5 ms·

> The problem was, Tandy didn’t really have a succession plan [for the Tandy 1000]. Sounds familiar... sitting back and treating their successful models as cas

by rob74 4y ago

> The problem was, Tandy didn’t really have a succession plan [for the Tandy 1000]. Sounds familiar... sitting back and treating their successful models as cash cows killed at least one other home computer pioneer: Commodore. The original Amigas (A1000/A500/A2000) were successful (more in Europe than in the US, but still), but they were never able to come up with a worthy successor until it was too late.

timbit42 4y ago
The person at Commodore who didn't have a plan for the future of computing was Irving Gould. He didn't use computers and wanted to extract as much value as possible into his own bank account. His henchman who executed it was Mehdi Ali. They cut research and engineering to save money, ensuring anything in the labs would never make it to market in time to be competitive. They fired Thomas Rattigan, the man who got the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 projects going. The Amiga 500 sold more units than the other Amiga models combined and kept the company going long enough to release the A3000 and A1200/4000 before it bankrupted. The only person who got what they wanted was Irving Gould. He got to die with a few more millions in his bank account.
hinkley 4y ago
Living through that era, I recall that Linus Torvalds talked a lot of smack about the 80286. The 386 was just so much better for implementing Unix on that they didn't even want to deal with it. So there seems to be this uncanny valley between 8086 and 386, where a lot of people either dragged their feet or jumped forward as soon as they could. My transition to a 386 was very abrupt, facilitated by a Christmas present that could not run on an 8086 machine. But one of the first things I installed on it was Windows, and I went from "How will I ever fill up a 40MB hard drive?" to "oh wow it's almost half full already" in a matter of weeks. I suspect a lot of people were experience 'sticker shock' with respect to file size inflation as well, leading to more foot dragging.
- Narishma 4y ago
  I don't get this comment. The 286 was extremely successful. It wasn't until the 1991 or 1992 that 386 started outselling it.
  - icedchai 4y ago
    I grew up during that time. In the late 80's, early 90's teenage BBS world, 286's were considered lame. You could understand someone being stuck on a 8086/8088: they couldn't afford to upgrade. But for a few more bucks, you could get a 386SX instead of a 286 and do way cooler stuff.
  - hakfoo 4y ago
    I suspect it got assassinated from Intel with the 386SX. Killing the 286 got rid of most of the remaining second-source competitors, until the Am386 came in to save the day. When there was a significant gap in pricing between a 286 and a 386DX, there was definitely a case for "you can put more memory or a faster disc in the 286, or just bring down the total bill, even if both are 16/20/25MHz parts." You could make a compelling argument for buying the 286 if you knew you weren't running 386-specific software. Once the 386SX, with its lower price and ability to be easily adapted to existing 286 designs, hit the market, the case was much harder to argue. My family's first PC was a 386SX/16 clone. We never ran anything that was 386-specific on it except maybe one or two games, never expanded past the soldered-on 1Mb. A 286 would probably have done just as well, but the general hive-mind opinion of the time was "be sure and get a 386" (along with "be sure and get both sizes floppy drive")
- fredoralive 4y ago
  I guess its the lack of a killer app for the 286? Was there much software for DOS that actually needed a 286 as a minimum? I get the impression they were often just used as "fast XTs". Some of this is due to various limitations that make using the new features of the 286 in DOS a pain (or putting major DOS compatibility limitations on OS/2 1.x, which is probably partly why no-one used OS/2 at the time). The 386 had features that were actually used like 32 bit support and a protected mode that could actually work alongside DOS. Plus its around this time you got Windows 3.x in 386 Enhanced Mode, which is around the point Windows actually becomes a thing people use. So you get a lot more apps that basically require a 386, rather than the generic mass of DOS software that runs on just about anything beforehand.
  - indymike 4y ago
    > Was there much software for DOS that actually needed a 286 as a minimum? Unless you decided to run OS/2 or XENIX (which was really the big deal for the 286), the only advantage was you didn't need a special memory card to exceed 640k of memory with most DOS software - so maybe, roomier, faster XT... My first "real" computer was a 286 with 2MB of RAM... and I mostly used the upper 1MB as a RAM disk which made loading the next level on a lot of games much faster.
- rob74 4y ago
  I can fully understand Linus that he didn't want to adapt Linux to work on a 16 bit CPU. When he started with it, those were on their way out already, so it would have been pretty pointless...
- bitwize 4y ago
  Bill Gates called the 286 "brain damaged". It had a protected mode, but you couldn't get out of it without doing a system reset. Even in protected mode it still had jankass segmented memory addressing because the register width wasn't actually wide enough to accommodate the 24-bit address space. The i386 and later had 32-bit registers, 32-bit pointers, and could do flat addressing in protected mode. No more having to faff about with near and far pointers or segment descriptors.
bitwize 4y ago
Tandy shipped more advanced, AT-class and 32-bit systems in its 3000/4000 line, but they were outcompeted by white- and gray-box clone makers in the business market.
illys 4y ago
Atari also... Their Falcon was great but probably too small and too late.

by rob74 4y ago

timbit42 4y ago

The person at Commodore who didn't have a plan for the future of computing was Irving Gould. He didn't use computers and wanted to extract as much value as possible into his own bank account. His henchman who executed it was Mehdi Ali. They cut research and engineering to save money, ensuring anything in the labs would never make it to market in time to be competitive. They fired Thomas Rattigan, the man who got the Amiga 500 and Amiga 2000 projects going. The Amiga 500 sold more units than the other Amiga models combined and kept the company going long enough to release the A3000 and A1200/4000 before it bankrupted. The only person who got what they wanted was Irving Gould. He got to die with a few more millions in his bank account.

hinkley 4y ago

Living through that era, I recall that Linus Torvalds talked a lot of smack about the 80286. The 386 was just so much better for implementing Unix on that they didn't even want to deal with it. So there seems to be this uncanny valley between 8086 and 386, where a lot of people either dragged their feet or jumped forward as soon as they could. My transition to a 386 was very abrupt, facilitated by a Christmas present that could not run on an 8086 machine. But one of the first things I installed on it was Windows, and I went from "How will I ever fill up a 40MB hard drive?" to "oh wow it's almost half full already" in a matter of weeks. I suspect a lot of people were experience 'sticker shock' with respect to file size inflation as well, leading to more foot dragging.

Narishma 4y ago
I don't get this comment. The 286 was extremely successful. It wasn't until the 1991 or 1992 that 386 started outselling it.
- icedchai 4y ago
  I grew up during that time. In the late 80's, early 90's teenage BBS world, 286's were considered lame. You could understand someone being stuck on a 8086/8088: they couldn't afford to upgrade. But for a few more bucks, you could get a 386SX instead of a 286 and do way cooler stuff.
- hakfoo 4y ago
  I suspect it got assassinated from Intel with the 386SX. Killing the 286 got rid of most of the remaining second-source competitors, until the Am386 came in to save the day. When there was a significant gap in pricing between a 286 and a 386DX, there was definitely a case for "you can put more memory or a faster disc in the 286, or just bring down the total bill, even if both are 16/20/25MHz parts." You could make a compelling argument for buying the 286 if you knew you weren't running 386-specific software. Once the 386SX, with its lower price and ability to be easily adapted to existing 286 designs, hit the market, the case was much harder to argue. My family's first PC was a 386SX/16 clone. We never ran anything that was 386-specific on it except maybe one or two games, never expanded past the soldered-on 1Mb. A 286 would probably have done just as well, but the general hive-mind opinion of the time was "be sure and get a 386" (along with "be sure and get both sizes floppy drive")
fredoralive 4y ago
I guess its the lack of a killer app for the 286? Was there much software for DOS that actually needed a 286 as a minimum? I get the impression they were often just used as "fast XTs". Some of this is due to various limitations that make using the new features of the 286 in DOS a pain (or putting major DOS compatibility limitations on OS/2 1.x, which is probably partly why no-one used OS/2 at the time). The 386 had features that were actually used like 32 bit support and a protected mode that could actually work alongside DOS. Plus its around this time you got Windows 3.x in 386 Enhanced Mode, which is around the point Windows actually becomes a thing people use. So you get a lot more apps that basically require a 386, rather than the generic mass of DOS software that runs on just about anything beforehand.
- indymike 4y ago
  > Was there much software for DOS that actually needed a 286 as a minimum? Unless you decided to run OS/2 or XENIX (which was really the big deal for the 286), the only advantage was you didn't need a special memory card to exceed 640k of memory with most DOS software - so maybe, roomier, faster XT... My first "real" computer was a 286 with 2MB of RAM... and I mostly used the upper 1MB as a RAM disk which made loading the next level on a lot of games much faster.
rob74 4y ago
I can fully understand Linus that he didn't want to adapt Linux to work on a 16 bit CPU. When he started with it, those were on their way out already, so it would have been pretty pointless...
bitwize 4y ago
Bill Gates called the 286 "brain damaged". It had a protected mode, but you couldn't get out of it without doing a system reset. Even in protected mode it still had jankass segmented memory addressing because the register width wasn't actually wide enough to accommodate the 24-bit address space. The i386 and later had 32-bit registers, 32-bit pointers, and could do flat addressing in protected mode. No more having to faff about with near and far pointers or segment descriptors.

bitwize 4y ago

Tandy shipped more advanced, AT-class and 32-bit systems in its 3000/4000 line, but they were outcompeted by white- and gray-box clone makers in the business market.

illys 4y ago

Atari also... Their Falcon was great but probably too small and too late.