[Coco]: Tandy's biggest mistakes thread

[L. Curtis Boyle]

    I am not so sure on the backwards compatibility. The 2 most successful  
computer lineages on the planet (Intel DOS/Windows and Mac) are as large  
of a market as they are BECAUSE they are backwards compatible. Even Apple,  
when completely changing the CPU from 680x0 to PowerPC, wrote a very good  
emulator to make sure one could still run old software. There was a 6809  
emulator (Bob Santy's, I think?) written for the OSK 680x0 machines, but I  
don't know how compatible it was with Coco sofware. The biggest contraint  
on the Coco 3 hardware (and, ironically, also it's biggest boost) is the  
GIME, and the fact that it is so tied down to the clock speed.
    In the TC-9's case, I think the two things that hindered it were:
1) The backwards compatibility (particularily RSDOS) wasn't ready when it  
shipped (I had it, but it didn't work very well, or even at all,  
sometimes), and
2) FHL was just too small of a company to try to make something to be a  
sequel to a computer made by a company as large as Tandy/Radio Shack.


On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 05:13:19 -0600, James Jones <jamesjones01 at mchsi.com>  
wrote:

> Biggest mistakes? Let's see...
>
> Over-reliance on the 6809 to do everything is high on my list.
>
> Ignoring standards by using ASCII HT (horizontal tab) for reverse line
> feed (and generating it when the up arrow key is pressed) isn't the
> biggest mistake, but it's definitely the stupidest.
>
> Waiting until 1986 to come out with the CoCo 3.
>
> Backward compatibility constraints on the CoCo 3. (IMHO that's what
> killed off the TC-09, too.)
>
> 	James
>



-- 
L. Curtis Boyle