Tandy 200 Portable Computer

This excellent example of the Tandy 200 Portable Computer was donated by Anne Pilvines of Sharon MA. Serial Number 502006373 was manufactured in 1985.

The Tandy 2000 is a personal computer introduced by Radio Shack in September 1983 based on the 8 MHz Intel 80186 microprocessor running MS-DOS. By comparison, the IBM PC XT (introduced in March 1983) used the older 4.77 MHz 8088 processor, and the IBM PC AT (introduced in 1984) would later use the newer 6 MHz Intel 80286. Due to the 16-bit-wide data bus and more efficient instruction decoding of the 80186, the Tandy 2000 ran significantly faster than other PC compatibles, and slightly faster than the PC AT. (Later IBM upgraded the 80286 in new PC AT models to 8 MHz, though with wait states.) The Tandy 2000 was the company's first computer built around an Intel x86 series microprocessor; previous models used the Z80 and 68000 CPUs.

While touted as being compatible with the IBM XT, the Tandy 2000 was different enough that most existing PC software that was not purely text-oriented failed to work properly.