Tandy Corp duly unveiled its family of Multimedia Personal Computer systems on Monday, coming out with models based on the 80286, 80386SX and 80386, plus upgrade kits for existing machines with internal and external CD-ROM drives. They are going to US software developers and publishers and will turn up in some Radio Shack stores over the next few months and they will also go through its GRiD Systems Corp in the US and Victor Technologies in Europe. The systems come with the new Tandy CDR-1000 internal CD-ROM drive, a multimedia expansion adaptor with audio circuitry and CDR-1000 interface, a 3.5 1.44Mb floppy drive, 512Kb video memory for VGA Plus graphics – 640 by 480 resolution with up to 256 colours – and a PS/2-style two-button mouse. Color VGA monitors are extra – at $400 to $630. Three of the new Multimedia PCs include 2Mb internal memory and 40Mb IDE SmartDrive: the Tandy M2500 XL/2 uses a 16MHz 80286 and costs $2,600. The M4020SX uses a 20MHz 80386SX and is $3,300; and the M4016 DX has a 16MHz 80386 and is $4,000. The other two models have 4Mb internal memory and 105Mb IDE SmartDrive: the M4025 LX is a 25MHz 80386-based system at $5,000 and the M4033 LX is a 33MHz 80386 system, $5,500. MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows 3.0 with Multimedia Extensions 1.0 are pre-installed and configured. The upgrade kits include CD-ROM drive, the multimedia expansion adaptor with audio circuitry and CD-ROM drive interface, Multimedia Windows, a special multimedia CD-ROM and cables. The version with the internal CD-ROM is $800 and the one with the external drive is $900. The audio circuitry includes 11-voice per channel stereo FM music synthesiser, two 16-bit digital-to-analogue converters with programmable sampling rates up to 62.5KHz, 8-bit stereo or 8/16-bit mono analogue-to-digital converter with maximum sampling rate of 62.5KHz, and built-in power stereo amplifier – a mousey 1.5W per channel with manual volume control. It also has a MIDI port with built-in MIDI In and Out.
