In November 1983, Tandy introduced the Tandy 2000, a forward-looking PC that tried to be better than IBM. The problem was the Tandy 2000 was IBM-like, but fell too far short of being fully IBM compatible.
Tandy 2000: Doing IBM one better
Tandy’s reasoning was if they built a computer that was similar to the IBM PC, but had a faster processor, higher capacity disk drives, and better graphics, sophisticated buyers would choose them over IBM.
And it seemed like they scored a coup when they convinced Bill Gates himself to be their pitch man. In their ads, they showed Bill Gates sitting in front of a Tandy 2000, running a pre-release build of Microsoft Windows. Here was a graphical environment running on an inexpensive PC nearly 4 months before the Apple Macintosh.
And since Windows used device drivers, hardware incompatibilities could be abstracted away. At least if people were running native Windows software.
The power behind this magic was the Intel 80186 CPU, and a graphics standard from Japan, pioneered in the NEC PC 9801. So it’s not like Tandy was doing something completely proprietary.
What went wrong
I think two things went wrong with the Tandy 2000. First, although it was somewhat software compatible with the IBM PC in that well-behaved programs would run on both, it wasn’t hardware compatible. Tandy didn’t use the ISA bus. There was a huge market of add-on cards available for the IBM PC, and Tandy 2000 owners couldn’t take advantage of them. They were limited to what Tandy offered, until the Tandy 2000 became a large enough market to attract third parties. That never happened.
The second big problem was Microsoft Windows was late. It didn’t ship in 1984. It didn’t ship in early 1985. It finally shipped almost 2 years after the Tandy 2000. By November 1985, Tandy 2000 was a flop. And if you wanted to run Windows, the Tandy 2000 was no longer the best computer to run it. By then, you could buy an IBM 5170, which was faster, and while not absolutely 100% compatible with the IBM PC’s hardware and software, it was very nearly 100% compatible.
How Tandy coped
Without Windows available, Tandy had to rely on software publishers producing special Tandy 2000 compatible versions of their software. Some did that, so there was interesting and useful software available for the Tandy 2000. But the selection wasn’t nearly as wide, and there was usually a delay between the time the IBM PC version shipped and the Tandy 2000 version shipped. And as time went on and computers that were much closer to 100% IBM-compatible arrived, the delay increased.
By November 1985, Tandy had shifted its focus from the Tandy 2000 and Microsoft Windows to its very successful Tandy 1000 line. This was the right decision in 1985, but in 1990, Tandy was skeptical, and I think that doomed Tandy computers.
David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.
I remember Tandy 2000 was very expensive – CM1 to, so we purchased the Tandy 1000sx in 1987 a couple of months after Tandy 1000tx was sold
could CM1 run EGA ? 640 400 16 color vs. 640 350
could Tandy offer a Color Computer like systems that have a 68k and Atari ST graphics and sound and price ? I wish that instead of Tandy 1000 or Color Computer in 1985 they offer a Atari ST or Amiga 500 like computer at under $1k with open architecture and cloning
I dream of a motorola 68000 cpu with Texas Instruments TMS34010 gpu and Ensoniq 5503 digital synthesizer chip, which has its own dedicated RAM and 32 channels of sound for under $1k and based on OS9 and GEM and deskmate 1986