[Coco] Another Radio Shack Article

[Nick Marentes]

John Kowalski <sockmaster at ...> writes:

> In High School, I would hang out in the store after school.  We could
> play games, sometimes I would write a little demo on the computer.
> Sometimes I ever ran errands for the manager, like delivering a
> deposit to the bank... imagine that now!

> 
> Just from this good will and camaraderie, I ended up taking a strong
> interest in computers and electronics and of course, bought a good
> deal of stuff from Radio Shack.
> 

This seems to be a copy story.

I too hung out at the local Tandy Electronics store when I was still at high
school. It was situated in walking distance between school and home so every
day after school I'd drop by to use the TRS-80 Model 1 Level 1 Basic machine
to type in a few more lines of code to games I had written on paper at home
or during school.

It was this exposure to the TRS-80 that steered me towards the Tandy
computer and into an interest in electronics.

I got a job over Christmas of 1980 as a casual employee and later (1987?) I
got a full time job at Tandy where I was employed for almost 4 years.

Then Tandy dumped the CoCo and my enthusiasm for staying there was gone.

I remember writing a letter a few months before I left to the then
Australian general manager telling him that the way the company was heading
with regards to computers, Tandy would not be in the computer business in a
few years time.

After I left and about 2 years later, Tandy wasn't selling any Tandy branded
computers anymore. They sold some crappy PC clone under the banner of
InterTan and a few years later dropped computers all together.

Tandy Australia were later to be bought by the local electronics chain Dick
Smith who subsequently closed down all the store it didn't want and
converted the remainder to Dick Smith stores.

End of an era.

Nick