Sam Ismail wrote:
>
> On Tue, 8 Sep 1998, Uncle Roger wrote:
>
> > Similarly, does anyone remember a truck-like thing (big trax?) that you
> > could program sorta like LOGO? I remember the commercials showed it
> > bringing a soda (or beer?) to one lucky owner. Unfortunately, my family's
> > gift budgets never would have covered such a nifty gadget... 8^(
>
> My oldest brother got one of those for Christmas in maybe '78. Those were
> cool! I hope I run into one of them one of these days. Weren't they made
> by Radio Shack?
No, though I think Radio Shack did resell them for a couple of years,
likely relabeled. As was (and is) common with Radio Shack, though
this last few years there's less relabeling. Back in the 80-86
period when I was with the company, the normal percentage was 40% of
the products in a product line were manufactured by Tandy Corp. In
computers, the ratio was higher, though almost all printers were
relabels. Aside from the Pocket Computers, the first Radio Shack
computer manufactured outside and relabeled was the 1200HD, built by
Tandon, an XT clone with no redeeming value other than filling the gap
until the 1000 series was functional -- the 1200HD had an incredible
rate of motherboard replacement under warranty, charged against the
managers of the selling stores -- I've heard rumors the buyer _was_
fired for it eventually. To the best of my knowledge that pattern
held to the early '90s, though with increased influx of peripherals
by other companies (many components of course were always from
outside), until the hardware market became so unprofitable that
Tandy sold the computer manufacturing capability to AST.
(It's a pain to go into a Radio Shack store and find no computers on
displays except Aptivas or whatever the brand of the month might be.
It's worse to find nobody who knows that Radio Shack was once a
serious and innovative computer manufacturer -- I've had better luck
there at Computer City, where a lot of long-time Radio Shack folks
who's been around migrated when Tandy opened that chain -- who knows
where they'll go with the sale of Computer City to the incompetents
at CompUSA?)
I am no longer a stockholder in Tandy Corporation.
--
Ward Griffiths <mailto:gram_at_cnct.com> <http://www.cnct.com/home/gram/>
When I was crossing the border into Canada, they asked me if I had any
firearms with me. I said "Well, what do you need?" -- Steven Wright
Received on Wed Sep 09 1998 - 02:20:50 BST