Welcome back to part 9 of my fifth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we took a look the Tandy1100FD, An early Subnotebook computer running DOS that paved the way for the PalmPilot. In this post we go back a little to have a closer look at Tandys first IBM Compatible, The Tandy 2000.
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Released in 1983, the Tandy 2000 was Tandys first attempt at making an IBM PC Compatible boasting a more powerful CPU and suppiour graphics. However the machine ended up failing to catch on due to its hardware quirks and high price.
The story of the 1000 begins with the intrduction of the TRS-80 Model I in 1977. While the Model I was initally targeted at home users, Due to the machines 64 collum text resolution and Z80 CPU, it ended up getting being very popular in the buisness market. So much so that Tandy followed up the Model I with the Model II and III specifacly for use in small buisness and office enviorments.
But in 1981, IBM introduced the IBM PC, and due to the influence of Big Blue and the PC's standardization of MS-DOS and Intel X86 architecture, Soon the buisness market shifted from Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 machines running the CP/M operating system, to IBM PC Compatible Intel 8086 and 8088 machines running MS-DOS.
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This created a huge problem for Tandy as the TRS-80 line was lossing its place in the buisness market. Not helping was their liscencing policies of the time discouraging the development and release of third-party products in Radio Shack stores. While Tandy didnt discourage third party products completely, they had to follow strick branding rules in order for them to be sold in Radio Shack stores.
You see, Radio Shack had a philosophy that any product that was going to be on their store shelf needed to have their brand names on it like Radio Shack, Realistic, Tandy, and Micronta. If another company wanted to sell a product in a Radio Shack store it needed to have one of those brandnames on it.
For example Radio Shack sold the Casio VL-Tone Sysntiszer in their stores, but it was sold as the Realistic Concertmate 200 rather than the Casio VL-Tone.
This carred over into their personal computer lines both with hardware and software. In fact weve seen examples of this in their portable computer lines like the pocket computers, the Tandy 100, and the 1100FD, which were OEM devices from companies like Sharp, Casio, Kyocera, Brother, Ciitzen, and Panasonic.
However this ended up hurting them when it came to software as many major software compaines were very discorraged to write any software for Tandy machines and effectivly have no brand recognition or advertising.
By 1983, It became clear to Tandy that the rise of IBM compatibles and their discourament of third-party products with their policies had halved the company's market share and stopped profit growth and something needed to change. They felt that making an MS-DOS machine had 2 benifits: 1). They could capitalize on the new market, and 2). they could leverage sales opportunities afforded by their solid position in smaller personal computer market.
Radio Shack already had a large presence in the computer market and by making an MS-DOS machine that they could sell in their stores at retail, They wouldn't have to rely on sales to corporate accounts and could offer affordable 16-bit computers running MS-DOS directly to the computing public. So work began on a MS-DOS Machine that would be suppior to the IBM PC in all most every way.
The Result was the Tandy 2000, launched on November 28th, 1983, at a retail price of $2,750 for a machine with 2 floppy drives and 128 KB RAM.
On the front lies the power switch, a reset button, and two 720K 5.25 floppy drives.
On the back, there are 4 expansion slots, an exhaust fan, is the power plug, the printer interface, an AC out for pluging in a monitor, the powerplug, monocrome monitor out, a paraleel port and an RS-232 Serial port.
And on the bottom is the Keyboard port, and the speaker grill.
The keyboard is exactly the same as the later Tandy 1000. It uses the same case and keycaps, the same layout, and the same Fujistu Leaf springs as its 1000 counterpart. The only difference is the badging on the top.
Also much like the Tandy 1000, There were two monitors available for the Tandy 2000 at launch, The monochrome VM-1, and the color CM-1. Now unlike the later VM-2, The VM-1 plugs directly into the monocrome monitor port on the 2000, theres no composite, so it can only used with the Tandy 2000 and nothing else. The CM-1 also can not be used with other systems, because although it uses a 9 pin connector it is not RGBI compatible. Tandy did produce a special graphics card that could allow you to use the CM-1 with Non Tandy 2000's, but other than that theres no way to use it as a CGA monitor.
Booting up the computer is the same as booting any IBM PC or compatible of the day, insert your DOS disk into Drive A, insert your program disk into Drive B, and turn the computer on. The computer will then preform a memory size check (counting how much RAM is available), let out a beep, and drop you to a BIOS screen booting the DOS disk in Drive A.
For storage, you have the previously mentioned two 720K 5.25 floppy drives or the option of using a 10MB hard drive. The Tandy 2000 used quad-density 80 track 5.25" floppy drives, allowing disks to be formatted at 720k, twice the capacity of the typical 40 track 360k disks of the time. However due to the design did lead to issues handling 360K disks, but we'll come back to that latter. The floppy controller on the Tandy 2000 is also compatible with 3.5" double-density 720K floppy drives as well.
For Expansion, Tandy provided both internal kits and external memory boards to upgrade the system to 256K of RAM, and later it was possible to have as much as 768K and even 896K with third party mods.
But a more intersting upgrade were chips for monocrome and color graphics. Yes, Thats right, The Tandy 2000 originally couldnt actually display any graphics at all! But it was possible to get a special monocrome graphics card to support pixel-addressable graphics and could also display color with a add on chip. Tandy also sold a TV/Joystick Option card giving you RF output for TV's, in addition to joystick ports and a sound chip.
Other perrifreals and accessories included a VM-1 monitor stand, a floor stand and a DigiMouse/Clock controller card for mouse input and a Real Time Clock.
For hardware, the 2000 uses an Intel 80186 CPU clocked at 8 MHz, 128K of RAM, and 16K of ROM for the BIOS.
The graphics are displayed with a text resolution 80x25 in monocrome and can display graphics at a resolution of 640x400 in either monochrome or 8 colors out of a pallette of 16 with the approprite add ons.
And for sound, It of course has a small PC Speaker for simple monophonic sound and beeps, typical for most IBM Compatibles of the time.
For 1983, those specs are insane! Especially compared with the contemporary IBM PC XT, The Tandy 2000 was effectivly on par with far more expensive CAD workstations.
As for software, the 2000 had a variaty of special versions of popular DOS software packages taliored to its graphics capabilities like WordPerfect 4.2, Lotus 1-2-3, Framework, DBase, MultiMate, Pfs:Write, AutoCAD, SCORE, Lumena (from Time Arts) shareware office programs, and the complete line of Microsoft language products. Microsoft also released a version of Xenix for the Tandy 2000 as well.
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Unfortunatly, the computer's great power did not translate to great sales as the Tandy 2000 sold poorly. The computer received a lukewarm reception by the market and press, so very very few were sold.
So why did the 2000 flop? Well there were 2 reasons, the first was the price. The base model was selling for $2,750 dollars and the 2000HD for $4,250. For comparison, the TRS-80 Model 4 with two floppy drives was selling for $1,999 dollars and the high-end Model 16 with two floppy drives was selling for $4,699, So the computer was already far too expensive for most users to afford to buy one.
And the second problem was it wasnt fully compatible with the IBM PC. For one thing, the Intel 80186 was not fully backwards compatible with the 8086 and 8088 and was was incompatible with the support chips in the IBM PC, so certain software wouldnt run on the 80186. The Tandy 2000 was only nominally BIOS-compatible with the IBM PC XT and only software that went through the OS and BIOS would work, so most DOS software that directly accessed the hardware did not work.
But even if the software would run on both machines, it would be difficut to actually load it because of the floppy drives. Remember how I said the he design lead to issues handling 360K disks earlier? Well you see the Tandy 2000's floppy drives used a narrower head to the typical 360K drive, much like the 1.2 MB drives in the later IBM AT.
However, much like the 1.2 MB drives in the IBM AT, the Tandy 2000 also had problems reliably reading and writing 360K disks due to the smaller heads not completely erasing the tracks and causing 40-track drives to become confused by residual magnetic signals on the outer edge of the track. Later on, Tandy did distribute the computer with a utility called PC-Maker that would read and format 40-track disks in the 2000s 80-track drives that were readable in drives on ordinary PCs, and various utility programs for DOS could read nonstandard formats including the Tandy 2000's disks.
The serial port was also incompatible the PC/XT's. PC-compatible terminal emulation software had to either access the serial hardware strictly through BIOS or use a FOSSIL driver, a software wrapper that virtualized the serial hardware to run on a wider variety of hardware, Though there were several terminal programs were available for the Tandy 2000, making it possible to log in on BBSes, e-mail, and other remote systems.
All of this lead to poor sales for the 2000, with Radio Shack begining to sell them at discont not long after. The Tandy 2000 continued to be marketed into 1988 with continual price cuts, before droping from the catalogs, with the remaining unsold computers being converted into Radio Shack store operations terminals.
But the 2000's legacy did live on for a litte bit as just a year after the 200 was released, The Tandy 1000 was introduced. it used the same keyboard and case design style as the 2000, but was built to be fully IBM Compatible and was far more successfull as a result.
The 2000 also had a role in the development of Microsoft Windows, as Microsoft used Tandy 2000's as their development machines. Tandy even ran an ad in BYTE Magazine featuring Bill Gates and an early version of Windows 1.0 praising the superior performance of the Tandy 2000 and how it was advantageous in Microsoft's development of Windows 1.0.
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While Tandy and Microsoft did plan to have a version of Windows for the 2000 as early as 1984, delays prevented windows from officially coming to the 2000 without proper patches. So just imagine had they been able to meet that deadline and it had been offical, The Tandy 2000 would have beaten the Amiga and Atari ST to market by being the first personal computer with a color GUI opperating system!
As for collectors today The 2000 remains an expensive sought after collectors item. It's certainly not a computer to grab to play DOS games on and it shows. but for those into bizzare failed computers, it certainly fits the bill.
And that concudes my look at the Tandy 2000, An Early MS-DOS computer that ried to one up the IBM PC XT, only to shoot itself in the process by offering more features at a high price. It limped on for 5 years without success on its own but would pave the way for the greatness of the Tandy 1000 and later Windows nontheless. It serves as a reminder that sometimes better features aren't everything and thaught Tandy a valuable lesson in the importance of compatibility. This concludes part 9 of my fifth SepTandy Spectacular, tune in next time as we conculde this years special by jumping all the way to the early 90's, to having a look at the Tandy Sensation.