It was interesting that Radio Shack found a "second life" in making IBM Compatibles that were very much their own, particularly with the improved graphics described in the article.
In the late 1980s when I was in high school I traded my TRS-80 Color Computer 3 for a 286-based clone which came in a big box with many expansion slots and that you plugged a keyboard and monitor into, like a modern full-size desktop computer. One of my friends I shared programs with had a Tandy PC which had a built-in keyboard but used an external monitor like a Commodore 64 or my CoCo -- there was a period in which they were fiercely competitive and influencing the industry. They didn't survive Win 95.
Radio Shack rebadged lots of products from outside sources, with the CoCo I/II being mostly a Motorala design for the AgVision terminal. The CoCo 3 is notable because so many of the improvements were driven by in-house processes. I wondered if maybe some of the people who worked on the CoCo 3's improved graphics were behind the Tandy Graphics used by the 1000 line but nope, turns out they went back to what worked for them and copied IBM's modes from the PCjr.
If you still have an interest in the CoCo 3, the port of Attack of the PETSCII Robots is coming along.
which had a decent C compiler at the very least. I was checking out everything I could about Unix from the public library and creating my own version of as many Unix tools as I could. In terms of OS, the Coco 3 was head and shoulders over anything else you could get up to that point. It even had a windowing system that was a lot like Plan 9.
At some point though I was frustrated with there not being a lot of software for it and I did a data processing job for my Uncle Bob that paid for a new 286 machine although if I knew how much value it made for him I should have asked enough for a 386. The 286 was a massive step up in performance -- in high school I developed a CP/M program for a teacher using a Z80 emulator that was 3x faster than any Z80 could you buy!
Not a huge deal, but the screenshots for Leisure Suit Larry are actually for Leisure Suit Larry 2. Played a lot of the first one as a kid. Inappropriate, but also just fun to explore the world and see what you could do and interact with. And you could kind of just exist in the game world.
I think the quiz was LSL1. You just pushed alt-x (or maybe ctrl-alt-x) to skip it.
LSL2 had the "little black book" with phone numbers. You could type 555-0724 IIRC and get in.
The real answers to these things were in the box, you weren't really expected to know that much about dumb stuff, this was just novel forms of "copy protection" to make sure you got the game (and everything with it) instead of just a copy from a friend...
In the late 1980s when I was in high school I traded my TRS-80 Color Computer 3 for a 286-based clone which came in a big box with many expansion slots and that you plugged a keyboard and monitor into, like a modern full-size desktop computer. One of my friends I shared programs with had a Tandy PC which had a built-in keyboard but used an external monitor like a Commodore 64 or my CoCo -- there was a period in which they were fiercely competitive and influencing the industry. They didn't survive Win 95.
If you still have an interest in the CoCo 3, the port of Attack of the PETSCII Robots is coming along.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS-9
which had a decent C compiler at the very least. I was checking out everything I could about Unix from the public library and creating my own version of as many Unix tools as I could. In terms of OS, the Coco 3 was head and shoulders over anything else you could get up to that point. It even had a windowing system that was a lot like Plan 9.
At some point though I was frustrated with there not being a lot of software for it and I did a data processing job for my Uncle Bob that paid for a new 286 machine although if I knew how much value it made for him I should have asked enough for a 386. The 286 was a massive step up in performance -- in high school I developed a CP/M program for a teacher using a Z80 emulator that was 3x faster than any Z80 could you buy!
It took a loooot of time to memorize the entry quiz questions, full of trivia from a time and place for which I was nowhere near old enough to exist!
LSL2 had the "little black book" with phone numbers. You could type 555-0724 IIRC and get in.
The real answers to these things were in the box, you weren't really expected to know that much about dumb stuff, this was just novel forms of "copy protection" to make sure you got the game (and everything with it) instead of just a copy from a friend...
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-2
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-3 ← NOPE
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https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-2
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/tandy-corporation-part-3
https://www.abortretry.fail/p/the-tandy-corporation-part-1
Well, it's right there in the name: AbortRetryFail