The Only Tandy I HATE - The Tandy 600 - Tandy Lab

Today on Tandy Lab we take a look at one of the most controversial of computers that Tandy ever sold in their Radio Shack stores. This system, the Tandy 600 was a 80s portable computer of dubious quality. It was Expensive and heavy despite not offering IBM compatibility. The Tandy 100 and Tandy 200 were probably the better buy.

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[inky]

you know its a good day when newsmakers tech uploads

[robertmudry]

Soldering a small NiCad RAM back up battery to the motherboard was pretty standard back then, and their removal is standard procedure for vintage computer collectors. They weren't defective, they all leak when they get old. The 100 and 200 also had them. The 600 also had a large 4 D-cell NiCad main battery, which should also be removed.

I own a 100, 200 and two 600's. I've been inside all of them. The 600's hardware is well designed and clearly used high quality components. It is a beautiful machine. It was simply obsolete straight off the assembly line.

[peterboyle]

Bought a 600 in 86 when I hung out my own shingle. I owned a small interconnect telephone company. Quite a few of the newer Electronic Key Systems were programmed through the use of a 300 Baud rate RS-232 interface. Got it at a great price, worked like a champ, but like I said, the most basic 600 you could get, no bells and whistles at all.

[bjgandalf]

This was the 2nd Radio Shack computer I owned as a teen, after first buying a 64k Coco2.

[doctorclu]

Hahah!! I had one of those. I love the biege look. Used the model 100 through high school, and somehow got a 600. I really don't remember how. And I never could get the 600 to do anything useful. But looked like it had a nice keyboard. 2:10 Well the 200 had a DOUBLE height screen, which aside from docking the 100 was a nice change for more screen real estate. 3:00 80 column and a built in floppy was a nice change over the 100. Not that I ever enjoyed that. LOL!! 3:52. Dang!! That $1, 599 price tag would be $4, 488.74 in 2023 money! 7:55 Ah that was common for that time frame. I ran into that on the Amiga 3000 computers I had and a few of the others.

[tetsujin_]

I don't know that dropping Basic was necessarily a bad thing: Where the Model 100 shone was essentially as a very rudimentary, but very mobile word processor. The Model 600 was meant to build on that, so its ROM focused on those kinds of tools. But as you say the machine got too big and expensive, and PC laptops were already on the scene.
I expect it maybe wasn't entirely clear, when the Tandy 600 was in development, that PC laptops were going to take over so quickly. The Data General One came out in 1984 and looks kind of amazing for its time (in terms of size and weight pretty similar to the Toshiba T1100, but with the proper 4:3 screen aspect ratio) but it was also a $2900 machine. By the time the Model 600 came out in late 1985, there were laptop PCs (Like the T1100) in the $1800 range.

[ozmond]

Thanks for sharing, you make great videos.

[dintyshideaway]

I love the way you throw down like that. But I do have to mention that the issue with the Tandy 600s price was marketing, not greed, or actual cost. All of the non 1000/100 (with the exception of the Tandy Sensation) machines such as the 2000 and 4000 were meant to be sold in Radio Shack Computer Centers. When the CEO of Tandy Corporation was setting margins for the Computer Center stores, he set them at 70%, or about double the regular Radio Shack stores. All of the computer center items were very low production as there were only 800 at that time compared to over 7000 regular stores. There were some "Plus Computer Center" Radio Shack stores too, and they would get these computers and stock transfer them to other regular stores. The whole structure was confusing. But the marketing for the Computer Center worked this way, make about 1000 units to send to stores, wait a couple of months, mark them at 50% off, make another thousand.

[IrishCarney]

Although you're right to ding the Tandy 600 for not being IBM-compatible, you missed another, probably just as fatal flaw: it was ALSO not compatible with its predecessors, the Model 100 and Tandy 200. It would have been one thing to make a decisive break with the past to enable embracing the IBM/MS-DOS future. Or to ignore that future and prioritize compatibility with past products. But this turkey did neither. Model 100 & Tandy 200 buyers couldn't bring their apps over to it. And people wanting to get on the MS-DOS bandwagon couldn't use it either.

[singletona]

Frankly I want a SBC powered device with the tandy-100 formfactor.

Frankly I can see exactly how the x00 line ended up failing. The featureset wanted at the time of the 100 just.... wasn't nearly as appealing as in the 600's time. I personally would have wanted a 100 if there was an easy way to get data OFF of it and in a way word perfect could open for the sake of getting classwork done since my handwriting has always been shit. However it was a VERY barebones affair even a couple years post launch much less a decade after when I would have found it useful.

[fubaralakbar]

A cautionary tale of how fans should be careful what they wish for...

[Chevroletcelebrity]

the pcmcia bus on this thing was really slow

[jestubbs]

Nobody wanted it. Still wanted 102 or 1400- sold many of those.

[TheSulross]

guess we need to know which vintage computers to disdain, but still makes me sad as my inclination is to find something to celebrates about all of them - but sometimes there are just plain old stinkers

[annieworroll]

Wow. That's a lot of nonsense.

If they were going to go with PC architecture, they could have easily achieved at least some compatibility. Like maybe let some of the graphics get weird, but at least text mode compatibility should have been pretty trivial to achieve with the hardware they were using.

If they didn't want compatibility, they could have just gone super hard on being an enhanced 200. Integrate a TPDD, add features to BASIC, and give it replaceable batteries. Have 40x8 and 40x16 modes for compatibility wtih older models in the line, stuff a faster 8085 in there(with a slowdown switch for compatibility).

This seems to be a weird hybrid of both approaches that would satisfy neither group of users, without finding a third group that it would be suited for.

[IrishCarney]

Geez you just relentlessly screw up the names of the systems you cover. From WRONGLY calling the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 the "Tandy 100" countess times in your video about it AND in the Tandy 200 video, you now manage, at the 1:10 mark, to mess up yet again. This time you called the Model 100 the "TRS-80 Micro Executive Work Station". NO. "Micro Executive Work Station" was NEVER the actual NAME of the product; it was simply a marketing tag line! And they never put "TRS-80" in front of that tag line.

[IrishCarney]

2:30 "This new system, called the TRS-80 Model 600..." Holy moly. You did it AGAIN. You managed to mess up the name of YET ANOTHER computer you did a whole video on. NO. This computer was NEVER called the "TRS-80 Model 600" - it was only ever called the Tandy 600. Here's a hint. If you want to know the name of the computer you're going to talk about, READ IT ON THE BADGE ON THE MACHINE, THE BOX, THE MANUAL, AND THE CATALOG!

[quincy]

Yea well documented this thing is like the Edsel of computers. I see no retro value here. In the day it might have had some utility in a portable word processor but I see no recreational value.