{"id":573,"date":"2024-12-18T14:55:48","date_gmt":"2024-12-18T14:55:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=573"},"modified":"2025-03-05T14:53:45","modified_gmt":"2025-03-05T14:53:45","slug":"former-tandy-ceo-and-pc-innovator-john-roach-dead-at-83","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/?p=573","title":{"rendered":"Former Tandy CEO and PC innovator John Roach dead at 83"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='booster-block booster-read-block'><\/div><p>John Roach \u2014  the former chief of RadioShack parent company Tandy who later became one of the lead proponents of the personal computer \u2014 has died at 83, <ins>TRS-80<\/ins>, a desktop microcomputer that retailed for just under $600, in its stores nationwide. This was at a time when few complete, pre-assembled computers were on the market. The TRS-80 first hit RadioShack stores in 1977, and by 1981 became the <ins>told<\/ins> <em>Creative Computing<\/em> in 1984.<\/p>\n<p>Roach was born on November 22, 1938 in Stamford, Texas. He started his career at Tandy Corporation as a data processing manager in 1967. Once a top-seller of CB radios through its RadioShack stores, the Tandy Corporation was then in a sales slump due to a decline in demand. The TRS-80, which sold exclusively at RadioShack stores, helped revive the company. By the time Roach became chief operating officer of Tandy in 1980, the company had close to 40 percent of the personal computer market.<\/p>\n<p>The very first TRS-80 came equipped with a Zilog 80 processor, 4 KB DRAM, 64-character per line video monitor and Level I BASIC language interpreter. Its keyboard could only type <ins> retired<\/ins> as chief executive of Tandy in 1998.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI was saddened to hear of John\u2019s passing. John\u2019s vision and his ability to get early computers, like the TRS-80, into people\u2019s hands through RadioShack made him one of the true pioneers of this industry,\u201d Bill Gates said in a <ins>statement<\/ins> to the <em>Fort Worth Star-Telegram<\/em>. \u201cHe helped create a market that so many people and companies benefited from as the personal computing industry took shape.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Roach \u2014 the former chief of RadioShack parent company Tandy who later became one of the lead proponents of the personal computer \u2014 has died at 83, TRS-80, a desktop microcomputer that retailed for just under $600, in its stores nationwide. This was at a time when few complete, pre-assembled computers were on the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[65,759,756,64,757,758],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1288,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/1288"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/engadget.vip\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}