that "fragmentation" to me was wonderful. Different models, different capabilities it was magical! 73 Eugene W2HX

On Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 10:53 PM, Carlos E Murillo-Sanchez via cctalk < cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: Don't get me wrong. Like you I learned a lot due to all the variety of differing machines that were available in the market early on. From a business perspective I don't think it made a lot of sense however to have so many internally competing models. Of course then, I guess you could argue that Atari probably had the most cohesive set of computers, but that didn't necessarily translate to great success. I guess that did mostly work for Apple with the II line, save for the major III distraction.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018, W2HX via cctalk wrote: There are two different interpretations of "fragmentation". Both are implicitly negative. "Any color you want, as long as it is black" (1909) saves the company a LOT of money, by only having one model. 1) Overlapping product lines. Such as Toyota Corolla and Camry, or Honda Civic and Accord, or TRS80 Model 1 and 2, or model 1 and Coco, or Model 100 and pocket computer(s). Company competes against itself, and can never manage to claim "best selling model". 2) TOO diverse. Such as Toyota Prius and Diesel Tundra pickup, or Honda Unicub/U3x and Ridgeline, or Coco and Model 16 Company has to support too many different things, and might not ever develop the expertise in some of the lines. (The Honda N600 that I mentioned earlier was a motorcycle engine and transmission design. The previous S600/S800 was two seater sports car (looked British), with dual overhead cam, roller crank, roller wrist pins, roller distributor shaft bushings, etc. At more than 9.5K redline, it got 60+HP out of 600cc/36cubic-inch. And constant tinkering. Meanwhile, the Toyota S800 looked similar, but had essentially a lawnmower engine.) There is a fine line between not having what a specific customer needs V making them make choices. Radio Shack made some mistakes. Ranging from not having the 80x24 and full memory management for CP/M in the Model 1 (not fixed until Model FOUR), to not having a "100% compatible" PC quickly enough. They were not the only ones to think that making a "better" compatible machine would be preferable to making a clone. (cf. DEC Rainbow, Sirius/Victor 9000, TI Professional) I don't know why the company went under. I doubt that their computer line was the sole cause. They had a good run, and we are the better for having experienced it. -- Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com

Excuse my long post, but I get excited whenever I can talk about the Model 16. :) I will expound a bit on what was already mentioned. The Model 16 was an engineering marvel. It was released in 1982 in the same form factor as the venerable Model II. It was essentially an upgraded Model II. In fact, the Model II could be upgraded to mostly Model 16 specs via an upgrade kit. The 16 was a dual processor machine with 2 independent computer systems running in parallel, one a Z80 and the other a MC68000. The Z80 side of the machine ran just as it did on the Model II. This was a big advantage in that the machine could run the entire Model II library of programs. The 68K subsystem consisted of a CPU card and one or more memory cards which shared their own independent bus (via ribbon cables) from the Z80 bus. When the 16 was running with a 68K OS, the Z80 subsystem controlled all I/O via the main computer bus. The Z80 and 68K communicate via shared memory in the 68K memory space with both sides essentially rapidly polling certain locations for requests and responses placed in memory. There was a facility available in the 16 for the 68K to interrupt the Z80, but since the Model II with the Model 16 upgrade did not have this capability, no operating systems took advantage of this feature AFAIK since the percentage of machines using the upgrade was significant. One cool feature is that the Z80 could bank switch in 16K of any location on the 68K memory so Z80 programs run on the Model 16 could use the 68K memory without a 68K OS. When it was released in 1982, the Model 16 came with TRSDOS-16. This was essentially a MC68000 runtime that ran on the 68K boards. With TRSDOS-16, the Z80 side of the machine ran the Z80 TRSDOS-II OS. A huge issue was that the Model 16 was released with almost no software ready to take advantage of the 68K. This was a classic case of the hardware way ahead of the software. This resulted in Tandy actually including a copy of the Assembler 16 with every Model 16 sold so that customers could write their own software. TRSDOS-16 had many limitations, a few of which was that it was only single user and that the assembler used non-standard 68K mnemonics. Tandy knew they needed a multi-user system for the system to succeed, and was considering Unos as the solution when for whatever reason they could not make that happen. They then pivoted to XENIX which was finally released maybe a year or so after the machine. The initial releases were rushed and as a result very buggy. Tandy lost a lot of market time advantage due to this fumble. However, XENIX ultimately did well on the platform. So much so that a year later the Model 16B, which was a 68K version of the Model II?s successor, the Model 12, was the most popular Unix based workstation on the market. An upgrade of the machine to the Tandy 6000 a year or so later saw an increase in processing power. But by then, we all know the story of the IBM PCs architecture dominance of the market and Tandy?s attempts to succeed in that area. This caused internal business conflicts which eventually doomed the MC68000 architecture at the company.

On Fri, 27 Apr 2018, Geoffrey Oltmans via cctalk wrote: Yes Although I think that it is likely that Tandy bought them before a tuner was put in, rather than remove already installed tuners. In early episodes of "Married With Children", you can see that model of TV on Al Bundy's kitchen counter. (off-white, not battleship gray/"Mercedes Silver") The signal cable for it comes out of the hole where the volume control would have been. The open area where the tuner would have been is large enough to mount a full-height floppy with a small power supply and a mumetal shield. even IBM. CGA boards, even Compaq's have a 4 pin Berg "RF modulator connector".