Wednesday, March 28, 2018

Is the MC-10 a doorstop?

One of the most common comments about the MC-10 within the Radio Shack computer community is that it's a doorstop. 

Out of the box, the keyboard alone makes it impossible to use as a word processor or for business, and it makes it difficult to program the machine.  The limited RAM and lack of hi-res graphics also limit the usefulness of the machine.  Unless you were willing to spend the time and money to hack in a replacement keyboard, more RAM, etc... as a general purpose computer it wasn't very useful.  So it's pretty much a doorstop for people that have those needs.
But if you wanted to introduce a child to programming at minimal cost (before you knew if they were interested or if it would just go into a closet) it would do that well.

But it didn't have to be a doorstop.  Once you put on a better keyboard and expand the RAM, it's more capable than a Model I without an expansion interface.  The cassette interface is faster, it has a built in serial port, it has color, sound, could have hi-res graphics, it only lacks a few BASIC keywords vs Level II BASIC, and it's faster.
Even with standard Microcolor BASIC, Ahl's benchmark yields the same result on the MC-10 as the Model III, and it's faster than the Oric, Spectrum, TI-99, Atari, Model 100, and the ZX-80 derivatives among others. With the new ROM it leaps past 32 more machines Creative Computing benchmarked, and uses greater math accuracy than most of them. 

I liken it to the V8 Vega a friend of mine had as a teenager.  Yeah, it was a Vega, but think how fun it was to see people's faces when it stomped on their sports car in a drag race.  I believe the term is sleeper.

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