John Roach, a marketing visionary who helped make the home computer ubiquitous in the late 1970s by introducing the fully assembled Tandy TRS-80 for $599.95 or less through RadioShack chain stores, died on Sunday in Fort Worth. He died at the age of 83.
Jean Roach confirmed his death. There was no cause given.
Mr. Roach was a college student when he joined the Tandy Corporation, a Texas conglomerate that was founded as a leather goods company and included RadioShack and its thousands of franchised dealers in electronics farrago.
Tandy was prodded to enter the computer market by him. Mr. Roach believed that consumers would like a model that they just needed to plug in.
The original prototype was cobbled together from a black-and-white RCA monitor, a keyboard, and a videocassette recorder.
The Apple 1 had been introduced the year before, and Commodore and other companies were marketing their own home computers, but the TRS-80 became the most popular computer on the market.
Mr. Roach said that Charles blew a little smoke and said, "build a thousand and if we can sell them, we will use them in the store for something."
In September, we were able to ship some machines, but we couldn't assemble them all.
The computer was cheap at just under $600 and it was connected to a separate viewing screen. It was available in all of the company's stores.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen were recruited by Tandy to write exclusive software for personal, home and small-business purposes. The Star-Telegram of Fort Worth became one of the first newspapers in the country to go online in 1982.
A model of the TRS-80 was acquired for the collection of the National Museum of American History.
John Vinson Roach II was born in a small farming community in West Texas. His mother was a nurse. During World War II, his father's meat market went out of business and the family moved to Fort Worth, where he opened a grocery store.
Young John, a math whiz, calculated the change in his father's grocery store without using the cash register. He worked his way through high school unloading boxes.
He earned a master's degree in business administration from Texas Christian University after working for two years at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility in Hawaii.
In an interview with the university in 2007, Mr. Roach said that the idea of a personal computer had not even been conceived.
Tandy had been experiencing a slump after the popularity of two-way citizens band radios faded. Mr. Roach became RadioShack's executive vice president after Mr. Tandy died. In 1980 he was named chief operating officer.
As Tandy's early dominance waned, competitors developed models that were equally inexpensive or had better features. In 1981 the company's share of the domestic home computer market was as high as 40 percent.
RadioShack employed 37,500 workers and had annual sales of $4.3 billion in the 1990s.
He retired as Tandy's chief executive and chairman in 1999.
Tandy changed its name to RadioShack in 2000 and overcame cutthroat competition to continue as an e-commerce site and franchise operation.
In the 1990s, Mr. Roach was chairman of Texas Christian University's board of trustees, helping to double its endowment to more than $1 billion, build a technology center and play a supporting role in Fort Worth's civic and cultural life. The John V. Roach honors college was endowed by his friends in 2007.
J. Luther King Jr., his friend and successor as board chairman, said in an interview that he was able to blend his intelligence with his judgement. Mr. Roach was able to transform the university from a regional university to a national university.
Mr. Roach is survived by his wife, two daughters, six grandchildren, and a great-granddaughter.
Mr. Roach has been comfortable with computers since he was in college. His family said he watched T.C.U. win the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament online before he died.
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