Every time we talk of hardware from this era I'm reminded that I was absolutely set on getting a Commodore 64 or even better, a ColecoVision Adam computer, and my dad 'made me' get a Tandy instead. Ugly tan box. Yuck.
My dad and I don't have what you might call compatible decision making processes, so there were many times I was disappointed by his decisions growing up. But that machine taught me DOS, the next one got me onto Windows (answering the question, "How could I possible fill up a 43 Megabyte hard drive?") and those got me my foot in the door at one of the best jobs I ever had.
I'm still a little jealous of all of the Atari and Commodore fans out there, that I didn't get to participate. But if I'd had my way I would probably be worse off and still not be able to participate because I don't think anyone but me has ever mentioned the Adam unless I fished for it. Kids are dumb.
The Tandy 1000 line was a great DOS machine of its moment for games, because the 1000 wasn't just a PC clone, it was a better version of the PCjr -- it had better sound and graphics out of the box compared to PCs, with better actual PC software compatibility and without the horrible chiclet keyboard. The 1000 was so successful for a while that games that supported the PCjr's enhancements were marketed as "Tandy-compatible".
Which Tandy DOS computer; there were several? While not bad machines, the 80186 ones suffer from all sorts of more or less annoying incompatibilities because of the differences between the peripheral layout and BIOS compatibility. A number of friends of mine got burned by that.
My dad and I don't have what you might call compatible decision making processes, so there were many times I was disappointed by his decisions growing up. But that machine taught me DOS, the next one got me onto Windows (answering the question, "How could I possible fill up a 43 Megabyte hard drive?") and those got me my foot in the door at one of the best jobs I ever had.
I'm still a little jealous of all of the Atari and Commodore fans out there, that I didn't get to participate. But if I'd had my way I would probably be worse off and still not be able to participate because I don't think anyone but me has ever mentioned the Adam unless I fished for it. Kids are dumb.