I worked back at Radio Shack from 96-99 (or thereabouts), back when they had a back end XENIX system (with dial up modem and tape backup), and they had three POS systems up in the front; all using the VM5 (TTL - 9 pin monochrome green) monitor, and apparently, a diskless Tandy 1000 TL type system.
The Tandy 1000 system they used looked exactly like the chassis from a Tandy 1000 TL - there was no floppy drive; there was a blank where the drive would be. It booted up into some kind of serial mode that hooked into the back office Xenix system. It posted and everything, and immediately went into serial mode as a dumb terminal.
Just for kicks and grins, we did the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-V on boot (which switched between the TTL monochrome monitor mode for the VM5 and the color TGA graphics monitors), and yeah, we got the sync issue until we switched it back. So, it had somewhat of the vestiges of the Tandy 1000 TL series.
I'm gathering it had a boot EEPROM in it that, instead of Deskmate, had a terminal emulator for their POS system. Try as we did, we were never able to CTRL-C the thing on boot to get to any type of DOS.
Does anyone know about this particular Tandy 1000 variant, how it came it about, what it was designated, etc?
BTW, the dot matrix printer we printed the RSU, Corporate charge, and other one-off orders on that printed carbon copies looked almost like an Okidata, but it was a Tandy.
I remember when they replaced the Tandy 1000 POS variant with PCs in late 1998, and they were IBM PCs that simply booted into DOS and into an terminal emulator; the systems acted the exact same way until they fully replaced the back end system with a (SCO?) system and deployed the ACR system. And boy, that was interesting. It was like a hybrid of a GUI and some of the old screens from the XENIX system.
Anyway... brain dump. I'm being nostalgic.
Edit: This was it! (But no floppy drive) Looked exactly like a 1000TL. https://books.google.com/books?id=t...=onepage&q=tandy point of sale system&f=false
Edit 2: Here's one of the guys responsible for their POS system. Some good history in his writeup. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickypike
The Tandy 1000 system they used looked exactly like the chassis from a Tandy 1000 TL - there was no floppy drive; there was a blank where the drive would be. It booted up into some kind of serial mode that hooked into the back office Xenix system. It posted and everything, and immediately went into serial mode as a dumb terminal.
Just for kicks and grins, we did the CTRL-ALT-SHIFT-V on boot (which switched between the TTL monochrome monitor mode for the VM5 and the color TGA graphics monitors), and yeah, we got the sync issue until we switched it back. So, it had somewhat of the vestiges of the Tandy 1000 TL series.
I'm gathering it had a boot EEPROM in it that, instead of Deskmate, had a terminal emulator for their POS system. Try as we did, we were never able to CTRL-C the thing on boot to get to any type of DOS.
Does anyone know about this particular Tandy 1000 variant, how it came it about, what it was designated, etc?
BTW, the dot matrix printer we printed the RSU, Corporate charge, and other one-off orders on that printed carbon copies looked almost like an Okidata, but it was a Tandy.
I remember when they replaced the Tandy 1000 POS variant with PCs in late 1998, and they were IBM PCs that simply booted into DOS and into an terminal emulator; the systems acted the exact same way until they fully replaced the back end system with a (SCO?) system and deployed the ACR system. And boy, that was interesting. It was like a hybrid of a GUI and some of the old screens from the XENIX system.
Anyway... brain dump. I'm being nostalgic.
Edit: This was it! (But no floppy drive) Looked exactly like a 1000TL. https://books.google.com/books?id=t...=onepage&q=tandy point of sale system&f=false
Edit 2: Here's one of the guys responsible for their POS system. Some good history in his writeup. https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickypike
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