Welcome back to part 4 of my SepTandy Spectacular. In this post I'm going to take a look at a line of computers that were launched around the same time as the Color Computer, that brought the ability to access personal computing on the go, the Tandy Pocket Computer line.
Today we have smartphones for computing on the go. we have computers in our pockets that we can pull out of our pockets and access information whenever we want, but think back to 1980 for a moment when there was no such thing as a smartphone, Seeing something like this that could allow you to program and run various software on the go was an incredible sight at the time!
Now although the Pocket Computer was sold here in the US by Tandy Radio Shack, it (along with the other models in the range) wasn't manufactured by them, it was made (like many electronics in the 1980s) in Japan by Sharp Electronics who sold it in their home country (as well as some others) as the Sharp PC-1211.
The Tandy Pocket Computer was released in July, 1980 for $249.00, certainly not cheap, but for a machine of its type it was quite impressive.
On the front of the machine is the 24 character LCD display, the on off buttons, the tiny keyboard, and a calculator style numpad.
On the side is a 9 pin expansion port for hooking up a docking station that would give you access to a cassette interface for you to load and save programs.
initially, there was only one docking station available at launch, that had only a cassette interface. but later on there was another docking station that had both a cassette interface and a small dot matrix printer built in.
And of course, Sharp sold their own versions of both docking stations in Japan, and the docking stations from both machines are compatible with each other.
In terms of hardware, the Pocket Computer uses two custom 4-bit CPUs which are clocked at 256 KHz (or 0.25 MHz), 1.9K of RAM, 11K of ROM (containing the BASIC programming language), and a a one-voice sound generator. To power the machine, it required 3 MR44 button cell batteries that gave the computer approximately 300 hours of battery life, according to the documentation.
So what could really you do with these? Well first, these are basically scientific calculators. So, you could type out a complex equation and have the computer solve it for you, as well as print them out. No other calculator of the time was capable of doing this. In fact, the Casio FX-7000g, what many consider to be the first graphing calculator, didn’t come to market until 1985, and Texas Instruments didn’t introduce their first graphing calculator, the TI-81, until 1990, 10 years after this computer came out.
And second, you could write your own programs in BASIC. keep in mind at this time, BASIC was still very popular. Pretty much every computer on the market was designed around BASIC. Even high school math books of the time would often have small BASIC programs at the end of each chapter so you could learn how to use what you just learned on a computer, and these type of programs could easily run on these pocket computers.
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Due to its capabilities, in addition to school students as well as Radio Shacks marketing towards, businessmen, real estate agents, and even aviation pilots, the computer was useful for people working in scientific and engineering fields, especially those working out in the field and needed to run very specific set of calculations on a regular basis.
In 1982, Radio Shack introduced the Pocket Computer 2 for $279.95, Which was once again a rebadged Sharp machine, in this case, the Sharp PC-1500.
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In terms of the hardware of this machine, it had quite a few upgrades compared to the previous machine. It has a 26 character LCD display (capable of displaying graphics at a resolution of 156 x 7 pixels), a Z80 CPU clocked at 1.3 MHz, 2K of RAM, and 16K of ROM, and could on either 4 AA Batteries (with a 50 hour battery life), or a 6V DC external AC adaptor. It also had a expansion slot on the back for either additional software ROMs or additional RAM.
As a result of this, it was very popular among computer hobbyists, as well as many companies who equipped their field staff with the machine.
On the side of the computer is a different connector that's also used to connect up to a docking station. It's also worth mentioning that all of these pocket computers are incompatible with each other, even if they're from same manufacturer. Although that wasn't much of an issue, since there wasn’t exactly a huge software market for the Pocket Computers.
The docking station itself is different too. It had two remote jacks, so you could hook up two cassette recorders, one for reading only and another for both reading and writing, which was useful for copying data from one tape to another, or just to access to additional storage. It also had a different type of printer, Rather than a small attachable dot-matrix printer for printing application print-outs and listings, the PC-2's docking station uses a 4-color plotter capable of printing both text and graphics.
So rather than use tiny pins that push against an ink ribbon, it uses tiny pens that are guided along the paper.
The Sharp 1500 had it's own set of interesting docking stations and accessories as well, such as a matching full sized cassette recorder, an external extended keyboard, various carrying cases, and even a tv out adapter!
Also worth mentioning is the Sharp 1600, a compatible successor to the 1500, that had its own unique docking station with a full size plotter and even a 2 1/2 inch floppy drive!
The next unit in the line was the Pocket Computer 3, launching in 1983, for $99.95. The Sharp equivalent for this machine was the Sharp PC-1251.
This machine's hardware was somewhat of a downgrade compared to the previous models, it had a 24 character LCD display, a SC61860 CPU clocked at 576 KHz (or 0.57 MHz), 4K of RAM (with 1.4K available to the user), 24K of ROM, and ran on a built in rechargeable battery.
While the PC-3 came with a docking station that was similar to the PC-2, The Japanese Sharp PC-1251's docking station was different as it had both a built in printer and a tape drive, and rather than use full size cassettes, it used Microcassettes. The same type of cassette tape that you would find in an answering machine or a Dictaphone, and also used in other Japanese portable 8-bit computers of the time like the Epson HX-20.
The PC-4 was the next model in the line, Also released in 1983, For $69.95. But unlike the previous models, It (as well as the next three models in the line), were not made by Sharp, but rather Casio. In this case, the PC-4 is the Tandy equivalent of the Casio PB 100.
This machine's hardware was, again, a downgrade compared to the models, it had a 12 character LCD display, a HD61913A01 CPU clocked at 455 KHz (or 0.45 MHz), 1K of RAM (with a measly 544 bytes available to the user), 12K of ROM, and ran on two CR-2032 lithium batteries.
The next two models were the PC-5 and the PC-6, released in 1985 and 1987, both retailing at $119.95, based on the Casio FX-780P and the Casio FX-790P respectively.
The two computers hardware are pretty much the same, they had a 24 Character LCD display, a VLSI CPU, and ran on two CR-2032 lithium batteries and one CR-1220 lithium battery. The only difference is the amount of RAM. The PC-5 had 4K of RAM and the PC-6 had 8K of RAM. In addition to BASIC, the PC-5 and PC-6 also had machine language monitors built in so you could write and debug small assembly language programs.
The PC-5 and PC-6 are compatible with the Printer/Cassette Interface docking station for the PC-4, though it required a special cable to hook it up.
Radio Shack also sold a new cassete recorder to go allong with these computers, The CCR-82. it was shorter, narrower, and smaller than the cassette recorder Radio Shack was selling for their machines at this point, The CCR-81. it was also $10 cheaper than the CCR-81, at $49.95 compared to the CCR-81's price of $59.95.
It had quite a different design compared to the other models in the line. It looks a lot like a regular calculator of the era. So much so that the average person probably wouldn’t have even realized it was a computer.
This machine's hardware was yet again a downgrade compared to the previous models, it had a a 12 character LCD display, a HD61913A01 CPU clocked at 200 KHz (or 0.2 MHz), 12K of RAM), 2K of ROM, and ran on two CR-2032 lithium batteries. it's also the only computer in the range to keyboard laid out in an ABC format instead of QWERTY, and not have any interface port.
And the last machine in the line was the PC-8, released in 1988, which sold for $59.95. For this model we go back to a Sharp model again, in this case the Sharp PC-1246.
For hardware, its again, pretty cut down. it has a 16 Character LCD display, both a 4 Bit SC43177 and a SC43178 CPU clocked 256 KHz (or 0.25 MHz), 1.2K of RAM, 16K of ROM, and runs off two CR 2032 lithium cells batteries. they did give the computer a calculator style hard-back shell and brought back the docking station port. The docking station is pretty much the same type of docking station as the one for the PC-2.
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