Xref: utzoo comp.sys.tandy:1307 comp.sys.ibm.pc:27904
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!indri!pikes!udenva!isis!csm9a!japplega
From: japplega@csm9a.UUCP (Joe Applegate)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.tandy,comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: My Experiances with Tandy pt. 1
Keywords: Tandy Compatibility Service
Message-ID: <1460@csm9a.UUCP>
Date: 25 Apr 89 18:03:18 GMT
Organization: Colorado School of Mines
Lines: 89


                 My Personal Experiances with Tandy
                            Chapter 1

In 1980 I bought my first home computer... a 16K Radio Shack Color Computer
for $599... within two months I added disk drives and a printer to the
system for an additional $299 + $499... this installment of my personal
experiances with Tandy deal with this computer... future installments will
deal with the Model 100 and 1000A that I subsequently bought from Tandy.

Pehaps this will help some of you understand why I make such an effort to
discourage others from buying Tandy computers!

At first I was in hog heaven with my little computer... though certainly
far from the VM system I was working with on the job, IT WAS MINE!
But it took little time to realise the need for dependable storage (and
a cassette is far from dependable) and hardcopy... so off I went to my
neighborhood Radio Shack for more goodies...

There really was only one choice for a disk... but the choice of printers
was huge AND EXPENSIVE... the salesman assured me that for a Coco all I really
needed was a Line Printer VII, which even though it had no lower case descenders
it did have an interface for the Coco and was the cheapest printer.

Within a week, this printer started dropping line feeds several times per
page... I was not amused... I took it back to the RS and after 4 weeks it came
back with a tag that said they could not duplicate the problem... we put it
on a Coco in the store and it skipped line feeds... I then asked if I could
just get another printer... but no! My 30 days was now up!... so again it
went to the shop... and again came back with a tag that said they could not
duplicate the problem... by this time the store mgr. had been changed and all
the clerks were new (Tandy seemed to go through them every week!)...

Once again I demonstrated there was a real problem and sent in the printer...
after 6 weeks it came back tagged as repaired... when I got home, guess what!
It still skipped!!!  I took it back and was told it was now out of warentee and
would cost a minimum of $150 to fix!  It still sits in my closet as a proof
of Tandy's lousy service and the poor quality of their printers...

Eventually I had my Coco (grey case E board) upgraded to 32K and when OS9
came out I wanted to run it as well... so I tried to do the E board mod myself
It didn't work... I asked some of the local hackers from our users group...
they checked my work and even re-did some of it... it still only had 32K
(I had the diagnostics pack that checks all 64K)... finally I ripped out the
chips I had put in and replaced them with new one minus jumpers and sent it
to Tandy... it came back with 32K.. OS9 would not boot!!!

Upon demonstrating this to the salesclerk he sent it back... after 3 trips
it still came back with 32K only!  finally, someone in the Users group
identified it as an EE board ran a different jumper and I had 64K... I am
still using this system... BUT WHY COULDN'T TANDY IDENTIFY THEIR OWN 
BOARD!

Let alone the fact that they charged me $150 for a machine that already had
4164's in it and which they never did make into a 64K machine!!!!

These stories are typical of the tales of woe that many Coco owners recite
as to dealing with Tandy... I could tell of worse problems that others in
our User Group encountered but I chose to keep this to my personal experiances.

One final story... simply because I was involved in it...

When DynaCalc for OS9 came out I had a really hard time getting it... I went
to a computer center and asked for it and when I told them it was a spreadsheet
for OS9 they tried to sell me a 1000!  I told them I already had a computer 
and I wanted the spreadsheet that Tandy sold for it, NOT A NEW COMPUTER!
They then said that it was probably a very poor spreadsheet cause it was
on a Coco and that I really needed a PC... this was not the way to endear
oneself to a Coco User Group President and the developer of several Coco
products on the market! Particularly when the product in question WAS A TANDY
PRODUCT!

So we did a survey... I had three other guys go around with me to various
RS and Computer Centers asking for a spreadsheet for the Coco (there were 
two in the catalog and almost every store had spectaculator (which I admit
was junk, but still was a spreadsheet))... another group would go in the
same store and ask for a Pascal (Pascal-09 was in the catalog!)...

Out of 30 stores only one would say that there was a spreadsheet... and every
one tried to sell the existing customer a new computer!

We wrote up this information and submitted it to several Coco magazines...
all of which forwarded it to Ed Juge
and he responded that his personnel could not know every product!
[and they can't look in a catalog I suppose!]

[To be continued]

Joe Applegate