Did anyone ever buy the Tandy 6000?

[bluejay]

I was reading through the 1985 Tandy Catalog(again) and for the 5th time, I noticed how ridiculously expensive the Tandy 6000 was(the Model 12 was as well, but not as much). It seems to have sold for $4499 for a 512k RAM, dual floppy model, and a hard drive model was $5599. An extra 15 Meg hard drive would have been $1995, and a single external drive would have set you back $1299. So if you wanted the ultimate setup of 4 floppy drives, 2 hard drives, and the Tandy 6000 with 1 megabyte of RAM, It would have cost you well over $10000, in 1985 money, but that's not considering a printer(which must have been necessary) and any software! That's over $25000 adjusted for inflation!

That begs the question; did anyone ever buy this computer? I mean, the IBM PC/AT was out by 1985. There was also the Tandy 1000. Why would anyone ever buy the Tandy 6000?

[jhd]

 

If memory serves, this was considered a multi-user system. Like the Model 12 and 16, it could support several concurrent sessions with dumb terminals. The PC/AT and (especially) the Model 1000 were aimed at completely different market segments. (Arguably, the AT and 1000 were not even directly competing with each other, given the widely divergent specifications.)

 

It would be interesting to see how a fully-loaded Model 6000 compared with, say, a DEC MicroVax or similar minicomputer in terms of both price and capability. That is the market that Tandy was aiming for. It was not intended for the desktop. 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by jhd

[bluejay]

28 minutes ago, jhd said:

 

If memory serves, this was considered a multi-user system. Like the Model 12 and 16, it could support several concurrent sessions with dumb terminals. The PC/AT and (especially) the Model 1000 were aimed at completely different market segments. (Arguably, the AT and 1000 were not even directly competing with each other, given the widely divergent specifications.)

 

It would be interesting to see how a fully-loaded Model 6000 compared with, say, a DEC MicroVax or similar minicomputer in terms of both price and capability. That is the market that Tandy was aiming for. It was not intended for the desktop. 

 

Ah, that makes sense. So it was a desktop sized minicomputer which was much more capable than PC/Compatibles. How popular were multiuser minicomputers in '85? What were they used for?

[jhd]

I do not know about 1985, but when I started University in 1988, the Faculty of Business maintained several minicomputers that served only that unit. The uses included file server for a large network of PCs, internal e-mail for students, internal e-mail for faculty, and running numerical/statistical analysis software. 

 

The PCs that we had access to were all 8086/8088-based -- adequate for running a word processor or even Lotus 1-2-3, but they were not suitable for heavy-duty number crunching. Some of the faculty were specialists in financial and economic modeling, so they needed serious computing horsepower to do their work.  

 

[KG7PFS]

How many terminals did the 6000 support? While I agree that it was overpriced compared to any other single computer with the same features, to get an idea of the true cost, add the total cost of the number of terminals supported, then divide the total cost by the number of users. I don't have my catalogs handy, but I'm guessing it's less than the cost of the same number of Model 4's or 1000's.

 

I know, it still seems like a rip-off if you don't max it out.

 

[jhd]

17 hours ago, KG7PFS said:

How many terminals did the 6000 support?

 

It looks like there was support for two serial terminals, and an optional board to support three more -- for six concurrent users (including the console): 

http://q7.neurotica.com/Oldtech/Tandy/Model6000HD.html

 

This is a wonderful example of how a fully-loaded system could be used. 

 

Quote

I don't have my catalogs handy, but I'm guessing it's less than the cost of the same number of Model 4's or 1000's.

 

Remember, too, that the Model 6000 allowed users to share a common hard drive (e.g. for access to a shared database) -- something not as easily achievable with the Model 4 or 1000, especially in the early-1980s. So, price is not the only consideration if the cheaper hardware just does not have the features or capabilities that are required for the application.

 

A Honda Civic is way cheaper than a Range Rover, but I am not going to be very successful off-roading in the Civic! 

Edited October 2, 2020 by jhd

[citigreg]

I actually had three of these systems. For the time, these were the bomb. Had several terminals with printers attached to each one and two ran auto repair shops, the third ran a restaurant/club with six terminals attached with cash drawers. These worked great, only problem was the hard drives didn't last long. The setup with the Line Printer (LPM2150) was great also, all three had one  of these printers.  I miss this system running Xenix, wish it were still around.