japplega@csm9a.UUCP (Joe Applegate) (04/26/89)
The Continuing Saga of
My Personal Experiances with Tandy
Chapter 2 - The Tandy 1000
In spite of my nightmares in dealing with Tandy I still loved my Coco...
if fact I was a Coco evangelist and talked many people into buying thoses
little computers... I still use my 9 year old Coco for games, music, Midi,
and even play with voice recognition and speech synthesis... yes they can
be done on a PC but the hardware and software is significantly more expensive!
The biggest problem with the Coco was the lack of locally available software
and the constant demise of software and hardware vendors... All of the software
had to be mail ordered since Tandy refused to carry 3rd party products in
the stores and the software stores in the area refused to carry Coco software
because Tandy would not sell the distributors mailing lists or even release
sales volume info on their computers (according to Software City and Computer-
Ware who both told us the same thing when we inquired about their chains
distributing Coco software)... Since Tandy didn't care about supporting us
and supplied so little software many of these vendors went out of business
(Deft Systems, Speech Systems), or switched to supporting other computers
(Computer Shack, VIP Software, etc)... at least one of these vendors when
I later discovered was marketing the same software they had developed for
the Coco on an ST allowed me to place their old Coco products in the Public
Domain, after bad mouthing Tandy for almost destroying their business!
But faced with the difficulty of obtaining software, and my new position as
PC coordinator at my company (A major oil co.) I needed to get my own IBM
compatible... after a month of searching, where I had originally discounted
Tandy, I came back to the 1000... I knew that the original 1000 was not
fully IBM compatible... but everyone I talked to at Tandy (about 4 different
salemen) swore the new model was!
Finally, assured that it was an IBM compatible I bought the 1000, figuring
that even though it was a Tandy, by nature of it's compatibility I would
be able to get standard hardware and software to run on it and I would
no longer be at the mercy of computer stores that laughed at me for owning
a Tandy and Tandy refusing to sell 3rd party software for my machine.
My first problem occured when I tried to hook up my Epson FX-100 to the
Tandy... first I had to buy a Tandy cable for $30... even though my epson
came with a cable that works on every other machine (even a TIPC!!!)...
But the software kept double spacing... so I read the DOS manual and found
that the Tandy was designed to work with a Tandy printer (having paid $500
for their junky, non-working printers in the past I knew about Tandy printers!)
So I applied their patches (LF.COM and MODE LF OFF) but still certain programs
continued to double space! Then I discovered that while Tandy's patches fix
the DOS function calls they do not fix the BIOS calls... and finally discovered
that covering pin 38 (?) on the cable stopped this problem!
Several years later I bought a Tandy switch box while on sale, because I
also had an INK JET printer... I discovered that the switch box ITSELF
reimplements a hardware line feed after CR! Boy, if you don't use their
printer their gonna do whatever they can to cause you grief!
Then to make things worse I bought a memory board for the Tandy... a
short Everex card I believe... IT DIDN'T WORK! I found out I needed Tandy's
card which cost twice as much to do the same thing!
Next I bought a mouse and clock card that plugged into the Tandy Memory board.
They assured me that this was an MS Mouse and was fully compatible... but in
640 X 200 2 color mode it left shadows and trails on the screen... it was
unusable with Word because of this and no one at Tandy seemed to care... they
finally discontinued the mouse and started selling a new one that was
compatible to MS and even used MicroSoft's driver... Tandy's solution... buy
another one... I just love the way they support their products!
When Windows came out the Digi-Mouse would not work at all with it... so I
use a Coco mouse plugged into the joystick port with Windows... I paid $100
for a mouse that doesn't work right and never did... and I can't spare the
slot on this 3 slot beast for another serial board or a mouse board!
I wrote to Fort Worth trying to get them to release the source for the Digi-
Mouse driver so I could write a windows driver and try to fix the bugs...
their response was that the mouse was no longer supported... I then contacted
MS who told me (after lots of effort to find the responsible person) that
the mouse was developed for Tandy and I would have to get the source from
Tandy... So the final decision on the Digi-Mouse is "We sell em' we don't
support em' , and we don't want anyone else doin it either" (read that with
a Texas drawl :-) )
Over the years I've run into numerous programs that would not work on the
Tandy 1000A... Wizardry, Electronic Arts Scrabble, What's Best, and Minix...
(Minix at least I was able to patch)... other programs work but only with
a patch to the keyboard, which lacks grey + and - keys and a scroll lock...
I eventually bought a real keyboard but found that like most IBM compatible
products it would not work on a Tandy!
[To Be Continued]
Joe Applegatelas) (04/27/89)
In article <1461@csm9a.UUCP> japplega@csm9a.UUCP (Joe Applegate) writes: [Chapter two of Joe's hassles with Tandy and Tandy computers] >My first problem occured when I tried to hook up my Epson FX-100 to the >Tandy... first I had to buy a Tandy cable for $30... even though my epson >came with a cable that works on every other machine (even a TIPC!!!)... I was one of the developers of the TI Pro. We didn't make it compatible with the IBM PC due to a corporate mandate to "...lead rather than follow IBM," but we were not told to screw over non-TI hardware and software vendors and users and we didn't. Ultimately, the Pro failed to make it in the market place and its incompatibilities increasingly became a liability so that PC-compatible software wouldn't run on it, developers were not motivated to port their software for it, and third party hardware vendors had no incentive to support it. At the time, we were trying to provide a superior alternative to the PC, not just trying to trap you into buying TI. Anymore, an MSDOS computer should be truly compatible with the PC family. Now if only the PC family were compatible with the PC family :-). regards, Larry -- Signed: Larry A. Shurr (att!cbnews!cbema!las) Clever signature, Wonderful wit, Outdo the others, Be a big hit! - Burma Shave (With apologies to the real thing. The above represents my views only.) (Please note my mailing address. Mail sent to me on cbnews doesn't make it.)