TRSDOS and other sundries

[Bill Gunshannon]

Is there anyone here who might know if there is someone at Radio Shack
(Corporate!) that might have the power to and be able to be convinced
to release the sources for the old Tandy Computer stuff? I am sure
they held the copyrights on a lot of it and I can't imagine they are
making much money on any of it today. :-)

I would love to have sources to things like TRSDOS for the Model-16.

What some of the other stuff that wasn't actually Tandy's? Is there
anyone from SuperSoft still around?

bill


--
Bill Gunshannon | de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n. Three wolves
bill...@cs.scranton.edu | and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
University of Scranton |
Scranton, Pennsylvania | #include <std.disclaimer.h>

[George Phillips]

On Jan 16, 9:47 am, billg...@cs.uofs.edu (Bill Gunshannon) wrote:
> Is there anyone here who might know if there is someone at Radio Shack
> (Corporate!) that might have the power to and be able to be convinced
> to release the sources for the old Tandy Computer stuff?  I am sure
> they held the copyrights on a lot of it and I can't imagine they are
> making much money on any of it today.   :-)

There is LS-DOS 6.3.1 source code available which is pretty close to
TRS-DOS 6.2:

http://nemesis.lonestar.org/computers/tandy/software/os/logical_systems/lsdos6/src631/

ROM disassemblies abound. Depending on your aims you may have just as
much luck
disassembling the software.

[Michael Black]

On Mon, 16 Jan 2012, Bill Gunshannon wrote:

> Is there anyone here who might know if there is someone at Radio Shack
> (Corporate!) that might have the power to and be able to be convinced
> to release the sources for the old Tandy Computer stuff? I am sure
> they held the copyrights on a lot of it and I can't imagine they are
> making much money on any of it today. :-)
>
> I would love to have sources to things like TRSDOS for the Model-16.
>

I'm pretty sure this was discussed here years ago, before everyone left.

I seem to recall someone who did work for Tandy mentioning that Tandy
wouldn't own the stuff anymore, since they sold off the computer stuff to
whatever company it did, I can't remember the name. I don't even think
that company still exists, I may not be able to remember the name but I
think it was one that later went out of business or was sold to some other
company.

It may not have been Tandy's software to begin with. Things like
Microsoft BASIC in ROM may or may not have been bought by Tandy, depending
on how they negotiated. In the early days, it was common for companies to
buy limited rights from Microsoft, but on the other hand, when the CoCo
III came out, Microware had to do weird things to Microsoft BASIC in order
to adapt it to it the CoCo III. (If I remember right, the Microsoft code
was kept in ROM intact, the Microware code patched it on startup, or
something like that.).

Tandy also either bought some rights to things like games, or just acted
like a middleman, so what they could release (if they still held the
rights) might be limited.

Michael

[Rainer Fredrich]

Some of the questions might be answered here:
'Why Did Tandy stop making computers'
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.sys.tandy/browse_thread/thread/5cbdc1b62420c3df/7d6f5296bd729340