Talk:Tandy 1000/Archives/2015

Disappearing DOS

While I can't find any sources to back it up, I had a Tandy 1000RL with DOS 3.3 built into ROM. When I installed DOS 5 on the hard drive, I could no longer access the ROM drive. This made Deskmate disappear. I later upgraded to DOS 6.22, but Deskmate never came back. Can anybody else back this up?

This was normal. The ROM drive was only available when running Tandy specific versions of DOS. You could get Deskmate back by using a boxed version, or some stores would offer to order a disk with the required files for you. Shawn510 (talk) 15:03, 22 December 2009 (UTC)

--Pat Hawks (talk) 08:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

I had a Tandy 1000 (25-1000), and I don't recall it having DOS in any form in ROM. I booted from a floppy, which contained a proprietary version of MS-DOS 2.11 that would only work on a Tandy 1000. I could also boot with a floppy using MS-DOS or PC-DOS, and eventually was using PC-DOS 5.0 when I gave away the computer.

Not all of the Tandy 1000 models had DOS in ROM. The original Tandy 1000 was one of the models that did not. Special Tandy versions of DOS on disk were supplied with the non-ROM models, though generic MS-DOS up to and including 6.22 would boot just fine as well.

My first computer was a 1000 HX. This machine did have DOS 2.11 in ROM. When I replaced the machine in 1993 I was using DOS 5.0. I'm not sure why 4.x didn't function with the HX. I'm not sure if it was just the HX, or if it was other Tandy machines as well. While the machine gave five years of good service, the fact that there was no provision for a hard drive and the fact that it used non standard cards were the biggest drawbacks.

JesseG 02:44, Nov 26, 2004 (UTC)

my tandy 1000RL had ms dos 3.3 on rom. deskmate was a disk load program.

HOWEVER: "Tandy 1000 RL, RL/HD, RLX, RSX

The Tandy 1000 RL/RLX/RSX series were slim-line desktop home computers. The RL and RL/HD featured a 9.56 MHz 8086 processor, 512 KB of RAM (expandable to 768 KB to provide 128 KB for video), smaller keyboard and mouse ports (which were similar to the PS/2's ports but not directly compatible), a bidirectional parallel port instead of the edge-connector ports, and the SL's enhanced graphics and sound. The RL/HD also included a built-in XT IDE hard drive."

my tandy 1000RL had a 8088 processor, not a 8086. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scoobertjoo (talk • contribs) 01:07, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Models

The model list is quite incomplete. They made, at the very least, the Tandy 1000, 1000EX, 1000HX, 1000SL, 1000TL, 1000SL/2, 1000TL/2. I seem to remember other models in and around those as well, though. I slightly modified the article page but someone might want to clean this up. --Yamla 21:25, 2004 Nov 26 (UTC)

Minix on Tandy

• My first computer was a Tandy 1000RL, which a few years ago I managed to get Minix and a stripped-down version of the Boa web server running on. I even had it hooked up to the Internet serving pages, but didn't leave it up because I'm on dialup here at home (I live in the boonies). However, I acquired it in 1996 at age 11, so I don't know too much about the history or historical context of the RL.Kurt Weber 02:12, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Image

My mom had some old photo albums out, and I found a picture of my old 1000 HX system in one of the albums. I uploaded it and placed it in this article. Enjoy!
JesseG 04:23, Jun 13, 2005 (UTC)

• That image is great! The memories! Although this leads me onto a slight nitpicking. The article states that all 1000's were colour, though I'm certain I'm looking at the same machine that I remember, given the description in the article and the picture provided, that the 1000hx had a black and white display. Unless there was more than one Tandy machine that looked like the one in the picture. Can anyone confirm? BigDXLT (talk) 06:39, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Upgrading

I had a 1000HX when I was in school. After buying a 1200 Buad modem from Radio Shack for $80, I used a program that formatted a 720k floppy to 800k, and ran a BBS on it for a few months before moving to a real IBM XT. I found an adapter card that allowed me to plug the modem into a standard IBM slot. After some testing, I was able to reverse the adapter and install standard 8 bit cards into the HX. I eventually added a hard drive with an MFM controller, and then lost interest. I can't remember if I ever tried to install an NEC V20 or not. Does anyone know if the processor was soldered onto the motherboard? (Larry S. Stotler)

history

could s.o. please add the year(s) during which this model was produced? thanks in advance! — MFH: Talk 20:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Here is a list of models:

    Model       Processor/Speed Standard Memory Catalog Number  Date Produced
--------------  --------------- --------------- --------------  -------------
1000             4.77MHz 8088      128k         25-1000             1985
1000A            4.77MHz 8088      128k         25-1000A            1986?
1000HD           4.77MHz 8088      256k         25-1001             1986?
1000EX           7.16MHz 8088      256k         25-1050             1987
1000SX           7.16MHz 8088      384k         25-1051             1987
1000HX           7.16MHz 8088      256k         25-1053             1988
1000TX           8MHz 80286        640k         25-1600             1988
1000SL           8MHz 8086         384k         25-1401             1989
1000TL           8MHz 80286        640k         25-1601             1989
1000SL/2         8MHz 8086         512k         25-1402             1990
1000TL/2         8MHz 80286        640k         25-1602             1990
1000TL/3         10MHz 80286       640k         25-1603             1991
1000RL(-HD)      9.44MHz 8086      512k/640k    25-1450/1451        1991
1000RLX(-HD)     10MHz 80286       512k/1M      25-1452/1453        1992
1000RLX(-HD)-B   10MHz 80286       512k/1M      25-1452B/1453B      1992?
1000RSX(-HD)     25MHz 80386       1M           25-1454/1455        1992

                                2 #'s: wo/w HD

Does anyone know whether and where a similar table exists for Tandy Models 100, 102 & 200? Thanks,
John Harvey, Wizened Web Wizard Wannabe, ^{Talk to me!} 00:03, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

Emulators

Do any Tandy emulators exist? I have some old games I would like to play on my current PC. Bastie 04:03, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Aha, just spotted the Tand-em link. Bastie 04:07, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

DOSbox has Tandy emulation mode. 2fort5r (talk) 09:48, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Tandy 1000 AX

Perhaps some mention of the Tandy 1000 AX should be added to the article. I can't find any good citations for it, though. I remember it was very similar to the 1000 SX. It was sold only at Walmart for a short time. [1] says that in 1988, Walmart was going to test market the 1000 SX in 50 stores. Perhaps it was rebranded as the 1000 AX. Anyone have more information? Madlobster (talk) 22:33, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Video and Audio

While the Tandy 1000 line supported the same "enhanced CGA" video modes as the PCjr, the Tandy did things just a little differently. To run T-1000 software on a PCjr there's a chip which has to be added, one trace cut and a few wires soldered in. The modification doesn't affect running PCjr software. For Tandy 1000 programs that require the Tandy audio, that's another modification to the PCjr. Since I never did the Tandy audio mod to my PCjr, I know no details about it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bizzybody (talk • contribs) 07:57, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

Hard disk "card" speed note ... is it necessary to say "only" 40kb/s?

I think the same person may have made this note as also said that the VGA card "only" had 256kb and was "limited" to 640x480x16 resolution... whereas it's technically true, it's perhaps needlessly critical and a little unkind. If you put it in the context of the time, it wasn't unusual. I'm pretty sure that a typical mid-late 80s Tandy computer user, if they were (as seems to be the case) using hardware roughly comparable to the Atari STs and OCS Amigas of myself and my friends, would have been MORE than happy to upgrade to VGA (256 colours from 262144 for games with no hardware trickery? Full TV standard but non interlaced hi-rez... with decent colour capability and speed? Crikey!) and a 40kb/s hard disk (hugely reliable? loads of storage on one device? far quicker than a floppy could ever hope to be? yes please!)...

Why not make a note about how they "only" held 10 or 20mb whilst you're at it?

Let's compare against the rest of the machine's abilities... note first of all that it probably only even applies for the earlier models (pre-RL, or up to 1991, as far as I can tell from the article proper), as once the XT-IDE ones came along, fitting a computer with a hardcard would have been a bit crazy, even wasteful, considering that there was a socket - most likely with reserved IRQ and DMA - just sitting there waiting for a cable, and a space left ready in the case structure, with a good quality built-in controller... no need to take up an expansion slot and put all that weight on the motherboard with a heavy, bulky drive and a questionable quality controller...

So we're in the realm of 512~640kb RAM as a maximum, and 360kb 5.25" floppy drives, with 640x200x16 as your top screen rez.

Ergo your biggest practical hard-disk installable program is under 400kb (to leave space for video, operating system, data files), the largest typical data file you might use (a full screen of max rez graphics) is about 64kb, and the only other form of storage available might - on a good day - manage to stream about 8-9kb/s continuous up to the point where you'd have to swap disks, with a typical access speed somewhere north of 100ms (compared to a few tens of ms or less for a hard disk)... oh yeah, and even the smallest HDD holds the equivalent of 28 regular floppies.

Yer enormous, RAM-busting program would take a maximum of 10 seconds ("as little as" 40kb/s, remember) to load off the hard disk, which I'm pretty sure is quicker than how long it takes to get a typical Office Suite program up and running on my (non-SSD) 2011-vintage workstation. A big-ish data file would need about a second and a half to load or save, or approximately how long it takes to insert and lock a floppy then have it mount and sync if you're pretty quick about it. DOS would start up almost instantaneously (it's none too sluggish off a floppy anyhow, if you have a fairly modest setup). In comparison the floppy drive would not only need something closer to a minute to load that big program, but the process would be punctuated by either a disk swap, or some lengthy "decrunching" of a compressed file. Your medium-resolution, heavily dithered masterpiece would take a good eight seconds to save and, later, to reload when you wanted to show it off. Loading two to show in a slideshow would take longer with the floppy than the "slow" hard disk needed to load the big program AND both images. After all, it's approximately 4.5 to 5.0x slower... (even a 1.4mb only manages about 15kb/s)

Plus, if your intent was to fill the hard disk up with nonsense data spewed out of, say, an experimental virus program, you'd hit the limits of a 10mb drive's storage in a little over four minutes, and a 20mb in eight to nine. This is equivalent to sustaining about 400mb/s with a modern 1 or 2Tb drive... (and whilst 4Gb programs with 640mb data files aren't super common yet, they still exist, and could be considered the equivalent of the big loads from the Tandy days; I've heard of people making photoshop PSDs that reach into the 100s of megs, and it's not like PS itself is a lightweight app when you come to install it). Really, it's the hardcards that make our spinning platter drives seem a little sluggish.

Heck, even memory was typically only reaching single-figure megabytes/sec. A backing store that could manage a few percent of that speed wasn't so terrible. 193.63.174.211 (talk) 18:07, 22 November 2012 (UTC)