Exploring & upgrading the Tandy 1000SX computer
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ก.ย. 2024
- A historical tour of the best-selling member of the Tandy 1000 computer family -- the 1000SX -- and tips and tricks on RAM troubleshooting and upgrading it with a NEC V20 CPU chip, XT-CF Eco Lite compact flash card interface, 3½" floppy diskette drive, and Microsoft InPort bus mouse card.
Adrian Black's video on modifying Tandy floppy drive cables to work with a 3½" drive: • Tandy 1000 EX 3.5" flo...
14:10 I can’t believe that having a PC speaker volume control was not standard on computers of this era. I remember not being able to play certain games because it was either too early in the morning or too late at night, and the speaker loudness would have woken everyone up. Easy enough to create one if you know how, but I didn’t.
Saw that thumbnail and thought this was a Techmoan video.
Why? He's not the only one who uses a white background.
@@vwestlife True XD
White background ?...
Is this a Phil's Computer Lab video ?
not gonna lie the thumbnail tricked me too
lol same here
This is a lot of effort to go through in order to play Leisure Suit Larry and Maniac Mansion! I approve!
Omg I never played Larry much, but I was all over all of the space quest and police quest. Wow those were the days.
Starflight!
i guess I am kinda off topic but does anybody know of a good site to watch newly released movies online ?
I've tricked out my own 1000SX quite a bit. Personally, I don't like the V20 upgrade because one of the biggest strengths of the SX is that it provides 100% compatibility with 4.77mh required software. I've upgraded it with a 286Xpress accelerator -- a 286 on an ISA card -- a 8087 and 80287. The card gives me 4 different speed options -- 8088 @ 4.77 or 7.16mhz, and the 286 @ 7.16mhz with Cache Enabled/Disabled -- all of which can be changed in software or with even with keystrokes if you have the program loaded in memory. I also have a Trackstar-E in it which is an Apple IIe on an ISA card -- essentially making the the Tandy a 2 in 1 PC/Apple computer.
I'm using an XT-IDE + IDE-CF adapters, since the only CF-Lite that I could find had a rear slot didn't fit the Tandy. I do still need to get a serial card for it, for mouse support but I was able to find an original boxed smartwatch for it -- I'm glad to see that we have alternatives for that though!
Holy balls, does that POST beep and floppy seek test ever bring me back to my toddler years 😭
What the heck, yours takes only 15 seconds to count up 2 GB of free space? My Epson takes almost that long to count up 60 MB. Maybe because I'm running a mechanical hard drive. Brotip - replace the firmware on the XT-CF card with the "XT+" firmware that takes advantage of 80186/80188-compatible CPUs like the V20. I'd be interested to see if you get even better speed.
That's a lot of great info about floppy drive setup tweaks.
I can also try enabling DMA mode. I'll cover that in Part 2.
I have no idea what you said with about half of that, but omg that sure brought me back to memories of putting a disc in and closing the little switch. I was always so paranoid my data would be erased. Probably cuz I was traumatized from having to use the cassette tape drive on my TRS80.
Can't wait for Part 2: Electric Boogaloo
Electric Boogaloo? What's that?
@@Lachlant1984 a movie and a allways sunny joke
I picked up a 1000 SX a couple of years ago. I bought it because I needed the monitor that was being sold with it.
It came with a 20 Mb hardcard installed. A big money upgrade at the time.
I’m not sure but I think the 6 in 96 may be a 0 so 1990.
Me too :)
But there are other zeroes on the same label and they're not written that way.
maybe the memory was upgraded in 1995-1996, almost no one would provide warranty more than 12 months, also it could have been traded in and "refreshed" and resold via tandy
You kids have to know, a lot of people didn’t just waltz into Radio Shack and pick up a PC, they were the number one computer manufacturer and reseller in the US for a few years. I worked as an assistant manager in Montebello, CA and some of the business extended service plans were insanely long, offering limited parts and labor up to 5 years. Back then, a small business wasn’t going to upgrade every year or even couple of years. Computers weren’t disposable either, especially at the prices Tandy was charging. 5 year extended warranties made sense, and I’m sure went well past the point Tandy got out of the computer business in 1993.
@@StevenSmyth The prices on those computers and monitors are insane for 1980's money. It reminds me of exactly why we didn't have a computer at home when I was a kid.
That was my 2nd comp, had it from 86'-94'. Looooooooved that machine. Eventually got the memory bumped to 512kb and added a 2nd 5 1/4" drive so I could copy stuff (then later replaced one with a 3 1/2"). Lasted through all the Sierra games until they required mice. Wrecked two joysticks for it playing BC's Quest for Tires, Thexder and Silpheed. Also wasted tons of hours with Bubble Ghost, California Raisins and Double Dragon. Never did manage to get the Light Pen for it though. Ran on MSDOS 3.2. Thanks for the memories @VWestlife!
Thank you for sharing that. My memory fails me as to my exact setup, but I know I didn't have much money so pretty sure I never got a second drive for mine. But I played all the Sierra games, was very partial to the police and space quest. And then I found starflight and omg that changed my life forever lol.
The light pen port was used with dual monitor cad/cam systems, some digitizers for autocad also used it. lots of software used it in fact, software that was all in the 10,000-15,000 $ range which is why most do not/did not know how prolific the light pen was, Ive seen 30 of them in one office :)
Get your Tandy 1000SX computer on sale at Radio Shack for only $599.95:
ic.pics.livejournal.com/grayflannelsuit/13548407/6367/6367_900.jpg
Hurry, offer expires April 26th, 1988!
The light pen was available at their Computer Center stores (11- and 01+ stores). It was special order at 01- stores.
The 1000 SX, the computer (I bought used) that got me through college in the 1990s and my darkest years of poverty. It wasn't fancy, but with a 14.4K modem and a local Freenet, it kept me online. I've had better computers, but this is the one I have nostalgia for.
2:50 - The keyboard may be non-standard, but in terms of quality and durability, it was only bettered by the Model M.
4:30 - I bought an internal bracket and put in a 3.5" drive. The panel cover would no longer fit, but usability beat aesthetics.
6:00 - Yup. Had the cable, connected to my dot matrix. Fun times, seriously.
The Bus Mouse was a very classy upgrade for this machine.
I see VWestlife video, I give thumbs up. I’m a simple man!!
How did you get the RAM working properly? I bought the same Texas Instruments 4256 10NL chips. I also read that that 15NL should be used. I was wondering what you did.
Update on my Tandy 1000sx. It now has a ISA IDE to SD card with MSDOS 6.22 and I'm getting DRAM to upgrade it's memory to max at 640K!
Update! The Tandy is now at 640KB of memory!
Happy to see you doing the old computer reviews again!
Awesome! I love videos about old computers and especially long videos of such - I hope you do more computers after the Tandy!
The SX is an awesome PC in the Tandy range!
Something that would make old PCs through ATs and clones faster was using faster than minimum speed RAM chips. The key to that was the loose tolerances in the RAM timing windows.
For example to do a RAM write the RAM had to be ready no later than Y time but *could be* ready as early as X. The minimum RAM speed specified would put the ready time for reads and writes closer to Y than X.
Using faster RAM chips would make the RAM available closer to X than Y, closer to the start of the window than the end. If you installed RAM ridiculously faster than the slowest allowed, like 70ns when 150ns was specified, then the RAM would be 'born ready'. The instant the system started the read or write cycle windows the RAM would be able to provide or accept the data *right then*.
Then the next read or write cycle could start as soon as the first one was finished.
But in some cases the RAM speed made no difference because the computer was designed with fixed length RAM cycles. For example if the window for the start of a RAM cycle was 20ns long it would wait precisely 20ns for the RAM to be ready to begin - even if the RAM was ready to begin a read or write at 1ns after the cycle start window. Then the rest of the cycle would be set to a fixed time, even if the RAM was able to be read or written in half the time. The computer would sit there for however many nanoseconds twiddling its digital thumbs until the end of the cycle and the next cycle start window.
One place you can easily tell the speed difference is in an IBM PC/XT that has the audible ticker and number count on screen during POST. With the 150ns RAM specified it goes *TICK* *TICK* *TICK* *TICK* *TICK* *TICK* *TICK*. Put 70ns RAM chips in and it goes *BBRRRRRRRRRRRRT* because the RAM is always already ready at the very start of every part of a read or write cycle while 150ns is getting close to being too slow.
Back in the day, 70ns DRAM chips were hellaciously more expensive than 150ns. I used to scavenge faster chips from dead "Turbo" 8086 clones, 80286 clones and even some early 80386 clones.
The same kind of loose RAM timing was often used in the early times of SIMM RAM, but by the advent of the 72 pin SIMMS RAM timings were tightened up a lot so there was little speed to be gained installing RAM much faster than specified. Could get a *little* bump mostly only detectable with benchmark tests.
Pretty sure that doesn't say 96 on the warranty sticker but 90...
Too bad you couldn’t have found one of those floppy drives for the Bondwell laptops you had. I would love to have seen those work.
The floppy drives were the least of that computer's problems!
The very first computer I owned myself. I sold it back in the days of the 386 to a friend's dad. I was always fearful that I charged him too much for it not fully realizing how much it had depreciated by then. How bizarre that it's probably worth more now than what he paid for it. I had the 2 drive version with the CM-5 monitor and I think I had a Star Gemini 10X printer to go with all that. It came with a full suite of word processing and other office type software. Deskmate I believe.
I remember those printers. I can't recall the brand I had, but yeah really loved my dot matrix.
Nice machine. I recently acquired a Tandy 4000 from recycling. Its power supply was dead, so I'm needing to replace that before I can test the rest of the machine.
If you have a Murphys in proximity, you might find a replacement.
Or replacement components.
Were you able to find it yet?
Tandy 1000 SX owner since 7 years, it's really great to see. Mine's mostly full now, serial, 2 lpt, 640k, 31mb rll drive, 360k drive, adlib, etherlink III, rtc, Iomega zip, syquest sparq and a trackball and I also have a couple of questions:
I wasn't aware of that dallas rtc, it'll be much more useful than having that isa card taking up a slot. Do they work in any mother boards, or is it just something that works on tandy 1000's ?
And also, will you keep that scsi card ? I may buy it off of you if not too expensive (ebay prices are way out of my reach for those...), been looking for an 8bit scsi card with a boot rom that would work in my tandy, I have only 16 bits ones that don't work in it, tho there is still one I haven't tried yet, I'll give that a try later.
As for putting a 720k drive, I don't really see the point in doing so, it it for convenience ? If so, why not just put a zip drive or any other big capacity media that can go on a computer like this ? Even if it is an XT there is still a lot of options.
Holy crap, there was an Iomega Zip drive that worked on the SX? (SCSI?) Didn't they show up in the mid-90s?
@@TrackZero No, I use the parallel version, there was a third party driver made for xt class cpus.
@@chainedenintenloup
Try all your 16-bit ISA SCSI cards in the 8-bit slots, just leaving the extra edge conectors hanging...
Many cards are actually downward compatible in this way.
Sometimes there is an obscure jumper you have to find though.
@@chainedenintenloup Nice!
With the NEC V20 CPU you can use the original Iomega GUEST.EXE Zip drive driver. I have 3.5" floppy drives in all my modern PCs, so having one in the 1000SX makes data transfer very easy.
For another mouse option, you could also track down an old CoCo color mouse and plug it into joystick port 1. That's what we did with our HX back in the day.
Fantastic video; I love it! Great job!
• I've seen some keyboards that have a Sleep key in the same place as that Hold key. That's even worse because instead of just pausing the (ACPI) system, it puts it into standby mode which is not just really annoying, but it adds a power-cycle, and thus wear-and-tear to the components, especially the hard-drive.
• If the dust caused problems that bad, I would assume Tandy Labs' "new" tobacco-stained HX will have problems too. ☹
• The stripes don't mark pin 1, they're just a reference to make it easier to plug it in the same way on both ends, so you can plug it in upside down, as long as you do the same on the other end (assuming the cable doesn't have a key-pin).
• You like the sound of old hard-drives? 🤨 Including old RLL/MFM drives with interrupters? 🤔
Could you please show that SCSI drive in action (in part III maybe)?
great video on these very cool tandy computers which i am new to..wish i had your computer now how !
That adress at NJ is now a Subs Store "Blimpie"
What connection do the floppy drives have? I have this exact computer with dual 5.25" floppy drives, and I am looking to connect the drives to a USB adapter I have, to read my old discs! EDIT: I guess you show the connection at 17:39 and explain it afterwards.
You have a very calming voice. Sometimes when I go to sleep I start your videos on my phone.
The number 5291 at 17:43 probably means that it was manufactured in the last (52nd) week of 1991.
Wow good detail, that's pretty cool. So do you know where these were manufactured? Or at least assembled?
7:27 i think this is 90 not 96
But there are other zeroes on the same label and they're not written that way.
@@vwestlifeare they handwritten or stamped? Cause if they are handwritten it could be a goof.
That’s awesome man. Congrats on getting that old computer running again. I also like the noise of old hard drives. I hope to get a fake sound generator for my win98 box. The SSD is fast but I miss a grinding HDD.
Ebay is flooded with counterfeit Chinese chips. Buy chips on Ebay at your own risk. :-)
I've heard about fake SID chips, but every NEC V20 / V30 and 8087 chip I've bought from China has been legitimate and has worked perfectly.
Wow, you got lucky. I run an electronics repair business and see counterfeit chips from Ebay on a fairly regular basis, in fact, it's so bad that most of the big chip vendors are having to provide quality control screening to identify and remove counterfeit chips.
The Chinese V20s and 8087s may be reproductions; they look awfully new and clean for chips claiming to have date codes from the 1980s. But if they are reproductions, they did them right, because they pass all diagnostic tests and work reliably.
AT compatible but needs 640k to run DOS 6.22
The 386 was the first "real" computer
It came with 4 memory slots that gave you 1mb to 4mb which is what you needed to run Windows 1.0
The 386s were 8mhz,16mhz,24,32, and the final one that I saw had 40mhz and I owned that one
That had 5 ISA slots and 3 PCI slots
I ran that with DOS and Windows 1.0,2.0,3.1 and I upgraded to Windows 4.0.0.0 also called Windows 95, and then 4.0.0.a, 4.0.0.b ( and then sr2, a special release that gave networking capabilities, also called 4.0.0.b2 )
I also heard one woman who was into computers back then call the a release Windows 96 and the b release Windows 97.
The sr2 had a lot of the newer Windows 98 DLLs
Windows 98 was good, and then they had Windows Me and Windows 2000
The Windows 2000 was the workstation OS for the Windows 2000 Server environment.
Then Vista. I think. Which had a bunch of problems, then XP. The original XP was glitchy, SP1 changed it's look and feel, but SP2 really made a whole new animal and SP3 was the best OS Microsoft made in my opinion
I really miss it.
I held on to it for a long time, but the software and drivers were not able to support a lot of newer items and I finally gave in and put in Windows 7 Ultimate
It runs slower than XP, but Windows 8 runs a lot slow and locks up all the time, 10 is unusable and 11 I just saw and it looked ok, but I don't like the fact that you don't own it and that ms or the government can remotely shut down the machine, just like the VMT SYSTEM can do to vehicles
Although they have not used the VMT SYSTEM, it 8s on and in all the roads and intersections and every vehicle since 2004 was mandatory for the ECM to have the VMT built in,
Which is why I keep my 1999 car, despite having a new car, because if the government decides to shut down all the vehicles only a pre 2004 vehicle will start and run
The idea that the government can brick every phone and computer remotely is terrifying and I worked for the state and several times the emergency management office with just a keystroke they shut down every cell phone tower and every landline and that's when I started studying for my amateur radio license and I purchased quite a few full band radios because if the government shuts down the phone lines the two-way radios are the only way people are going to be able to communicate and we actually use them when the state shut down the telephone networks
It's a super creepy feeling and that was before VMT
Imagine something happens like an election and they don't like the results or they say the results are not valid and there is civil unrest and your phone goes black your computer goes black and your car shuts down and won't restart
They literally can do that right now with the press of a button and they can do it using the EAS
I worked in Media and for several commercial radio stations that had a network covering six States and we had the new codes we had to program into the EAS at all of our stations and transmitter sites
They can transmit digital commands over analog radio and over GPS and over satellite radio and the car accepts the commands and all of the cell phones have to take the transmission and they literally can brick the cars and the phones with the push of a button
Very very scary stuff
Tandy did have light pens. The stores used the light pens to scan the barcodes at the checkouts
The stores used these computers for their POS system
There was a special catalog on a cabinet near the front of the store that said RSU and had all sorts of special order stuff
Had the NEC CPU, math coprocessor, 640 memory and a 10 MB hard drive. Later I added a 1.44 MB floppy.
that was simular to one of my first PC's i had and learnt on
It's crazy to think that there are hundreds of frames in this video, thousands. Each frame is a picture that would have taken me an hour or maybe longer to download on my old 2400 bps modem. Not that my pc from back then could even display all the colors in one of these frames, but it could at least display 256 of them! I take so much modern technology for granted. Still though, I had so much fun tinkering around with that thing. Staying up all night trying to find numbers to dial for new bbs to visit. Spending hours downloading a shareware game, then even more time trying to make it run.
Weird how the Tandies went with the same inscrutable designations that car companies use to confuse us on their car models/trim levels (SL, SX, HD, etc)
... "Tandy 1000SL that you can see on the background there". Like it just happened to be there these days. Well, as every subscriber knows, it was ALWAYS there!. A whole decade of highly enjoyable video content production has been witnessed by that good old guy. Hats off to it.
Actually prior to a few years ago it was the 1000RL on the table -- and for a while, the IBM PS/1.
Hi. Looks like a pin is not in on one of the RAM chips on the 2nd bank, closest to the vent slots.
yep, 12:55
One of the pins did get a little bent when I was removing it, but it still makes contact and works fine -- it passes a full diagnostic RAM check with no errors.
Damn this reminds me of the never ending hunt for better ram chips for each computer I had. Lol
My first DOS computer was an XT, with the MB replaced with a 286 after a few years, so I never owned a Tandy. I was unaware that the Tandy 1000 used the same joysticks as the TRS-80 Color. That was the first computer I ever used. Unlike the Atari and other game systems, the TRS-80 Color joysticks were analog, offering excellent positioning control for games that utilized it.
The compact flash card interface is a more elegant internal storage solution than the full length ISA "Plus Hardcard 40" that I installed in an thrift-store sourced NCR PC4, a two floppy all-in-one PC clone.
It seems your biggest disappointment with this Tandy 1000SX is the keyboard. It would probably cost more than all your other upgrades combined, but if you can find a Northgate Omnikey, I understand those had dip switch settings that would make them compatible with the Tandy 1000 series, were "clicky", and had a 101-key layout.
Looking forward to Part 2... Would love to see a benchmark comparison with and without the math co-processor.
This brought back some memories...
Best way to remove permanent marker is to use Rainex and a cottom swab. It works flawlessly on ABS plastic
These din sockets they used It on Russia made computer based Upon the Sinclair zx spectrum
My first computer was a hand-me-down Tandy 1000EX, this was in the early 90s.
hi kevin your awesome!
*you're
That's a badly written zero I think, expiration date 1990.
That PC was used for the POS
I worked for RS, I know a lot about the company and the parts
1000SX machines that shipped with two 5.25 drives had A: on the bottom drive. The one we had is still in the parents’ basement in near mint condition. We Used it from the time we got it in the mid 87 until 92 or so.
I've seen them both ways, with the A: drive at either the bottom or top.
This video has inspired me to clean up my Tandy 1000sx.
Nice! This is the model i'd want if i had room for a Tandy 1000
@ 13:08 - Pin 1 of IC7 TMS4256 (second row from the top, at the left) doesn't seem to be properly connected, looks like it's out of the socket...
No, all of the pins are properly connected.
Awesome!! Inspires me to dig out my Old Tandy 2500 SX/33 I've had for a long time now. One of my friends also recently gave me an old TRS-80 128k Color Computer which I've had loads of fun on so far, I just haven't had a decent way to load other software to it yet haha.
There's a Trs-80 basic software website, yet specific software besides older programming interface is unknown. I was looking up how to operate there pocket computers.
@@tarstarkusz With my 2500, which I agree is just a low-end 386 when it comes down to it(though these are all old machines now anyway), that there are a couple of things supported that I do like about this particular machine: First thing being the 2k compatible clock, which supports from 1/1/1900 to 12/31/2099. Second thing being that I do not need to load bios configuration software from a floppy, this machine has that built into the ROM. Sounds silly, but even my dad's old Packard Bell, which houses a 486 with an 850MB harddisk(I am not sure what any of its other specs are off the top of my head), doesn't support ROM based BIOS configuration. So I guess with it being low-end(again its just going to be a DOS machine anyway) I do like it for what it has to offer otherwise.
@@obsidian9998 I know of a few sources myself, the guy who gave me the old Color Computer 128K has a bunch of his own sources, I just haven't had much of a chance to play around with it further other then writing my own basic programs.
A great video as always. These older systems are great fun.
jees... i used to sell them.... im getting old....
Really cool! Would windows 3.11 work on it?
No. The newest version of Windows you can run on it is 3.0.
You can see an example of how Windows 3.0 would run on a machine like this (NEC V-series CPU at 7.16 MHz, CGA graphics) in my video about the Zenith eaZy PC.
...and thanks so much for sharing all of this!
I'll bet you're fun at parties :) Just kidding, I loved the information. Our family had one of these when I was 12, so it brought back so many magical memories... Programming in gw basic, playing Thexder, buying my first Sierra graphical adventure game at Radio Shack (Space Quest!) Simpler times.
Belleville, NJ...that was my local Radio Shack growing up. It was in a strip mall on Main St. with a Fayva shoe store, Mickey Music record store, Blimpie sandwich shop, Trust Company of NJ bank, Belleville Tobacco where I got a photo with "Macho Man" Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth, Grand Union supermarket, and others. My family's first home computer was bought at that Radio Shack- a Tandy 2500SX. The strip mall is still there, but that Radio Shack is gone.
This was my first PC. I think it was Christmas time 1985. I worked at the local Shack when I was a kid and the owner let me take it home and just took payments out of my checks. Mine came with MS-DOS 3.12 and Deskmate. The onboard 16 color graphics were an amazing value for the time. MIcroprose: F19 stealth, Gunship, and Red Storm Rising . Thanks for this video!
Did you ever get a Gotek working on the SX? Much as I tried, I simple could not get it to work.
I have never used a Gotek.
Nice! Are you coming back to vintage computers?
I never left them.
I had a Tandy 1000 with 3.5 floppy drive. and it looks like yours on screen.
my Tandy 1000 came with a hard drive and some games like: Roboman, Battle Chess, Tetris and some kind of word document with if you can I did find program the Tandy 1000 Hard Drive drive.
Of funny! I put an inport Microsoft mouse in my SX as well. Just feels like it fits! Nice and period-specific.
This take me back we owned a Tandy 1000 TX with 768k of RAM and a 40MB hard drive. It was one of the ISA hard drives on a card. Plus we had a 3rd party keyboard which was an omikey keyboard with dip switches for configuring the keyboard and one of the combinations of the switches made it compatible with a Tandy 1000 computer thanks to a PS2 to Tandy adapter. Also it was a very clicky keyboard. But sadly the keyboard met its sad demise on a base board heater. But our tandy met its sad demise when it refuse to boot anymore because of the hard drive dying. If i still owned that computer I would have replaced it with some sort of flash solution and also the Keyboard was dying as well. We also had the Tandy printer that was capable of printing in color. My dad got a 1200 baud modem so he could do his school work since he went back to college at the time.
This is not super relevant but I had to mention it. I thought I heard your voice on HBO earlier today. It wasn't you. It was one of the guys who Michael Jackson abused, James Safechuck, on that LEAVING NEVERLAND documentary. His vocal cadence and tambre is remarkably similar to yours (at first). Not identical, but enough to catch my ear, since I watch all your videos. Anyway, that's a thing.
People say I sound similar to just about any white guy with a New Jersey accent and a mellow voice. People have even said I sound like Ray Romano, even though he has a New York accent.
It's the cadence. The pauses. The similarity of extemporaneousness. Just a weird thing I noticed. Romano's voice is deeper, I think.
Hi All, nice video, i really hate those Dallas chips, my P-100 has one and i have purchased 4 replacement chips that are advertised as new / refurbished / working - and none work, i have given them to a friend who done the remote battery mod and i use either a CR2032 housing or a 2 x AA battery housing and only 1 works, but there is a catch, you need to remove it , wait 30 seconds, insert and reboot, you get 1 chance, it always detects the hard drive irregardless, but it will only save the data once, i get 1 chance for quick reboot and then the HD works, after that its is nothing.
You can try all you like it will not work unless you power down and then pull the chip out and start again.
As for the CF card, i have a Pentium 2, and it runs a IDE2CF card with a 4Gig card, it is partitioned with 2 x 2Gig, with Windows 98, it works fine and is very fast, initial fdisk and formating from memory was very fast - Yes mine also doe snot have access from the rear of the card and i need to open the case, but that is about 2 times a year i need to do it as the machine has a USB cat 5 network card and USB2 add on card via PCI bus
BTW if you go with Gotek, there is a simplified win 3.1 modified image that runs on a single 1.44 floppy, it is auto boot and unzips into ramdisk ( you need 8meg or more ) Win 3.1 runs well, just remember if you want to save any documents to save to a real floppy or change the gotek drive letter
Regards
George
Please continue! I have my Tandy 1000sx and monitor waiting for Resurrection
Still have my Tandy 1000 with two 5.25 floppies; RAM upgraded to 384K.
You should look into getting an IDC crimp tool, ribbon cable on a roll and the connectors to make cables yourself! I've found it to be way easier and reliable, and in the long run, it ends up saving money if you find yourself fixing up stuff from back in the day regularly.
Great video. I wonder if that CF benchmark was bottlenecked by the hardware it is plugged into haha.
Got one of these cheap a while back and it came with a Tandy-specific hard card, which is miraculous because I never would have found one cheap otherwise. Got a TRS 80 3000 keyboard to use with it, which is pretty badly yellowed
You need to try Windows on it. Example: Windows 2.0 or Windows 3.0 is both support old computers.
I used this computer in college up until late 1996. At that point I was mostly using it for word processing (with a dot matrix printer) and very slow internet access through Prodigy.
The 1000SL was my first computer and I have been looking for one for a while now.
I need a V20 and XT-CF adapter for mine, fortunately it already has a 3.5 inch drive, albeit 720k.
Great Machine. Great Video.
Part 2 still in the works?
Yes.
@@vwestlife PLEASE Put up part 2!!
Great video. I'm in the process of doing many of these upgrades to my 1000 SX right now. I've ordered a math co-processor - I got the C8087-2 with the gold on it. Is there any difference between the ones with the gold and the ones without?
Man I wish I still had my old Tandy computer that I got from a yardsale when I was a kid, but my mom made me give it away to some of her relatives that were visiting from Texas :(
It would be great if you could demonstrate a gotek drive on an old PC machine!
VWestlife, I happen to have the Radio Shack Computer Centers 1985 Catalog (copyright 1984) if you want it. It's 64 pages of nothing but their Tandy computer items, including the Tandy 1000 shown as New for '85'. I don't see anything about a Light Pen in it. Let me know.
I already have it, plus it's online at www.radioshackcatalogs.com
Out of curiosity: why did you insist on making the 3.5" disk drive the A: drive? As far as I know, booter games always came on 5.25" floppies, so wouldn't it be more practical to keep the 5.25" drive as the A: drive? Or did the Tandy 1000 allow booting from either the A: or B: drive? The dual floppy PC we had at home when I was a kid had a BIOS that could only boot from the A: drive, or the hard drive, if one was installed, but not from B:. I know there was this software that allowed you to create a special chain load disk that you would put in the A: drive that would make the computer boot from B:, but that would still be less practical, since you would have to put that helper disk in your primary drive, whenever you would want to boot something in B:.
Oh, I hadn't finished watching the video and had it paused as I was typing my previous response. Just now did I see it boot and it clearly tried to boot from both disk drives consecutively when it did. That's a cool feature! Those Tandy 1000 series were cool machines indeed. 🙂
I have the 3.5" drive set to the A: drive. I just put the 5.25" drive on top because that's how I always saw PCs configured back in the '80s and '90s so it looks better to me that way. Also the Tandy has a neat feature where if you press F3 during the memory test it will swap the A: and B: drives so then I could boot from a 5.25" disk if I wanted to.
i cant find anything like that ide to card edge adapter, has anyone else been able to find one?
It's not IDE, so maybe that's why you can't find one. It is a 34-pin floppy drive connector. (IDE is 40 pins and is not used for floppy drives.)
every time i try upgrades they die, so i just gave up and leave them as is....
Yeah I didn't have much money to spend, so I was always afraid of spending it on upgrades, instead I purchased a faster modem and games lol
Love it! I'd still love to get my hands on an old TL/2, RLX HD, and/or RSX HD!
Great job and commentary. Be sure to rewind the CF card every week.
Alt+145 should work to fake a scroll lock key press.
No, that would just put an "æ" symbol on the screen.
I love the form factor of that computer. I used to have a 1000 EX and dreamed about having one of these.
What a nice comprehensive video on a classic... thank you!
Nice!! I had a Tandy 1000SX that I bought used in 1992 -- it was all tricked out with everything you mentioned, minus the math coprocessor. And of course, it had a 20MB MFM hard card. I loved playing Sierra games on it -- the Tandy sound and 16 colors were sweet as hell, for its day.
Same with me, man was I ever hooked on police quest and space quest! And also star flight, wow. I never had the money to trick out mine much though, my biggest expenditures was a better modem, and simply the games themselves. Ugh hard to spend 50 bucks on a game working at McDonald's sometimes lol.
I keep hoping to run across one of these or a PCjr. We had these in my computer class in '87. Funny thing was, they were bought new at that point so I'm guessing the school got a pretty good deal on some old stock. Was my first intro to PC's and GWBasic. Prior to that all I had was my Atari 400 and a tape drive, so everything was an upgrade for me. :)
I had a cassette tape drive for my TRS 80. Boy was that thing a headache!
it feels like it's been forever.....love your channel.......
13:16 Bent pin on one of those RAM chips
Yes, but it's still making contact, so it's fine. I didn't want to bend it back, for fear of snapping it off.
I had both.. and several other 1000's later on in generation