Tandy/Radio Shack Advert - October 1982
From Practical Computing
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Tandy had announced its "bigger brother" follow-up to the 1977 Model I at the end of 1979, but wasn't initially expecting to ship until April of the following year, whilst as this advert shows the machine was still selling right up until the end of 1982, the year in which it was replaced by the TRS-80 Model 12.
The Model II was designed to "start from the upper limit of the Model I" and it was claimed would run 2.5 times faster than the original.
However, although pitched as a follow-up, the Model II wasn't actually compatible with either the Model I or the Model III as it used port-mapped I/O and a different disk format, closer to IBM's 3740 floppy-disk standard.
It also had a different memory arrangement which was compatible with CP/M and which, like the PBM-1000, allowed almost all of the machine's 64K memory to be used by software.
It was also intended as a professional business-only machine, and not as a hobbyists or home micro, with Ted Russell, the director of Tandy's computer division, suggesting that it would be comparable to IBM's up-coming 5110 (the original IBM PC), HP's H9800 and Wang's WCS15[1].
Date created: 06 March 2026
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Text and otherwise-uncredited photos © nosher.net 2026. Dollar/GBP conversions, where used, assume $1.50 to £1. "Now" prices are calculated dynamically using average RPI per year.
