Welcome back to part 15 of my fourth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we took a look at the MC-10 with it's early peripherals. In this entry we move on to the MC-10, with its miscellaneous peripherals and add ons.
Again, being that the MC-10 was the shorter lived computer in Tandy's catalog, most of the other peripherals for it were made long after its discontinuation by enthusiasts. But there were still some that were compatible with it.
The first of these was the Direct-Connect Modem IB (catalog number 26-1175), Introduced in 1983, for $99.95.
Now while the MC-10 had an RS-232C serial interface just like the Coco did, It had extremely limited usefulness. The 6803 CPU included a built-in UART, but it wasn't connected and didn't work with the RS-232C interface all. This was mainly because a single 3.58 MHz TV colorburst crystal is used to generate video and clock the CPU, and this clock rate could not be divided by an integer to obtain any standard baud rate for the UART. As a result, programs have to shift bits individually into and out of the RS-232C interface, a mode of operation that entails atypical and especially critical timing requirements, so modem connections were far more difficult.
Still, while modem weren't ideal to be used with the MC-10, the Direct-Connect Modem IB did state that it was possible to use it with the MC-10 in the manual.
There were also techinacally some periferals from the outside tandy as well. As youre probably aware last Septandy, I covered the Matra Alice, a lisenced clone of the MC-10 from Fance and in the post, I mentioned that there were other 2 peripherals available (or at least advertised) besides the 16K RAM expansion: a Joystick adapter and a modem.
The joystick adapter and modem for the Matra Alice
Although I was unsure if these were ever released, I have found photos of both the modem and the joystick adapter.
The Matra Alice Joystick adapter and modem
According to the manual, the joystick ports are the same DE9 port as the Atari 2600, so any Atari compatible joystick works on it. However, im unable to find any other information about the modem, but I'll assume it was around 300 Baud. Im also unsure if these will work on the MC-10 as well, but considering the hardware is similar, I would assume so.
But if you want joystick controll for the MC-10, You can actually build one yourself as it was very easy to do so.
A magazine article on building an MC-10 joystick adapter
Theres even been a way to add floppy drives! In 2011, Darren Atkinson designed a Disk Drive for the MC-10, apropriatly named the Tandy/Radio Shack MC10 Disk Drive
The Tandy/Radio Shack MC10 Disk Drive
This allowed you to plig in a 5.25 floppy drive and lode and save tata onto disk. While it doesnt havr much and it was only a prototype, Its an Impressive feet nonetheless!
The Tandy/Radio Shack MC10 Disk Drive in action
And finally we have the MCX-128, also by Darren Atkinson, and created in 2012.
The MCX-128
The MCX-128 added 128K of RAM, and included a new version of BASIC built into ROM called MCX BASIC, which features from the Tandy Color Computer's Extended Color Basic, providing a more capable programming environment for the MC-10. .
The MCX-128 in action
Other than these, due to the MC-10's short life, not many add ons were and are being developed. But every now and again one gets made and gives the MC-10 a little bit of attention when it was a computer that didnt at launch 42 years ago. But thankfully Tandy did have another computer introduced after the MC-10's Demise that got considerably more due to the arcitecture with both software, and more inportantly, hardware. This concludes Part 15 of the fourth Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we move to the Tandy 1000 and talk about its peripherals.
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