Tandy MC5000 (was: Re: Classic != IBM AT)

From: Roger Merchberger <zmerch_at_30below.com>
Date: Wed Nov 4 17:04:41 1998

Once upon a midnight dreary, Ward Donald Griffiths III had spoken clearly:
>Roger Merchberger wrote:

>> Was this the first MCA "clone"?
>>
>> I'm pretty sure the MC5000 came out in '88, so it's ontrack topically.

>Don't recall the precise release date, but they were definitely out
>when I attended the Tangent (Tandy Professional Users Group)
>conference in Fort Worth in 1987.

I checked my '87 computer catalog (it's here at work) and it wasn't in
there. My '88 is at home, so it's prolly in there.

>Not exactly a "clone". The MCA architecture was fully licensed and
>paid for by Tandy to IBM.

Yes... and ISTR that IBM wanted a small fortune for that license as well.
Prolly one of the reasons it never caught on; very little profit to be made
as people weren't willing to shell out the big bucks for a system, and all
new cards as well (MCA stuff commanded quite a premium back then).

> The 5000MC actually had a better MCA
>implementation than the IBM systems at that point, as Tandy didn't
>cripple the bus-mastering feature the way IBM did.

That I didn't know, as my main (work) machine was a CoCo3 until I needed
Autocad capability and my (then) employer loaned me a 486DX2/66 (which ran
the CoCo2 emulator pretty well...)

The CoCo3 is still set up next to "Goon" which is a Pentium II 350 (dual
capable) w/256Meg ram... and no, I've been too busy to try the CoCo 3
emulator on it... but in a couple weeks I should have time. I wrote a
(very, very) basic benchmark proggie in assembly... my Cyrix 150+ was
roughly an 8Mhz CoCo3. I'll let you know what my Pentium II runs like... if
my proggie doesn't need to be recoded.

> Naturally the
>machine died like a pig, leaving less of a ripple as it sank than
>the Tandy 2000 or even the Tandy 600 portable had.

Too bad... the machine had potential. I remember seeing "MC5000" thinking
"yea, that's prolly the price..." Lo and behold: $4999! ( I think that was
it's initial roll-out price)

Anywho, enough rambling, & back to work.

Roger "Merch" Merchberger
Received on Wed Nov 04 1998 - 17:04:41 GMT