A breakdown of a still working Tandy 1000 RSX covering hardware components, add-on sound, software and the difficulties with bringing back a 30 year old computer.
I learned so much from my Tandy 1000 RSX. Funny thing though. I upgraded my ram, but I didn’t have sim slots, but regular chips to insert and I believe you got me the 12 MB. This was in the early 90s mind you, so I might be mistaken. All I know is I needed it to get 256 color
Sorry for this late reply. I remember installing individual RAM banks back in the day too but I feel like that became rare after the 80286. My first 386, which was an AMD 386-40 was either SIMM or SIPP, can't recall which. SIPPS where the worst!
I think you got the SX/DX variants mixed up between the 486 and the 386. The math co-processor wasn't built into the machine until you got to the 486DX. The 486SX left it out. For previous machines you could get 8087, 80287 and 80387 co-pro's. The difference between the 386SX and the 386DX was that the DX was fully 32-bits while the SX had a 24-bits address bus and a 16-bits data bus. What I think would be cool, if there was Tandy sound on-board (I'm not sure) that could be passed internally to that soundcard (perhaps via the cd-analog in) so the soundcard would output all stuff through the same ports. While I like the design of the RSX, it is quite a bit long in the tooth by the time it got introduced. I think it would be nice for some old Sierra classics, perhaps some Turbo Pascal and Windows 3.1 but not much more.
Ya know, you're right! Been a long time since i played with this tech. Fuzzy memory and all. Playing some space quest or kings quest on this thing would be pretty cool too but as I recall they run WAY too fast on these CPUs.. even on a 286 I remember space quest zipping from screen to screen uncontrollably. I haven't written anything in Turbo Pascal in AGES but I'd sure like to try something simple as a follow up. Until I get this HDD online or one that works with it (my PATA drives seem to prevent the system from even posting for some reason) most of that stuff will have to wait... well, the sierra games probably run just fine from floppy... I also managed to find a 16Bit ISA Ethernet card just today that I'd love to put in this thing... but that'll wait on the HDD as well. Thank you for the correction and than you for your support.
@@techwreck3331 If you have the CD (or later distributed) versions of Sierra games like Kings Quest or Space Quest, they were recoded to time off the system clock rather than the bus speed of the CPU to prevent them from running too fast. So an option could be using those version and putting them on this system.
Tandy *branded* computers, made by AST, continued for another couple of years until Tandy sold their computer holdings to their former partner (AST). I'm in the midst of restoring an MMPC Model 20, one of the last Tandy-branded machines ever. These were run-of-the mill PCs, which is good and bad. They lack Tandy sound and Tandy graphics (which were outdated by the 486 era), but they have industry standard floppy drives, HDDs, and CD drives. This makes them far easier to maintain today. My interest in them purely stems from personal nostalgia, though. The 1000 line is certainly more historically relevant.
My first computer was a Tandy 1000 EX which I bought with my own money (many saved allowances) around the ripe age of 13 or so... So the 1000 has always been a spat of good memories for me when I look back. I remember the old AST brand but I think the only one I ever got to use was in my school library and I drooled over it heavily... As I recall a 486 with a VGA monitor... It was soon replaced with an Everex but I don't recall why. If you [post any video of your MMPC Model 20, I'd love to see it. Thanks for your comment.
Interestingly The Tandy 1000 RLX was modified (no disk drives at all) to be the Legacy RadioShack POS cash lane system. There was no fan in them and they had a special BOOT rom to connect to the ARCNET terminal board in the 4000 Back room server. Smaller stores only had (1) 4 port ARCNET board, larger stores had (2) or more of them in the 4000 server running Zenix. The largest server I saw had 3 of the ARCNET 4 port boards giving availability of combination 10 total POS cash lanes mixed with up to 2 DMP 300 Printers connected to a special Serial to Parallel adapter located at the printer. The newer DMP 302 used a different Serial to Parallel adapter.
I had this computer back in 94....remember installing Sierra's Quest For Glory 3 and Jetpack, Wolfenstein 3D....also had a SoundBlaster Soundcard and a MIDI sequencing program for composing on musical staves.. Doom hated this PC haha....
First comment on the first video of this channel!
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I learned so much from my Tandy 1000 RSX. Funny thing though. I upgraded my ram, but I didn’t have sim slots, but regular chips to insert and I believe you got me the 12 MB. This was in the early 90s mind you, so I might be mistaken. All I know is I needed it to get 256 color
Sorry for this late reply. I remember installing individual RAM banks back in the day too but I feel like that became rare after the 80286. My first 386, which was an AMD 386-40 was either SIMM or SIPP, can't recall which. SIPPS where the worst!
I think you got the SX/DX variants mixed up between the 486 and the 386.
The math co-processor wasn't built into the machine until you got to the 486DX. The 486SX left it out.
For previous machines you could get 8087, 80287 and 80387 co-pro's. The difference between the 386SX and the 386DX was that the DX was fully 32-bits while the SX had a 24-bits address bus and a 16-bits data bus.
What I think would be cool, if there was Tandy sound on-board (I'm not sure) that could be passed internally to that soundcard (perhaps via the cd-analog in) so the soundcard would output all stuff through the same ports. While I like the design of the RSX, it is quite a bit long in the tooth by the time it got introduced. I think it would be nice for some old Sierra classics, perhaps some Turbo Pascal and Windows 3.1 but not much more.
Ya know, you're right! Been a long time since i played with this tech. Fuzzy memory and all. Playing some space quest or kings quest on this thing would be pretty cool too but as I recall they run WAY too fast on these CPUs.. even on a 286 I remember space quest zipping from screen to screen uncontrollably. I haven't written anything in Turbo Pascal in AGES but I'd sure like to try something simple as a follow up. Until I get this HDD online or one that works with it (my PATA drives seem to prevent the system from even posting for some reason) most of that stuff will have to wait... well, the sierra games probably run just fine from floppy... I also managed to find a 16Bit ISA Ethernet card just today that I'd love to put in this thing... but that'll wait on the HDD as well. Thank you for the correction and than you for your support.
@@techwreck3331 If you have the CD (or later distributed) versions of Sierra games like Kings Quest or Space Quest, they were recoded to time off the system clock rather than the bus speed of the CPU to prevent them from running too fast. So an option could be using those version and putting them on this system.
Acumos was precursor (or rather taken over) by Cirrus Logic in around 1991 - they kept producing the AVGA 2 and 3 chips for a short time.
Tandy *branded* computers, made by AST, continued for another couple of years until Tandy sold their computer holdings to their former partner (AST). I'm in the midst of restoring an MMPC Model 20, one of the last Tandy-branded machines ever. These were run-of-the mill PCs, which is good and bad. They lack Tandy sound and Tandy graphics (which were outdated by the 486 era), but they have industry standard floppy drives, HDDs, and CD drives. This makes them far easier to maintain today. My interest in them purely stems from personal nostalgia, though. The 1000 line is certainly more historically relevant.
My first computer was a Tandy 1000 EX which I bought with my own money (many saved allowances) around the ripe age of 13 or so... So the 1000 has always been a spat of good memories for me when I look back. I remember the old AST brand but I think the only one I ever got to use was in my school library and I drooled over it heavily... As I recall a 486 with a VGA monitor... It was soon replaced with an Everex but I don't recall why. If you [post any video of your MMPC Model 20, I'd love to see it. Thanks for your comment.
Interestingly The Tandy 1000 RLX was modified (no disk drives at all) to be the Legacy RadioShack POS cash lane system. There was no fan in them and they had a special BOOT rom to connect to the ARCNET terminal board in the 4000 Back room server. Smaller stores only had (1) 4 port ARCNET board, larger stores had (2) or more of them in the 4000 server running Zenix. The largest server I saw had 3 of the ARCNET 4 port boards giving availability of combination 10 total POS cash lanes mixed with up to 2 DMP 300 Printers connected to a special Serial to Parallel adapter located at the printer. The newer DMP 302 used a different Serial to Parallel adapter.
I had this computer back in 94....remember installing Sierra's Quest For Glory 3 and Jetpack, Wolfenstein 3D....also had a SoundBlaster Soundcard and a MIDI sequencing program for composing on musical staves..
Doom hated this PC haha....
I too remember installing the cool games back in the day. I still have a fondness for all the old Sierra games.