The Ghosts of Windows 3.1
<i>&gt; Well, the secret of the VIS was this: It was effectively a low-end PC (a 286, to be exact)</i><p>Tandy had this incredible, inexplicable love affair with the 286 processor.<p>IBM sold a ton of PC&#x2F;ATs with 286es in them, but overall the clone market tended to treat the 286 as what it was, a deeply flawed first attempt to solve the problems of the 8086&#x2F;8088. When the 386, which finally fixed those problems in a way that was elegant and usable, came along, most cloners enthusiastically jumped to that chip. But Tandy kept chugging along making 286 machines like the Tandy 1000 TX and TL into the mid-&#x27;90s, by which time they were deeply, obviously obsolete.<p>The only thing I can figure is that they had a sweetheart deal with Intel of some sort on the 286, and therefore couldn&#x27;t bring themselves to let it go even long after everyone else had.