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MC-10 Micro Color Computer
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Home / CoCo Relatives - MC-10 Micro Color Computer
This computer was first made available in 1984. Tandy intended it to compete with the Timex Sinclair 1000, the low-price leader in US home computers at the time.
It had the same cassette port used by other TRS-80 computers (such as the CoCo, the Model I/III/4, and the Model 100) and could use the same computer tape drives they did, including the CCR-81, CCR-82, CCR-83, and others.
Together with the MC-10, Radio Shack introduced a printer intended especially for it: the TP-10, a small and cheap thermal printer using 4⅛" wide paper. However, since the MC-10 had the same 4-pin DIN serial port used by the CoCo, the CoCo could also use this printer, and the MC-10 could use any CoCo-compatible printer... or modem.
Radio Shack offered a 16K RAM expansion plug-in.
Although it was "cute" and cheap, it was not well-suited for children because it lacked joystick ports or a cartridge slot. It was instead aimed at electronics hobbyists and first-time computer buyers who wanted to learn to program. Accordingly, its version of BASIC was powerful and its small keyboard enabled entire commands to be entered with minimal keystrokes.
Although the MC-10 arguably made sense when Tandy began the project, by the time the computer actually came out, the market had changed due to various factors such as video game crash of 1983 and the Commodore-driven drastic decline in the price of mid-range home computers closer to the low-end MC-10's price point. With those pressures and a weak lineup of officially released software at time of launch, the MC-10 sold poorly; Tandy almost immediately gave up on it, releasing no new software or accessories and slashing the price to clear out the existing inventory.
The computer was discontinued in 1985.
Accessories
Tandy/Radio Shack MC10 Disk Drive