Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!merch!cpe!hal6000!trsvax!uhclem From: uhclem@trsvax.UUCP Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy Subject: Re: Tandy Printer + PC Compatible Query Message-ID: <193300121@trsvax> Date: 10 Apr 89 14:52:00 GMT References: <1370@cunixc.cc.columbia.edu> Lines: 109 Nf-ID: #R:cunixc.cc.columbia.edu:1370:trsvax:193300121:000:5727 Nf-From: trsvax.UUCP!uhclem Apr 10 09:52:00 1989 <> Undoubtedly others will go/have gone through this procedure, but here are my old-timers' two-cents worth: S>The real facts are that Tandy has designs their peripherals and S>computers to NOT use industry standards in order to force their customers S>to ALWAYS BUY TANDY... And what was the IBM Microchannel? Cloners Liberty Hall? A "standard" that no one is allowed to copy? Face it, everyone protects themselves. But you are a bit paranoid about the 1000. Baseline note. Tandy has had three generations of 1000s to date and each has addressed and/or changed the following complaints in some way. So keep in mind this rebuttal is for the 1000/1000A, not the SX/TX/SL/TL/S%c/T%c. S>Case in point: The Tandy 1000 Which was designed to compete against the PCjr. The design period ended in Oct. 1984. At that time, the IBM AT was only a rumor, IBM was selling the PC, PC/XT and PCjr. Clones were mostly cheap things from Taiwan. Only two months before the 1000s annoucement, IBM announced it was stopping production of the PCjr. This started the drift more towards the plain-old PC, but the original 1000 was pretty much committed to the PCjr scheme of things at that point. The 1000 did have a PC expansion cage and extended video from day 1. S>Non-Compatible hard disk interrupt Not for the PC Jr. Newer machines eliminate this complaint by providing a strap. S>Reversed drive cable So they force you to set the strap on the drive instead of building a more expensive cable. So what? Many people who bought Model I/III/4's complained about the custom cable it used that prevented you stacking the drives in the order you preferred. The second plug would ALWAYS be drive 2 and so on. So they avoided a customer complaint and made the cable simpler in one shot. I can't see this as a issue unless you have a supply of drives with no DS straps. S>Non-standard JoyStick Compatible with the PCjr. Show me a stock IBM PC or PC/XT that had a joystick! I can show you the original IBM PC that had a cassette port, which no one bothered to clone (good for them.) S>Non-standard Parallel Port Actually, Tandys mistake was that they were standard. They used the Centronics printer interface standard, as they had for several years. But IBM used 90% of the Centronics interface standard with deviations, like adding a few signals and changing a few others. IBM also switched the job of generating the print strobe to software, whereas everyone up to that point used a one-shot since the Centronics spec called for a 1.5usec pulse all the time. So, PC printer drivers are timing dependent thanks to IBM's lack of compatibility with a good standard. Now, whom is "non-standard" with whom? S>Uses Tandy Specific 8087 (won't use IBM chip) Um, if you have information of a supply of 8087s other than the ones from Intel or someone who is a second-source, I think Intel would like to know so that they can sue that sucker. The bottom line is that Tandy is using the same part you can buy anywhere else. At most they sand the Intel part number off and put their own on (dumb). S>Non-Standard Monitor scan rate Again, compare it against a PCjr. It actually has more modes than the PCjr and that was done for competition purposes. S>Very Non-Standard - Not replacible keyboard! I can't say that it is the same as the PCjr because it isn't. No infrared support. But you can get a little adapter and use a standard PC keyboard on a 1000 if you desire. And there are some outfits that that sell a 1000 equivalent keyboard with a PC/XT or AT layout. All the newer 1000 systems (SL/TL) come with AT-enhanced keyboards anyway. An interesting side note is that people I have talked to that worked on the original PC development say the keyboard interface used in the PC was copied from the R/S Model II. S>I could beleive that 1 or 2 incompatibilities in a system were the result S>of lack of standardization but for a computer bought in 1986, such radical S>departure from standards in every peripheral interface on a machine sold S>as an IBM compatible could only be acomplished by design! Again, you are comparing alar-free apples and watermellons. At the same time, the marketing people didn't make it easy to tell since they did market it as a PC "compatible" system, although they were probably talking about the card cage. Recall that the previous year Tandy released the 2000 that did not have a PC-style card cage and they took considerable heat because of it, so they would be sure to list that as a big feature. And there were design flaws or shortcomings that cleared up over time, but every manufacturer has those. Anyone care to recall the original IBM AT hard disk and controller? S>As to the comment that "nobody cared much", every other manufacturer had S>adapted the IBM PC architecture by 1984... Tandy was still trying to S>lock in their customer base, while claiming compatibility in 1986! Hmmm, the 1000A came out in November of 1984. But the PC architecture is not perfect. If it was, then why are we talking about Microchannel and EISA? Why didn't Apple, Next, Sun, MIPS, DEC, and all other IBM products switch over? Perhaps they needed more than four interrupt sources, or a DMA that would transfer a sector to any address in memory, not just convenient ones. On the other hand, Apollo has 68030 systems with PC-AT card cages.... Better check the canary. :-) "Thank you, Uh Clem." Frank Durda IV @ ...decvax!microsoft!trsvax!uhclem ...sys1!hal6000!trsvax!uhclem Innovation != Compatibility