Description

Tandy

Tandy is a former electronic company. Around 1980 it was one of largest suppliers of computers. The company was founded in 1919 by Norton Hinckley and Dave L. Tandy, the company was therefore called Tandy-Hincley. This company started as a tannery. In the 1960s, Charles Tandy (son of Dave L. Tandy) bought Radio Shack. This company was in decline, but had many existing shops and therefore offered a good opportunity to display the Tandy products.

In the early 1970s, the Radio Shack stores expanded to the European continent under the Tandy name. The company began to expand and sell a wider portfolio of electronics. In 1976 a microcomputer was developed, originally as a self-build computer for the large home-brew community, but because people within the company thought that people could not solder sufficiently, a complete computer was built anyway. The TRS-80 was the third but most popular home computer. It was released in 1977. Because Radio Shack had more than 3,000 stores, the computer sold well and was the market leader until 1980. Tandy released computers until the early 1990s, after which it was sold to AST Computers. At that time, the European stores were also slowly closing. In 2001 the name Tandy was discontinued and the stores were all renamed to Radio Shack.

Tandy Scoreboard

The TV Scoreboard (sometimes called RadioShack TV Scoreboard) is a Pong machine from Tandy. It is developed in Hong Kong form 1976 through the early ’80s . It belongs to the first generation of home consoles. Like many of the gaming consoles of the first generation, the Tandy had pre-installed games and did nog make use of cartridges. It features 10 games with a total of 88 game variations. Games and game modes, including difficulty settings and serving settings, could be adjusted with switshes. It ran on either an AC adapter, or six 1.5 V AA batteries. Distribution was handled exclusively by its mother company RadioShack.

The TV Scoreboard consisted of a left and right player, with dials or paddles on the hand held piece, and had multiple (simple) games. It was also possible to connect a revolver and light gun, which could be used for a clay pigeon shooting game. Using additional cosmetic attachments to the light gun, the user could change its appearance to be that of a rifle.

The console belongs to the first generation of gaming consoles and is based on one single chip, the General Instruments AY3-8500 running on 2 MHz.

Games

The following ten games are playable with the system:^[2]

• Tennis
• Football
• Squash
• Practice (Pelota)
• Target
• Motorcycle
• Enduro
• Motocross
• Stunt Cycle
• Drag Race