Tandy 200

COMMENTS

Tandy decided they needed to do some tweaking on their insanely popular Model 100 laptop.

First, the screen needed some work, i.e. more lines or more characters per line.  Tandy chose more lines, as in 16, up from 8.

Second, the connector for the expansion buss needed reworking.  It was moved from the bottom to the back and given a more robust connector. This same upgrade was also present on the Tandy 102.

Third, the RAM was expanded, sort of...

What the designers did was to create 3 banks of 24K each.  In effect, 3 entirely separate machines in one.  This idea was borrowed from CPM ver 3.0 and the NEC PC-8201 and 8300 computers.

Finally, since the screen was doubled in size, the computer could no longer remain as a "slab top."  The decision was made to put the screen on a hinge and allow it to sit on top of the keyboard "clamshell" style.  While this is normal today, it was revolutionary for 1985.  The T200 is generally considered the first use of this design.