<Actually, remember that they DIDN'T MAKE $599 per unit, because the cost
<production was probably at least $250-350. Then they didn't directly sel
<them to end users, but to resellers, for about a $100 max profit... it ad
The stores had a margin of something like 35% in '78, it got better with
time.
Production cost was horrendous at ther start as yeild was less that 30%
working systems due to bad design and test procedures. The -69A boards
were slightly better than junk. The 69D board and revized assembly and
test were still under 80% yeild. But even at that the production cost
was in the $100-160 range for the 4k/L1 basic.
Design weak points in the TRS-80 were data bus noise, poor memory timing,
power and ground noise, no lowercase (all it needed was one ram), common
keys missing of the keyboard and the parts count was too high. I had a
simplifed design at that time that ran TRS80 l1/l2 basic that was
functionally identical and used far fewer packages with better timing.
No doubt all of that was the side effect of not understanding the original
design. It all showed up big time with the EI!
Also total sales for the first year of production were in excess of
250,000! Other than apple it was the most common machine out there
and between the two they out numberd likely all other computers in
existence to that date.
Allison
Received on Tue May 26 1998 - 09:53:54 BST