• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

How many Model II owners here?

How many Model II owners here?

  • Yes, I have one.

    Votes: 22 55.0%

  • No, but I'd like to get one!

    Votes: 11 27.5%

  • Nope.

    Votes: 7 17.5%
  • Total voters
    40
lowen said:
Scripsit = 1978, as it was introduced with the Model II, as I recall. As WYSIWYG as you can get with a monospaced 80x24 terminal, also as I recall; I wrote many papers for high school and college between 1983 and 1989 using the Model III SuperSCRIPSIT and the 4 ScripsitPro.

80 Micro ran a review in February 1982; see http://electrickery.xs4all.nl/comp/trs80m2/doc/80M_Feb1982_Scripsit.pdf
Click to expand...

Oh, I'm familiar with Scripsit--but it was a Tandy-only package, which hobbled it somewhat. Wordstar was general enough that you could run it on a system with the most brain-dead terminal--basically, if your terminal supports a way to move the cursor around the screen without erasing text, you're gold.

While the Tandy systems were popular, they were by no means the only system out there. WordStar found its way into lots of solftware bundled with systems. It wasn't the best, but it was the easiest to get going. My vote for CP/M word processor with interesting features probably goes to Memowrite or Spellbinder.
 
hi

i have a model II
after writing software for it some 35 years ago - i think its so awesome to have one again.
one problem
i dont have a boot disk trsdos ( cpm would also be nice )
or some other software ?
i only got 10 empty disks :)
can anyone help me ?

regards
jan
 
Chuck(G) said:
Oh, I'm familiar with Scripsit--but it was a Tandy-only package, which hobbled it somewhat.
Click to expand...

The business strength of the Model II lay in the complete coverage of business applications, not just word processing, of course. And the rudimentary access controls in TRSDOS were a plus in the business environment; CP/M as I recall has no concept of access control. And Tandy was not interested in getting its software to a wider audience; they were mainly interested in selling product. Business class computers by business people, essentially.

While the Tandy systems were popular, they were by no means the only system out there. WordStar found its way into lots of solftware bundled with systems. It wasn't the best, but it was the easiest to get going. My vote for CP/M word processor with interesting features probably goes to Memowrite or Spellbinder.
Click to expand...

But of course. There were two major problems with the TRS-80's: Radio Shack, and Radio Shack. The first 'Radio Shack' for the Radio Shack name itself and reputation as a place for hobbyists and enthusiasts to plow through surplus junk (and that is where Radio Shack's roots lay at the time). The second 'Radio Shack' for the Tandy margin-driven mentality. Everything at Radio Shack was high margin, some of it extremely high margin. Margin at all costs means it was easy to undersell them.

While the Model II with TRSDOS was a solid machine with a great variety of apps that were for the most part well-integrated, they certainly didn't sell the volume that some other machines did. But businesses that took the plunge found business solutions.

As far as word processors, I would hazard that the best feature set of the TRS-80 word processors belonged to Lazy Writer, but it was definitely a small-volume product. And it wasn't available for Model II......

The technical aspects of the Model II are not what made it a business-class computer. The complete package (especially the access controls and the application portfolio's integration and coverage) made it a business-class computer. It is of course not the only business-class computer made; far from it. But the question was asked what made the Model II business-class, and this is my opinion of what made it business class.

Later the Model 16 with Xenix really upped the bar, and even MP/M on something like an Altos 580/20 couldn't compete, again because of the access controls and the application stack, not anything technical (even though the 16's 68000 at 6MHz blew a 4MHz Z80 out of the water for raw performance, the Xenix overhead narrowed that gap a bit).

I'm not saying they were the greatest machines out there; again, far from it. There are better built business machines of that day. But the II series, taken as a complete system package, hardware and software together, were solid performers.
 
lowen said:
I'm not saying they were the greatest machines out there; again, far from it. There are better built business machines of that day. But the II series, taken as a complete system package, hardware and software together, were solid performers.
Click to expand...

Tandy tried to play the "locked in" business model, which was SOP for the day. Apple is the only manufacturer that has succeeded with this model, but I think it did so only by using its own proprietary hardware and aggressive legal approach. And, of course, there was "Radio Shack". But Apple also offered features that no one else did in quite the same way. They were hugely popular with the educational community, what with built-in color graphics in a small package.

And then there were the so-called "killer apps". Apple sold a lot of machines based on the availability of VisiCalc; IBM, the same for Lotus 1-2-3. A few thousand dollars one way or the other doesn't mean quite the same thing in the business world as it does when you're trying to sell to the mass consumer. Apple also had the foresight to sell aggressively into the educational market. (The old Jesuit maxim of "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man"). The eventual presence of inexpensive clones really assisted IBM's market presence (had IBM taken Apple's litigious approach, I don't think we'd be seeing them mentioned in connection with the personal computer).

I don't think that Tandy's offering of Xenix had a big effect on their business line. Xenix/Unix wasn't known for offering great business software--and as far as word processing, was there ever a Xenix version of Scripsit? At that price point, you were looking at the minicomputer manufacturers and their low-end product line, such as the 11/03 who could promise a smooth upgrade path.

The problem with Xenix or UNIX programs is that they all run on a common base, regardless of hardware manufacturer--usually just a re-compilation away from running on a competitor's platform. So, no "lock" there.
 
Chuck(G) said:
Tandy tried to play the "locked in" business model, which was SOP for the day. ...
Click to expand...

Yep. Even going as far as furniture, diskettes, paper, ribbons, and everything else Tandy-branded that your Tandy-branded computer might need.

I don't think that Tandy's offering of Xenix had a big effect on their business line. Xenix/Unix wasn't known for offering great business software--and as far as word processing, was there ever a Xenix version of Scripsit?
Click to expand...

Yes, there was a Xenix Scripsit (later downported to MS-DOS). Tandy tried to get everything they had on TRSDOS for the Model II onto Xenix. Multiplan by Microsoft was one of the programs Tandy got as part of getting Xenix itself. The effect of Xenix on Tandy's bottom line is debatable, but there were lots of businesses bought it. Tandy didn't release sales figures of these machines, but there were enough of them sold to where they weren't exactly rare (at least in the early '90's they weren't).

At that price point, you were looking at the minicomputer manufacturers and their low-end product line, such as the 11/03 who could promise a smooth upgrade path.

The problem with Xenix or UNIX programs is that they all run on a common base, regardless of hardware manufacturer--usually just a re-compilation away from running on a competitor's platform. So, no "lock" there.
Click to expand...

The Model 16 and later the 6000 were more powerful than the lowest end PDP 11's. Not as powerful as the low-end VAXen. And quite a bit more powerful than the IBM PC. The PC AT on the other hand was comparable in speed, although Xenix ran a lot better on the 68K than it ever did on the 286 (a person who worked on both ports said that a long time ago on comp.sys.tandy). The T6K was a strange in-between; priced like a low end mini with the performance of a high end micro and running a Unix just before Unix workstations hit it big.

And the 68020 machines (Apollo, Sun, etc) blew the old T6K away. At one time I had a printout of the results of running the old Byte UnixBench suite on my T6K, but it's long gone I'm afraid. Kelly, do you have a running Xenix system that is stable enough to compile and run the Unixbench suite?

Tandy's computer division's demise was in many ways caused by the lack of lock in in the PC Clone world. Why would you buy a 'not-quite-compatible' Tandy when you could get a much better compatible clone for much less money?

EDIT: Infoworld ran an article on Tandy's 'revamped' product line in March of 1985. See: https://books.google.com/books?id=5C4EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA29#v=onepage&q&f=false where in the right hand column this interesting factoid is found:
Oddly, the 16B has been the most successful machine of its kind on the market and has provided an upgrade path as far back as the Model 12. "The 16B has been the biggest shipper of Unix [upon which Xenix is based] and sold nearly 40,000 units in 1984," says Kirsten Sanders, a senior analyst at Yates Ventures of Palo Alto, California. "Upgrading it will only help it."
Click to expand...

40,000 units in one year doesn't sound like a lot, but to be called the biggest shipper of Unix? That's cool.
 
Last edited:
lowen said:
The Model 16 and later the 6000 were more powerful than the lowest end PDP 11's. Not as powerful as the low-end VAXen. And quite a bit more powerful than the IBM PC. The PC AT on the other hand was comparable in speed, although Xenix ran a lot better on the 68K than it ever did on the 286 (a person who worked on both ports said that a long time ago on comp.sys.tandy). The T6K was a strange in-between; priced like a low end mini with the performance of a high end micro and running a Unix just before Unix workstations hit it big.

And the 68020 machines (Apollo, Sun, etc) blew the old T6K away. At one time I had a printout of the results of running the old Byte UnixBench suite on my T6K, but it's long gone I'm afraid. Kelly, do you have a running Xenix system that is stable enough to compile and run the Unixbench suite?

Tandy's computer division's demise was in many ways caused by the lack of lock in in the PC Clone world. Why would you buy a 'not-quite-compatible' Tandy when you could get a much better compatible clone for much less money?
Click to expand...

Actually the PC market killed Tandy in more ways than one. If you look at "Background on LSI vs Tandy and the creation of 6.3.0. " in http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/software/os/logical_systems/lsdos6/src631/history.html a follow on implication from actions there is that enough people in key positions in Tandy had lost interest in the non-pc clone stuff. With the right will and focus, the 4D could have been turned into something to beat the XT and clones of the mid-80s, and the 6000 could have been turned into something to match the SUN 3 and Apollos of the late 80s (which made quite a bit of money thank you very much).
 
pjhacnau said:
Actually the PC market killed Tandy in more ways than one. If you look at "Background on LSI vs Tandy and the creation of 6.3.0. " in http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/software/os/logical_systems/lsdos6/src631/history.html a follow on implication from actions there is that enough people in key positions in Tandy had lost interest in the non-pc clone stuff. With the right will and focus, the 4D could have been turned into something to beat the XT and clones of the mid-80s, and the 6000 could have been turned into something to match the SUN 3 and Apollos of the late 80s (which made quite a bit of money thank you very much).
Click to expand...

Pull the other one! The 4D is still Z80 based right?
 
geoffm3 said:
Pull the other one! The 4D is still Z80 based right?
Click to expand...

And the XT was still an 8088 at 4.7Mhz, 8-bit data access, and only 640K. Both used 360K drives. So take the 4D and:

* Give it a better+cheaper hard drive option,
* Go to a Z80B and 6MHz,
* Bump the memory (with the 8088 you could only address 64K at once, then you had the pain of segments, and people were already bank switching up to at least 256K with 3rd party options, I vaguely remember a 1M option)
* Make the hi-res graphics standard,

And you'd have something that only lost outright in not having a colour option. Granted it was a dead-end at that point, but it could have given them time to decide where to go next. (Maybe even go from Z80 to X86)

I wonder what would have happened if the Z800 had worked out.
 
pski said:
I love the 4D, but I think you mean the mythical and legendary Model 5, if the rumored specs came to fruition.

http://www.trs-80.org/model-5/
Click to expand...

I was talking about further development of the 4D, so the Model 5 is one possible "further development". I think there was also scope for a "quick and dirty" boost to the 4D to buy more time, had they been serious about further development.

Thinking even more fancifully I was doing a bit of reading of both the original "TRS80 Assembly Language" book, and Intel's x86 programming reference. Looking at the basic architecture of each a transition from Z80 to 80X86 would have been not that different to what Apple went through going from 68K to PPC.

Whether they would have found a market is another matter.
 
pjhacnau said:
ILooking at the basic architecture of each a transition from Z80 to 80X86 would have been not that different to what Apple went through going from 68K to PPC.
Click to expand...

OK - _that_ was an over-statement. Although similar at the mnemonic level, there's no guarantee of that at the instruction level. So that was a claim too far.:rolleyes:
 
pjhacnau said:
And the XT was still an 8088 at 4.7Mhz, 8-bit data access, and only 640K. Both used 360K drives. So take the 4D and:...
Click to expand...

... add an HD64180 or Z180 at 6MHz with 1MB of RAM and a color screen. Later Z180s can go faster yet.

I wonder what would have happened if the Z800 had worked out.
Click to expand...

It did work out, just too late. It hit production as the Z280. A Z280 at 8MHz with 1MB of RAM and reasonable graphics with a good HD would have outperformed the XT. Maybe not some of the super turbo XT's that came along later running at 10 and 12MHz, but definitely a straight XT.

Frank Durda's page is spot-on; after all, he was there. The Z80 TRS-80 lines did not die for technical reasons, but for marketing ones.
 
pjhacnau said:
Actually the PC market killed Tandy in more ways than one. If you look at "Background on LSI vs Tandy and the creation of 6.3.0. " in http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/software/os/logical_systems/lsdos6/src631/history.html a follow on implication from actions there is that enough people in key positions in Tandy had lost interest in the non-pc clone stuff.
Click to expand...

Saying that they 'lost interest' is probably being too nice; they were actively blocking things for the non-clone stuff (search comp.sys.tandy for the threads on the 6000's MMU that allowed access past 1MB).

...the 6000 could have been turned into something to match the SUN 3 and Apollos of the late 80s (which made quite a bit of money thank you very much).
Click to expand...

Hmmm, up to a point I would agree. Getting a 68020 on the limited size card that the 6000's card cage can support would have been tricky. I have here a 68020 CPU card from an '80's Proteon ethernet router, and it takes a full Multibus card tightly packed (but that's with RAM).

In terms of raw performance with text-mode apps, the 'Super' 6000 with an '020 might have done pretty well; I/O is still going to be a bit hobbled, though, unless a Z80 upgrade were to be in the works. If you were to upgrade the Z80 to a fast chip and/or a Hitachi HD64180 at 6MHz or higher and allow the '180 to have a much larger window into the '020's RAM space you might be able to remove the bottleneck. The similar spec'd AT&T UnixPC/PC 7300/3B1 (68010 at 10MHz as I recall) was quite a bit faster with the '010 doing the I/O with no Z80 running that portion. I do remember doing the '010 modification to a 6000, but I never finished the 10MHz upgrade, although it was possible with some chip swaps and faster RAM. (I didn't finish because I bought a 3B1 at a good price and let the 6000 languish a bit.)

The biggest technical problem the 6000 had versus Sun, Apollo, etc, was the lack of a graphical framebuffer. Apollos started with monochrome screens (Sun's did, too), so color would not have been a hard requirement. The Unix workstation business was highly graphical in nature; even the 3B1 has a reasonable framebuffer and a usable non-X11 GUI. The next problem was hard disk performance.

The biggest total problem preventing the 'Super 6000' from coming to fruition was the PC clone business. Tandy likely did more volume in the 3000 and 4000 series than Sun and Apollo combined did with 68K-based workstations.

I base that last assertion on a document I have from the collection of an employee from a local factory. This local factory was part of a much larger company which standardized on Tandy/Grid 3000 and 4000 series PC's in the late late 80's and early 90's; this is a huge company, and they went enterprise-wide to Tandy/Grid PC's; I am reading a copy that I have of their recommendation document from February 1990, and their 'corporate IT recommended PC systems' were, in order: 1: )Apple Macintosh family; 2.) IBM PS/2; 3.) Tandy 4000 and GRiD 386sx products. The document is marked company classified, so I am not at liberty to say what company or to provide copies. (Yes, this company was large enough that it had a four-tier classification system; this is not 'government classified' information, though.)

I know that there was several hundred Tandy 4000 series machines in the one factory, and, again, this is a company in the top 20 of the Fortune 500 with worldwide employment in the hundreds of thousands.

A 'Super 6000' would have taken technical people away from the much more lucrative 4000 business.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top