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One of my favorite bits of tech trivia is the story of Tandy's pivot from being a leathergoods store to selling some of the first home "microcomputers" simply b
by LarsDu88 1y ago
One of my favorite bits of tech trivia is the story of Tandy's pivot from being a leathergoods store to selling some of the first home "microcomputers" simply because microcomputing overlapped as a hobbyist activity in it's early days.
Quite unexpectedly, Tandy/Radioshack's computer business has gone kaput, but Tandy leathergoods still exists and has operating stores more than 100 years later.
- EvanAnderson 1y agoEerie coincidence: Coleco, manufacturers of the ill-fated ADAM home computer, which competed with Tandy/Radio Shack, was originally the Connecticut Leather Company.
- LarsDu88 1y agoApparently the Ycombinator equivalents of early microcomputer startups were leather hobbyist stores!
- JKCalhoun 1y ago> their first offerings were surplus military equipment But then military surplus electronics came along and seem to have kick started a number of businesses, not just Radio Shack.
- agumonkey 1y agoIt was one of the first brand I remember as a kid, I never sought to dig their history.. kinda jawdropping.
- irrational 1y agoI did leather working as a kid in the 80s and only knew Tandy as the leather company. I’ve been a programmer for decades now and had heard of the Tandy computers but never connected the name to the leather company. I’d especially never heard that they also owned Radio Shack. This article was a real eye opener.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoThe “Trash-80” was an important predecessor home computer, as were the Commodore, Sinclair, and Amiga ones. Many of the trendsetters often fade into the past, as they are overtaken by their rivals (a certain electric car company comes to mind).
- JKCalhoun 1y agoStarted picking up "retro computers" in the early 90's when they could be had for $25 or so. I was disappointed to see all the bodge wires on the TRS-80 motherboard. Compared to the Apple II, Commodore 64, it looked kind of ... half-baked when it shipped.
- PaulHoule 1y agoThe first Model Is were awful. The earliest home computers (TRS-80 Model I, Apple ][, Commodore PET) used discrete logic for everything other than the microprocessor and RAM. Next generation machines had custom ASICs for the glue logic, display controller and such which brought costs down. Modern retro-revival computers like the Commander x16 struggle with this because the conventional wisdom is that you need to ship 10,000 units for it to be worth making an ASIC. A display controller, particularly a color display controller, is conceptually simple, a really fun project in discrete logic, but the part count is absurd and since things like the x16 compete with the Raspberry Pi, the cost is a problem. Turns out to be most cost effective to implement a VDP in software with the ESP32 https://github.com/AgonPlatform/agon-vdp https://github.com/AgonPlatform/agon-vdp
- jaybrendansmith 1y agoBut think how incredible it is that this company actually had a working home computer for sale in 1977, right next to Apple.
- alnwlsn 1y agoIt's more impressive that Apple was able to do this. Apple had a couple dozen people. Radio Shack had thousands of stores and their own factories. And Apple's computer was better (though more expensive).
- rbanffy 1y ago> but Tandy leathergoods still exists and has operating stores more than 100 years later. Maybe we can convince them to restart production ;-)