Welcome back to part 4 of my fifth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we took a the Tandy 200, the successor to the verneable Tandy 100 which was one of the first to use the modern design of a laptop. In this post we'll have a look at the ill fated successor to the Tandy 200: The Tandy 600
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Released in 1985, the Tandy 600 was ment to be another successor in the 100 line, but due to some fatal flaws in the hardware and software, it failed in the market place.
Unlike the Model 100 and 200, The 600 was not based on the design of by Kyocera but rather a design from Zenith Data Systems: The Zenith ZP-150.
Yes, Zenith Data Systems is part of the same Zenith thats known for making TV sets and known for inventing the modern TV Remote Control and subscription television, but the computer division of the company they purchased to become Zenith Data Systems has a pretty fasinating story as it was aguably one of Radio Shacks biggest competitors in the hobbyist electronics market: The Heath Company.
The story of Heath begins in 1911 when Aircraft engineer Edward Bayard Heath purchased the Bates Aeroplane Co, soon renamed to E.B. Heath Aerial Vehicle Co. to manuafacture kit planes.
Their best selling plane was the Heath Parasol, a small, single seat parasol winged airplane using surplus Parasol wings from a Thomas-Morse S-4 World War I fighter trainer and a Henderson four-cylinder motorcycle engine, first built by Heath in 1926.
His Parasol design proved to be incredibly popular, being economical to build and operate as well as easy to fly. As a result its design sold nearly 1,000 kits on an installment basis! Unfourtunatly, things took a turn for the worse as Heath died in 1931 in an aircraft accident while testing a new low-wing aircraft design, with the company going bankrupt, reorganizing, and moving from Chicago to Saint Joseph, Michigan.
The company was then purchased by an investor named Howard Anthony to shift its focus from kit airplanes to accessories for small aircraft. At first he had little success, but his luck soon changed when he scored a contract with the US Millitary to make aircraft parts durring World War II.
After the war, Anthony decided to shift the companies focus again to electronics when he bought a large stock of surplus wartime electronic parts with the idea of building kits with them. In 1947, Heath introduced its first electronic kit, the O1 oscilloscope with 5-inch diameter cathode-ray tube (CRT) display that sold for US$39.50 (Or around $570 today ajusted for inflation).
It was an immediate success due to its low price adn was follwed up by the O2 and O3 shortly after. After the success of their oscilloscope kits, the company began to produce a whole line of Heathkit projects geared at hobbyists. The idea was that by investing the time and money to assemble a Heathkit, the buyer could build something comparable to a factory-built device for significantly less money and could be repaired by themselves. The stratagy worked very well as by the end of the 1950s, they expanded into making kits for devices like Tape Recorders, Radios, and TV Testers.
After Anthony's death in 1962 (Ironically enough, also from a plane crash), his widow sold the company to Daystrom Company, a management holding company that also owned several other electronics companies. Shortly afterwards, Daystrom was absorbed by oilfield service company Schlumberger Limited, Who continued Heath's success in the electronic kit market, despite being Schlumberger's only consumer business. By the 1970s, they expanded the kit range to include projects of various complexites, with everything from digital clocks to full sized Color TV Sets.
While Heathkit briefly sold an analog computer in 1957, it wasn't until the mid 1970's that they decided to explore the market in depth. The company had considered designing a kit computer as early as 1974, but concluded that it was not a good fit for their traditional market. But after seeing the success of the Altair 8800, Heathkit decided to design kits similar to the Altair but addressing its more obvious shortcomings. This resulted in the 8 bit Intel 8080 based Heathkit H8 and the 16 bit PDP-11 based Heathkit H11 both launching in 1977, for $379 dollars and $1,295 dollars respectivly.
While the H11 wasn't a commercial hit due to its high price, the H8 had proved to be a sales hit as a CP/M machine for engineers and computing enthusiasts. It was soon followed up by successor model, the Heathkit H89, which was an all in one unit combining a Z80 processor board and floppy drive into the cabinet of an Heathkit H19 terminal.
In 1979, Heathkit's success caught the attention of the Zenith Radio Company, Who were looking to expand into the personal computer market.
The Zenith Logo (1954-1997)
Zenith was founded in 1918 by Ralph Matthews and Karl Hassel and initally sold amateur radio equipment. But by the 1920's they became known for their high-quality radios with pioneering features such as the first portable radio in 1924, the first mass-produced AC radio in 1926, and push-button tuning in 1927.
By the 1950's, they also became a pioneer in TV sets, creating the first Pay Per View Subscription TV Service, Phonevision in 1951, and the modern wireless TV Remote control, The Space Comander 400 in 1956.
Left to right: The Test Patern for Zenith's KS2XBS Phonevision station (1951) and the Space Commander 400 (1956)
By the 1970's, they were one of the biggest market leaders for consumer electronics in the US, and saw the growing personal computer market as a huge opprotunity. So in October 1979, they purchased the Heathkit brand from Schlumberger for $64.5 million dollars and changed the name to computer division to Zenith Data Systems.
The Zenith Data Systems Logo (1979-1990)
At first, Zenith had left things more or less unchanged other than selling a few machines under the Zenith Data Systems name. But by 1982, it became clear to them that selling kit computers not designed to be shipped preassembled were causing some problems with customers. So Zenith phased out the kit buisness and focused on fully assembled machines instead starting with the Intel 8085 and 8088 based Z-100 running CP/M and their modified, licensed OEM version of MS-DOS Z-DOS, and later to fully IBM Compatible computers like the Z-150.
In 1984, they had the idea to start making portable machines, starting with the Z-160, a luggable version of the Z-150.
While the Z-160 was highly regaurded for its build quality and sold very well, Zenith was also interested in making a machine that could target the newer Notebook portables like the Tandy 100. The result was the ZP-150, released in late 1984 at a retail price of $1,995 dollars when bundled with the $800 dollar Microsoft Works software.
The device also caught the attention of Tandy, who were interested in making their own version to be part of the Tandy 100 line. Tandy took the basic design of the ZP-150, but added a 3.5 inch floppy drive and a built in DOS.
The result was the Tandy 600 Released in 1985 at a retail price of $1,599 dollars.
On the front of the machine, lies LCD display, the Power Button, a low battery light, a row of function keys, 4 cursor keys and the keyboard. The keyboard is overall pretty much exactly yhr same as the Model 100, with the main differences being the placement of the power button, the battery light, cursor keys, and of course, the flip up screen.
On the right side, is the contrast adjustment wheel, and 3.5 inch floppy drive.
On the back, there is a floppy drive port, a printer port and an RS-232 Serial port.
On the left side, There is a 8V AC jack, a direct ACP switch, a modem port, and a reset switch.
And finally on the bottom, there is a Memory Power switch So you could use a CMOS battery to save data if the batteries are either dead or not installed, and the ROM expansion slot.
Powering on the Model 600 is very similar to its predacessors, You're greated to a menu of built in programs. But unike its predacessors, theres a little more going on under the hood, its built of of an OS from Microsoft called the Hand Held Operating System (Handheld DOS or HHDOS) in order to take advantage of the built in disk drive to save your files to disk.
Also much like how the Model 200 had a bult in version of Multiplan, which could be considered the direct precursor to Excel, The 600 has a built in version of Microsoft Works, which could be considered the direct precursor to Microsoft Office.
Microsoft Works initally began as an answer to Appleworks intended for small laptops like the Model 100 series. But in 1986, Appleworks creator Rupert Lissner had worked with Don Williams to create a productivity suite called MouseWorks for the Macintosh and approached Microsoft to demonstrate it. Bill Gates and his Head of Acquisitions, Alan M. Boyd, mannaged to convince Williams to license the product to Microsoft.
Mouseworks was soon renamed Microsoft Works, and it made its debut for the Mac in 1986, with an MS-DOS version following a year later on September 14, 1987.
It was Microsoft's first all in one office suite sotware package, and managed to become extremely popular on laptops. While it never ended up becoming as ubquitous as Microsoft's Office, it managed to remain updated and supported until 2009, When it was replaced with with Office 2010 Starter Edition
But back to the version included with the Tandy 600, It includes a word processor(Which appears to be a version of Word), a calendar, a database, a communications program and a spreadsheet (Which appears to be another version of MultiPlan). One program that is not included however is a BASIC interpreter, that was a $129.95 ROM expansion extra.
Storage wise, You of course have the built in 3.5 inch floppy drive and it was also possible to have an external drive to use as a B: Drive. Although Tandy never released one, You can connect a double-sided 720K 3.5 or 5.25 drive to the port.
You can also backup data by transferring files to a desktop computer, via either the modem connected to a telephone line, or the RS-232 serial port connected to a null modem cable by using the built-in TELCOM software to communicate between the Model 600 and a desktop. The 600 uses uses the same cable as the model 100 and 200 and works very much in the same way
Same for printers, The 600's printer port is also uses the same cable as the model 100 and 200, so anyparralel printer that works with the 100 and 200, works on the 600.
Other perrifreals and accessories included a 96K RAM upgrade, and an optional carring case.
For hardware, the Model 600 uses an Intel 80C88 CPU clocked at 3.07 MHz, 32K to 224K of RAM, and 160K of ROM.
The LCD screen that's capable of displaying text at a resolution of 80 Columns by 16 rows as well as bit mapped graphics at a resolution of 480 by 128.
Unlike like the 100 and 200, it does not have a small beeper speaker for sound, and instead of runing off 4 AA batteries, it runns on built in rechargable NiCd batteries (With an Approximate 10 hour battery life) or the previously mentioned 8V power adapter.
Softwarewise, You would think that because it uses an Intel 8088 varrient, The Model 600 would be IBM Compatable, right? Well... No, it isn't. both the 600 and HHDOS are completely incompatable with the IBM PC and MS-DOS. Its also completly incompatible with the Model 100 and 200, and software for the machine is scarce
So how did the 600 do in the market? Answer, Miserably! It only sold for a period of around 4 years before being discontinued by 1988 and very few units were actually sold, making the Tandy 600 very rare to find today.
So why did it flop? Well there were 5 main reasons: 1). it was very expensive $1599 dollars and was difficult to justify the price compared to the older models, 2). Once again IBM Compatible computers were on the rise and the 600 wasnt even compatible with it or its older 100 and 200 counterparts, 3). It lacked the BASIC interperture the 100 and 200 had limiting its appeal to hobbyists and people who wanted to write their own software, 4). At 32K, it was very limmited out of the box unless the RAM Expansions were installed, And 5). The Screen was very hard to read an d didnt hold a candle to its rivals with backlit LCD and more expensive Gas Plasma Screens.
Combine all those factors together its no wonder why the machine was a flop. In fact to this day, its considered to be the worst computer Tandy ever made. While i feel that that may be a bit of an overstatement, its not hard to see why it earned that distinction.
But what happened to the ZP-150? Well Zenith continued to sell the machine into 1987, but it was quickly foolwed up with the fully IBM Compatible Z-171 (Which was really just an upgraded, rebranded Morrow Piviot). The Z-171 mannaged to become incredibly successful with field auditors after Zenith won a $27 million dollar contact to supply the IRS with around 15,000 Z-171 computers.
The Z-171 was followed up with the Z-181, which came in a clamshell design and 2 pop up 3.5 inch floppy drives, remenisent of the Z-160.
But by 1989, things were starting to slow down for Zenith Data Systems. Due to a prioritizing outside sales over its retail chains, losing a $700-million bid to supply the military with desktop computer systems to Unisys, A botched ploy to boost sales of their desktop computers by requiring its laptop dealers to also sell desktop models, and the less then expected salses of the MinisPort subnotebook, took a toll on the company
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In December 1989, Zenith sold the Zenith Data Systems Division to French computer company Groupe Bull, who continued to use the Zenith Data Systems name into the mid 1990's. By then the Heath Chain of retail stores (by then renamed "Heath/Zenith Computers) was closed and they had focused on designing more modern laptops and even doing commisioned design work for the IBM ThinkPad 300.
The brand was soon sold to Packard Bell in 1996, which was in tern purchased by NEC. with the ZDS name living on for a little longer on certain PC's til 1999. In 2008, Packard Bell was sold to Acer and has remained dormant ever since.
The Heathkit brand was sold to a private investor group called HIG in 1995, which then sold it to another investment group in 1998. Wanting to only concentrate on the educational products, this group sold the Heath/Zenith name and products to DESA International,[11]: 154 a maker of specialty tools and heaters. In late 2008, Heathkit Educational Systems sold a large portion of its physical collection of legacy kit schematics and manuals along with permission to make reproductions to Don Peterson,[33] though it still retained the copyrights and trademarks, and had pointers to people that could help with the older equipment.
DESA contiued support for older Heathkits untill they filed for bankruptcy in December 2008. The Heathkit company existed for a few years as Heathkit Educational Systems located in Saint Joseph, Michigan, concentrating on the educational market. The Heathkit company filed for bankruptcy in 2012. However in In May 2013, Heathkit annouced on their website they were doing corporate restructuring, and by October 2015, they had secured the rights to all Heathkit designs and trademarks; secured several new patents; established new offices, warehouse space, and a factory in Santa Cruz, California; and had introduced the renewed company's first new electronic kit in decades. The brand still does live on today and provide support for the older Heathkits.
For now, that concudes my look at the Tandy 600, a well intentioned but poorly designed, poorly executed sucessor to the Model 100 and 200 that never mactched its success and remains a forgotten collectable today. This concludes part 4 of my fifth SepTandy Spectacular, tune in next time as we have a look atTandy's Next portable computer: The Tandy 1400.
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