Hi, the article's author here~

I just checked the Tandy 2000 Windows pre-installation - it has the drivers unpacked, which means you can just get the Slow Boot Windows 2.0, and put the drivers from this floppy to it. And the fonts, of course. Definitely do not check this bad pirate website that has it: https://winworldpc.com/product/tandy-2000-ms-windows-pre-Ins...

> "[...] in the early 1980s it was the only x86 machine out there that could do hi-res (640x400) color graphics."

Mindset Mindset II.

Which was also a 186-based PC-incompatible.

Could the Mindset do 640x400 noninterlaced?

Neither Mindset nor Mindset II. Mindset II had the 640 x 400 four-color mode upgrade. Double-buffered but interlaced. Could be genlocked to another Mindset.

The Tandy 2000 could do 640x400 8-color noninterlaced. It was pretty useful as a CAD and DTP workstation, predating even the EGA by a year, which is why it was chosen to develop and test color Windows.

The Mindset machines were (also) advertised as Video Production System, with custom VLSI chips and modules for graphics and video workflows and assorted applications (e. g. Lumena). So a bit of a different market.

I wonder if there's some top-class Japanese x86 machines from the "IBM workalike" era.

Indeed. At the time, Tandy was trying to break into the business market with its computer offerings, and the 2000's software library reflects that, including MultiMate, Basic Four, Lotus 1-2-3 and Symphony with hi-res graphic/charting add-ons, a version of Ashton-Tate's Framework, and the best desktop version of AutoCAD available at the time. The Mindset and Amiga lapped it in terms of video, audio, and in particular NTSC- and composite-compatible output capabilities, but machines that were targeting those workflows were doing something very different from the generic business market (which Windows, at the time, was aimed squarely at).

A composite compatible output addon, called the TV/Game Adapter, was planned but never released for the Tandy 2000; if released it might not have supported genlocking or really much beyond getting 16-color 320x200 or so video onto a TV. Until recently the only graphical game I recall actually being released for the machine was a special version of Flight Simulator; but recently on Facebook I saw a photo of a 2000 running some sort of video poker or other card game. It was unlikely to have been very fast paced and may even have been written in GW-BASIC; I don't know much about it.

PC-9801 could do 640×400 in 8 colors, and is supported by early Windows.