SY'S'T' E'M RE VIEW

The Tandy Model 2000

A fter six months of intensively using color graphics you'll need a memory-chip the Tandy 2000 alongside an IBM upgrade kit and Tandy's CM-1 RGB monitor. compromise A PC, I can say without reservation All told, a two-floppy, color graphics system that the 2000 is the superior computer. It runs about $4200. between is noticeably faster and has better display options, a superior keyboard, higher disk- INTERNAL LAYOUT IBM PC storage capacity, and more room for expan- A large main circuit board lies horizontally sion. You should choose between the two at the base of the 2000's system unit. compatibility computers based on whether you are will- Cables interconnect the main board to the ing to accept the limited availability of soft- power supply and disk drives. While the and high ware and hardware in order to gain much 2000 has slots for expansion boards, these performance higher performance. boards do not connect directly to the main board. Instead, a small expansion bus SYSTEM OVERVIEW board rises vertically from a connector on The Tandy 2000 is a low-profile unit with a the left side of the main board (see photo BY MARK S. JENNINGS thin, detachable keyboard. You can set on 'At a Glance" page). Expansion boards either a monochrome or RGB (red-green- slide in horizontally from the back and con- blue) monitor on top of the system unit, or nect to the expansion bus board. Four ex- Tandy will sell you a stand to mount the pansion board slots are provided. system unit vertically on the floor. This method of plugging in expansion Tandy used plastic as the main construc- boards has several advantages. First, you do tion material; RF (radio frequency) shielding not need to open the computer's case to is accomplished with foil lining and metal plug in a board-just pop two plastic clips access covers. I'm not big on plastic, but it on the back panel of the computer, slide makes the 2000 lighter than the IBM PC. the board in until it seats, and re-pop the The color is an attractive eggshell white. clips. You don't even need a screwdriver. A small but important feature of the 2000 Second, the entire rear edge of the expan- is a front-panel reset button. Some people sion board can have I/O (input/output) con- complain that hardware reset buttons cause nectors. This alleviates the "connector accidents; however, the 2000's reset button space squeeze" that afflicts IBM PCs with is deeply recessed on the unit's front panel multifunction expansion boards. Third, to prevent problems. A hardware reset but- keeping the expansion connectors on a ton ensures that you can always reboot the separate board allows plenty of space for system, even after a serious software crash. big connectors. The 2000 uses a 96-pin You can also use the IBM PC's Control-Alter- three-tiered Euroconnector rather than the nate-Delete combination to boot the 2000. usual card-edge connector. The relatively The basic 2000 system includes 128K large number of pins provides designers of bytes of RAM (random-access read/write expansion boards with more flexibility. memory), dual 5V4-inch floppy-disk drives, A disadvantage of the 2000's arrange- a monochrome display adapter, a parallel ment is that you need two connectors in- port, and a serial port. Adding Tandy's VM-1 stead of one to connect each expansion Mark S. Jennings (POB 3203, monochrome monitor produces a working board to the main board, perhaps degrad- Durham, NC 27705) is the system for about $3000 list. You can sub- ing reliability a bit. founder and president of Digital stitute a 10-megabyte hard-disk drive for Kinetics, a software-development one of the floppies; this system (with PROCESSOR firm. He received his B.S. from Purdue University and his M.S. monochrome monitor) lists for approxi- The 2000 uses the , an improved from Stanford University: both mately $4500. Monochrome graphics re- descendant of the 8086/8088 micropro- degrees are in civil engineering. quires an expansion board, and if you want (continued)

DECEMBER 1984 • BYTE 239 REVIEW: TANDY 2000

cessors used by the IBM PC and most not show as much of a performance to the main board (see photo 1). You other MS-DOS computers. Compared increase when run on the 2000. add the next 128K with another small to the 8088 as used in the IBM PC, The key to fast execution of a pro- piggyback board. After this, you add the 80186 has a faster clock speed gram that does extensive disk I/O is memory with expansion boards that (8 MHz versus 4.77 MHz), uses a full to use a hard disk or, better yet, a use the expansion bus; each board 16-bit data bus, and includes a RAM disk. The 2000 has a hard-disk comes with 128K bytes and sockets number of functions for which the option but doesn't yet have RAM-disk for another 128K. Two expansion 8088 requires extra support chips. All software. Tandy has contracted for the boards give a total maximum memory these improvements do not com- development of a RAM-disk package size of 768K bytes, as compared to promise software compatibility; the and it might be available by the time the IBM PC's maximum memory limit 80186 can execute the full 8086/8088 you read this. Until a 2000 RAM disk of 640K. instruction set and has a few new in- is available, an IBM PC with a RAM Another interesting feature of the structions of its own. The 80186 has disk can outpace a 2000 when run- 2000 is its RAM-based character one drawback: limited availability. ning programs with heavy disk I/O. fonts. While the IBM PC stores the Intel can't produce enough to meet If your program requires floating- pixel maps defining each character demand. point arithmetic operations , a numeric font in ROM (read-only memory), the Do these features translate into im- coprocessor (such as the Intel 8087) 2000 stores the maps in dedicated proved performance? Yes and no. can be the key to fast execution. The static RAM on the main board. This Operations that are "processor- 80186 can use the 8087 but it needs simplifies redefinition of character intensive" (such as recalculating a the 82188 controller chip to coor- fonts. (But don't expect to see propor- spreadsheet) run about two to three dinate. Unfortunately, the 82188 is in tional spacing on the 2000's display times faster on the 2000 than on the short supply and Tandy doesn't ex- like that of Apple's Macintosh and IBM PC. This peps up certain pro- pect to release a coprocessor option Lisa; the 2000's display system is still grams. The 'At a Glance" benchmarks until early 1985 . It won' t require any basically character-oriented.) indicate the performance improve- expansion slots; the coprocessor op- In general, the 2000 avoids the use ment you can expect in this area. tion will be a small board that plugs, of ROM, using only 16K bytes for Unfortunately, the effective operat- piggyback style, onto the main board. boot-up. The 2000 loads the BIOS ing speed of many programs is limited With this option, the 2000 should be (basic input/output system) to RAM by disk I/O speed rather than pro- among the fastest number crunchers from disk rather than using ROM as cessor speed . There is little significant available short of a VAX. the IBM PC does. This lets Tandy make difference in disk I/O speed between frequent changes to the BIOS; how- the 2000 and the IBM PC as shown MEMORY ever, this flexibility might lead to soft- in the benchmark graphs. This means The basic 2000 comes with 128K ware problems unless Tandy makes that programs that read and write disk bytes of RAM chips mounted on a sure that each new version of the files extensively (most compilers) will small piggyback board that connects BIOS is completely compatible with previous versions. The problem has already surfaced in Tandy's version of SuperCalc3, which uses a BIOS that is incompatible with earlier versions. You have to reboot the system before and after running SuperCalc3 in order to run other programs. Tandy has acknowledged the problem and claims to be working on a solution. Another area where the 2000 uses RAM rather than ROM is in its GW- BASIC interpreter. The 2000 loads the entire interpreter into RAM from disk, whereas the IBM PC includes the core of its BASIC interpreter in ROM. The 2000's heavy use of RAM for the tends to eat into the RAM available for programs. Equipped with only the basic 128K Photo 1 : The 2000's main circuit board with standard and optional piggyback boards bytes of RAM, a 2000 has only about installed, each with 128K bytes of RAM. The large white connector on the left is for the 75K bytes of RAM left after loading expansion bus board. (continued)

240 BY T E • DECEMBER 1984 AT A GLANCE

Name Tandy Model 2000

Manufacturer 1500 One Tandy Center Fort Worth, TX 76102 (817) 338-2390

Components Size: 19 by 6 by 16 inches (system unit), 16.3 by 1.2 by 7.9 inches (keyboard) Weight : 23 pounds (system unit), 2.8 pounds (keyboard) Processor: Intel 80186 Memory: 128K bytes standard, up to 768K bytes optional Display: 12-inch green phosphor or 14-inch RGB, nonstandard input Keyboard : Detachable with 90 keys, standard layout, 12 function keys, separate cursor MEMORY SIZE (K BYTES) DISK STORAGE (K BYTES) control and numeric keypad 0 300 600 900 1200 1500 0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 Mass storage : Two 51/4-inch, 720K-byte, floppy-disk drives Expansion : Four slots, nonstandard I/O interfaces : RS-232C serial port, parallel printer port

Software MS-DOS 2.02, GW-BASIC interpreter M

Optional Hardware Monochrome graphics $449 Color-graphics chip kit $199 BUNDLED SOFTWARE PACKAGES 0 2 4 6 8 10 Mouse $100 Mouse/clock controller $120 Monochrome monitor $249 Color monitor $799 128K RAM expansion kit $299 External 256K expansion $499 board (with 128K) Internal 10-Mb hard disk $1699

Documentation M] Introduction to the Model 2000: 69 pages MS-DOS Manual: 291 pages BASIC Manual: 366 pages TANDY 2000 IBM PC ® APPLE IIE Reference Guide to the Model 2000: 51 pages The Memory Size graph shows the standard The Price graph shows the list price of a system Prices and optional memory available for the com- with two high-capacity floppy-disk drives, a Base system price $2750 puters under comparison. The Disk Storage monochrome monitor, graphics and color-dis- Monochrome system $3946 graph shows the highest capacity of one and play capability, a printer port and a serial port, with 256K, color/graphics two floppy-disk drives for each system. The 256K bytes of memory (64K for 8-bit systems), capability Bundled Software graph shows the number of the standard operating systems for the com- Color system with 256K $4496 software packages included with each system. puters, and their standard BASIC interpreters.

DECEMBER 1984 • BYTE 241 The back panel of the Tandy 2000. The serial and parallel ports Removing the 2000's top reveals the disk drives (top left), power are along the bottom. supply (right), and expansion bus (bottom left).

DISK ACCESS IN BASIC (SEC) BASIC PERFORMANCE (SEC) 250 250

200 19

150

100 94 78.9 69

50

WRITE READ SIEVE CALCULATIONS

SYSTEM UTILITIES (SEC) 50 44

40

30

20

10

40K FORMAT/DISK COPY 40K FILE COPY LOAD RECALCULATE

TANDY 2000 IBM PC ® APPLE IIE

In the Disk Access in BASIC graph, a 64K-byte sequential text file to transfer a 40K-byte file using the system utilities. The Spreadsheet was written to a blank floppy disk, then read. (For the program listings graph shows how long the computers took to load and recalculate see June BYTE, page 327, and October, page 33.) The Sieve column a 25- by 25 -cell spreadsheet where each cell equals 1 .001 times shows how long it takes to run one iteration of the Sieve of the cell to its left. The spreadsheet program used was Eratosthenes. The Calculations column shows how long it takes to Multiplan . The tests for the Apple Ile were done with the ProDOS do 10,000 multiplication and division operations using single-precision operating system (except for the spreadsheet test, which was done numbers. The System Utilities graph shows how long it takes to for- with DOS 3.3). The IBM PC was tested with PC-DOS 2. 0. `Note: mat and copy a disk (adjusted time for 40K bytes of disk data) and Format and Disk Copy are separate operations on the Tandy 2000.

242 BYTE • DECEMBER 1984 REVIEW: TANDY 2000

the operating system. This is insuffi- system. I obtained similar results text and graphics. The graphics sys- cient for most programs: most users when I performed the test in Pascal. tems (monochrome or color) display will want to upgrade their 2000s to at With programs that switch back and text with the same resolution offered least 2 56K. forth between text and color-graphics by the text-only system. And the modes, such as Lotus 1-2-3, this per- 2000's RGB monitor is acceptable for DISPLAY formance penalty will go largely un- text display (although definitely not as The Tandy 2000 offers a number of noticed. But programs that stay in the good as the monochrome monitor). options for different combinations of graphics mode continuously, such as Another drawback: both the VM-l text, monochrome graphics, and color the BASIC interpreter, will be severe- and CM-1 monitors are specifically graphics. A text system requires only ly hampered when run with the color- designed to work with the 2000 and the VM-I green monitor-no expan- graphics system. won't work with any other computer sion board. This is a superb system for If you know that you will not be system. Conversely, no other monitors word processing. Characters are crisp- using any graphics, you can recon- will work with the 2000. ly formed with an 8- by 16-pixel figure the 2000 as a text-only system. matrix against a dark background. The manual tells you to tap the Flt KEYBOARD This display is slightly superior to the key when the disk drive flashes dur- The 2000's keyboard (photo 2) is a IBM PC's excellent monochrome dis- ing the boot-up procedure, and if this strong point. The layout is conven- play. doesn't work, to "repeat the proce- tional: Tandy wisely avoided IBM's By adding a graphics expansion dure, tapping the key as quickly as controversial placement of an extra board, you can display 640- by possible.:' I tried and could recon- key near the left shift key. The cursor 400-pixel monochrome graphics on figure my system (some of the time) controls are arranged separately from the VM-l. For color, you need a mem- by furiously hitting the Fl2 key for the numeric keypad in an upside- ory-chip upgrade for this board, as several seconds during the boot-up down "T" arrangement. The Caps and well as the CM-1 RGB monitor. This process. It turns out that the manual Num Lock toggles have status lights provides for 640 by 400 graphics in is wrong-you're supposed to hit the so you won't forget when they're on. 8 colors (selected from 16 possible F12 key when the Caps and Num Lock Another nice feature is a Hold key colors). This color system looks indicators on the keyboard flash. This that stops display scrolling: the IBM spectacular-easily producing the reconfigures the system and provides PC requires a difficult combination of most attractive color displays I have normal text display speed, but it limits Ctrl and Num Lock to do the same seen on a mass-market microcom- you to text display until you reboot thing. Unfortunately, the 2000's Hold puter. The resolution, focus, and color the system. Even when you know how key is right above the up-arrow cur- rendition (particularly yellow) are to do it, this is an inconvenient way sor key where it is too easy to hit ac- excellent. to reconfigure the system. cidentally. Finally, the 2000 has 12 Unfortunately, the 2000's color One aspect of the 2000 that I like function keys that are arranged hori- graphics are seriously flawed. When is that it doesn't require a separate zontally across the top of the key- operating in the graphics mode, the monitor if you want both high-quality (continued) computer displays text at a snail's pace, more than nullifying its speed advantage over other systems. An odd hardware configuration is to blame. With a text-only system or l when using the monochrome-graph- ics option, the 2000 uses a high- speed 9007 CRT controller chip that scrolls text very quickly. But when the color-graphics chips are added, the 9007 can no longer be used to generate text in the graphics mode. Instead, text must be laboriously generated in software. The text display in color-graphics mode is very slow. I wrote a short BASIC program that displays the words "Hello, BYTE"" on the screen 100 times. It ran in less than 2 sec- Photo 2 : The Tandy 2000 keyboard features 12 function keys, Caps and Num lock onds on a text-only 2000 but took keys with lighted indicators, and a large Enter key. over 30 seconds on a color-graphics

DECEMBER 1984 • BYTE 243 REVIEW: TANDY 2000

does not automatically include should run on the 2000 without The Tandy 2 000's FORMAT-they are two separate changes. HFORMAT command steps. One small but important feature of APPLICATION SOFTWARE can keep you from the 2000's MS-DOS is the use of The question most people ask about separate commands for formatting a application software for the 2000 is accidentally trashing floppy and a hard disk. The IBM PC "Will it run Lotus 1-2-3?" With the re- uses the same command to format cent release of a 2000 version of the the entire contents of both and can cause you to acciden- popular Lotus program, Tandy can your hard disk. tally trash the entire contents of the now respond with a definitive yes. hard disk. The 2000 uses a complete- Model 2000 owners have four basic ly separate command (H FORMAT) ways to get the application software board instead of vertically on the left that is much less likely to cause this they need. First, Tandy markets many side. This arrangement is better than problem. mainstream MS-DOS products under IBM's for associating the keys with on- One MS-DOS command conspicu- its own label , customized and opti- screen menus. ous by its absence from the 2000 is mized for the 2000 with documenta- Keyboard touch is very subjective. MODE . On the IBM PC, you can use tion in the standard 2000 gray I find the 2000's touch to be nearly this command to switch display binders. A second option is Tandy's perfect-fairly light but not "nervous:' modes, configure parallel/serial ports, Express Order program. With this One aspect many will appreciate is and redirect output from the parallel system, you order the software you the lack of clickety-clackety noise from port to the serial port. Without this want from a catalog at your local the keyboard. command, accessing the 2000's serial Radio Shack Computer Center. Within port directly from the operating sys- two or three days, the software is ex- DISK STORAGE tem is difficult. The lack of any re- press shipped to your dealer so you The basic 2000 comes with two half- direction provision also hurts; it vir- can pick it up. Programs ordered height, 5%a-inch, Mitsubishi M4853 tually requires that you have a printer through the Express Order program floppy-disk drives. Disk-storage with a parallel interface. Tandy has ap- will usually be "generic" MS-DOS and capacity on the 2000 is twice that of parently recognized the need to ad- might or might not take advantage of the IBM PC (720K versus 360K), a dress this problem: the company says certain 2000 features. result of doubling the number of it has a new version of MS-DOS com- A third option is the Reviewed Soft- tracks (and track density) from 40 to ing that includes a MODE command. ware catalog, which lists software that 80 tracks per disk. This makes a world Tandy should also include some Tandy has tested and knows will work of difference for many uses of the diagnostics with the basic 2000 sys- on the 2000. You order the software machine. The 2000's drives are quiet tem. The MS-DOS disk does not con- directly from the vendor or through and the disk ejection mechanism tain any diagnostics programs, and I a distributor. The fourth option is to works well. One complaint-as in its could find no reference to diagnostics buy IBM PC programs, some of which earlier computers, Tandy put the A in any of Tandy's documentation. will work fine while others won't even drive on the bottom and the B drive Microsoft's GW-BASIC interpreter is load from disk. on the top. included with the 2000 system. The I was able to briefly test Tandy 2000 The hard-disk 2000 system sub- Tandy 2000 differs from the IBM PC versions of 1-2-3, Multiplan, Super- stitutes a Tandon TM502, dual-platter, in that the interpreter is implemented Calc3, MultiMate, dBASE II, Word- 5V4-inch, 10-megabyte Winchester as a single program (BASIC.EXE), Perfect, and all the Microsoft com- hard-disk drive for one of the floppies. which includes graphics commands. pilers and assemblers . All performed A hard-disk system that retains both The 2000's BASIC automatically well on the 2000 and most seemed floppies is not currently supported senses whether you have installed the significantly faster and more respon- but probably will be eventually. graphics expansion board. If you sive than the IBM PC versions. have, the graphics routines work; Certainly the most impressive of SOFTWARE otherwise, you get a syntax error these packages is 1-2-3. The software For this review, I used Tandy's recent- whenever you attempt to execute a is extremely quick and responsive on ly released MS-DOS version 2.02. The statement that uses a graphics rou- the 2000 . Because the 2000 's hard- differences between the 2000's and tine. ware configuration is more stable, the IBM PC's MS-DOS implementa- Although the 2000 has more op- fewer ancillary files hang around on tions are fairly minor. The 2000's tions for color and resolution than the the disks and you do not need to con- FORMAT command has a few extra IBM PC, the 2000's BASIC includes figure the system to get it up and run- options and the commands for copy- the lower-resolution modes that the ning. I was displaying spectacular ing and comparing disks are slightly IBM PC uses . All other things being seven-color bar charts with 640- by different. For example, DISKCOPY equal, most IBM PC BASIC programs (continued)

244 BY T E • DECEMBER 1984 REVIEW: TANDY 2000

Most sophisticated drive. Also, disks that are relatively 2000 is aimed at novice users; it pre- "fragmented" (due to repeatedly sents a short overview of the system. application programs go writing and erasing files) are less like- The MS-DOS and BASIC manuals are ly to work. So far, using the bottom much larger and are similar in size outside the operating drive on the 2000 and a newly for- and format to the IBM PC's DOS and matted IBM PC disk has been a sure- BASIC manuals. Finally, Tandy pro- system to implement fire way of transferring any file. vides a pocket-reference guide to the special features. Suppose you've put your favorite system. For some reason, however, IBM PC program on a disk that the Tandy doesn't put the loose-leaf MS- 2000 can read. Will it run? That DOS and BASIC manuals in slipcases; 400-pixel resolution three minutes depends on how the program com- this tends to add to bookcase clutter. after taking 1-2-3 out of the box. municates with the computer hard- Overall the 2000's manuals, while ware. attractive and easy to use, are less IBM PC COMPATIBILITY If the program calls the PC hardware than complete. A great deal of tech- Because the 2000 runs MS-DOS and directly, it will definitely not run; the nical information is left out of the MS- uses a software-compatible micropro- memory maps and I/O ports of the DOS manual. For example, it devotes cessor, it offers some compatibility 2000 and the IBM PC are very dif- a scant two pages to the subjects of with IBM PC software. To run IBM PC ferent. This rules out copy-protected configuring a system and device software, the Tandy 2000 must be programs, programs that write direct- drivers. The 2000's manual is also able to read PC disks, i.e., have the ly to display memory (e.g., some pro- missing key documentation of batch same disk format. Futhermore, the grams with high-speed graphics), and commands. Finally, the general software itself must interact with the many communications programs. manual, Introduction to the Model 2000, 2000's hardware through MS-DOS If the program communicates with is much less comprehensive than system calls or through compatible the hardware through the BIOS, it will IBM's Guide to Operations. BIOS calls. probably run. However, the 2000 uses Some information missing from the As for disk-format compatibility, a different system for character at- standard manuals is in the recently numerous reviewers have commented tributes and graphics that can cause released technical manuals: Program- that the 2000 can read but not write incompatibility. One programmer's mer's Reference and Technical Reference. The to IBM PC disks. This is not entirely utility that I use in my work uses the programmer's reference manual gives true. What the 2000 could not do, un- BIOS to play around with different information on how to access MS- til recently, was format an IBM PC disk. combinations of color and character DOS and the BIOS from assembly lan- To write a file to an IBM PC disk, the attributes (bold, underline, blinking) guage. The technical reference disk had to be formatted on an IBM depending on whether it is run on a manual provides detailed information PC. Thereafter, the 2000 could read, monochrome or color system. This about the 2000's hardware. It covers write, and erase files just as if the disk program does not work properly on every circuit in great detail and even were formatted on the 2000. the 2000. It is a fact of life that most includes manufacturers' data sheets Apparently, however, this formatting sophisticated application programs for most of the critical chips in the limitation has been alleviated. Tandy go outside the operating system to system. Unfortunately, the technical is now including an extra formatting implement special features. manual seldom presents any overview program (PC Maker) that allows the As for IBM PC hardware compatibili- information that puts the details in 2000 to format IBM PC disks. Accord- ty, there is none. The expansion bus perspective; I found it nearly impos- ing to Tandy, all registered 2000 used on the 2000 is completely dif- sible to read. owners will receive this upgrade. ferent from the IBM PC's. Aftermarket Granted, I have had some minor er- hardware vendors will need to de- SERVICE AND SUPPORT ratic problems in getting the 2000 to velop completely separate products With well over 1000 Radio Shack read a file written by an IBM PC and for the 2000. Computer Centers (of which about vice versa. After transferring hun- I called the major IBM PC after- 400 have complete service facilities), dreds of files (text and binary) be- market board developers (Tecmar, the 2000 is well supported in the field. tween the 2000 and an IBM PC, I have AST Research, and Quadram) and My 2000 has performed flawlessly, so yet to be thwarted-although a few asked them if they had any plans to I have no direct experience with Radio transfers have been a bit stubborn. develop products for the 2000. For Shack's service department. I have Part of the problem might be due to the most part, their attitude was "wait heard that it is above the industry individual head alignment and rota- and see." average. tion speed variations in the disk Tandy provides a customer service drives; the bottom drive on my 2000 DOCUMENTATION support number to help with hard- seems to read and write to IBM PC The 2000 comes with four pieces of ware and software problems. I called disks much more reliably than the top documentation. Introduction to the Model (continued)

246 B Y T E • DECEMBER 1984 REVIEW: TANDY 2000 PC

SOFT I think that requiring a separate (and The Tandy 2 000 expensive) internal memory board .%A I breaks no new ground; has more to do with marketing than 1u`,1,LEeW with engineering. Tandy aggressively WE'LL MATCH PRICES ON MOST PRODUCTS- it is a refinement prices the basic 128K, two-floppy system at $2750. Adding the mono- LOTUS 1-2-3/ o f the basic chrome monitor raises the price of a SYMPHONY $375 IBM PC system. working system to $3000-quite a $309/$425 EASYWRITER II bargain considering how much com- dBASE II/III SYSTEM puter you are getting. $279/$375 $185 it with some typical problems and was Tandy makes money by selling the WORDSTAR PRO KEY favorably impressed. I also called add-ons people inevitably buy. If you PROF PACK $87 Tandy's headquarters in January 1984 decide you want a 512K color system, $275 HAYES when the 2000 had been on the you will need to add the graphics CROSSTALK SMARTMODEMS market for a few weeks. I had not yet board ($450), color-graphics chip kit $99 1200/1200B purchased the computer and had a ($200), RGB monitor ($550 more than $489/$409 number of technical questions. After the monochrome), 128K internal getting passed around for a few memory board ($300), 128K external LOOK AT THESE minutes, I was able to talk to a knowl- memory board ($500), and a 128K edgeable technical person. This is chip kit ($300). Suddenly, your $3000 SPECIAL PRICES! something I have been unable to do computer costs $5300. Some of these ATI Training Power CALL AST Products CALL with IBM and Apple. prices seem a bit high. Crosstalk $ 99 A gripe list wouldn't be complete dBase II/III $279/$375 GRIPES EasyWriter II System $185 without mentioning the constant Hayes 1200/1200B $489/$409 Tandy seems to have an aversion to scheduling slips that have plagued the IUS Accounting CALL DIP (dual-inline package) switches; entire 2000 program. I know that all Lotus 1-2-3/Symphony $309/$425 MicroPro Products CALL changing the 2000's hardware con- computer manufacturers are op- Microsoft Products CALL figuration often requires cutting traces timistic in predicting when items will Multimate $265 on circuit boards. For example, adding be on the market, but Tandy has Norton Utilities $ 59 PFS Products CALL the color-graphics chip kit to the pushed optimistic scheduling to new ProKey $ 87 graphics expansion board requires extremes. I especially dislike the way Quadram Products CALL RBase 4000 $289 cutting a trace. Adding a numeric co- Tandy lists items in its catalog that are SuperCalc 2/3 $149/$199 processor will involve major surgery; not available. For example, MultiMate Volkswriter Deluxe $175 the technical reference manual men- was listed as available in a January Wordstar $209 Wordstar Prof. Package $275 tions cutting several traces on the 1984 catalog; it finally appeared in All Other Products/Diskettes CALL non-visible side of the main board. June. Any prospective 2000 purchaser To order: How expensive can it be to add a DIP should beware of Tandy's "Real Soon Call TOLL-FREE: switch or a couple of pins that can be Now" promises. 800-227-4780 or 415-845-2651 jumpered? Perhaps Tandy wants to discourage CONCLUSIONS Or write: ECONOMY SOFTWARE customers from installing options on Unlike Apple's Macintosh, the 2000 2040 Polk Street their own. The thought of cutting into breaks no new ground; it is a refine- San Francisco , CA 94109 a circuit board will scare many ment of the basic IBM PC system. If customers down to their local Com- you want an "IBM PC type" computer, puter Center. This hypothesis is con- you have three basic choices: you can firmed by other aspects of the 2000's go with Big Blue, you can save a little ECONOMY design. Adding the 128K byte internal money and buy an IBM PC-compati- memory board requires you to take ble, or you can buy a higher-per- the bottom cover off the computer. formance version of the IBM PC. SOFTWARE Tandy doesn't like you to do this; a The 2000 is definitely the computer q We guarantee our products against prominent seal warns about loss of to consider for the last option. In manufacturer's defects. q Quantity discounts available. We are warranty coverage. If you have it done nearly every measurable way, the experienced with Corporate accounts. at a Computer Center, you pay $15. 2000 is superior to the IBM PC. And q No surcharge added for charge cards. No charges until products are shipped. I would have preferred that Tandy in- when higher-performance software q Purchase orders accepted. clude 2 56K in the basic computer or, comes into wider use, the 2000's ad- q Call for shippi ng charges. El Prices subjec t to change. better yet, put in sockets to let you in- vantages will become even more stall your own memory chips. evident. n

248 BY T E • DECEMBER 1984 Circle 146 on inquiry card. -