Tandy 1000 (and/or Marketing 101)

[buttertweet]

I never pushed a single key on any Tandy 1000, but I have to admit, the catalogs and commercials have me fascinated with it. Though I can no longer get the real thing, I've been using Deskmate and love the simplicity. (For maximum authenticity, I am typing this in TEXT and will copy/paste later)

 

Rather than resurrect the 1000 thread from 2003, I'll start this new one for anyone who wants to shout the praises (or complain about the flaws) of this amazing machine. I'd love to hear what I missed out on (I know King's Quest is one thing).

 

The brilliant ads are all on the Radio Shack catalog website. The commercial with Bill Bixby runs through my head at odd hours of the day. Well played, sir.

[Bill Loguidice]

Why can you no longer get the real thing? They're still readily available on eBay.

 

I have several in my collection (1000 and the successor models), but haven't gotten around to using them much. As the years have passed, though, I have found myself mustering a bit more interest in classic DOS-style gaming, so I may end up exploring that part of my collection more thoroughly at some point. In any case, most PC compatibles were rather generic, but systems like the original IBM PC, IBM PC transportable, PCjr, Tandy 1000, Leading Edge, etc., do hold greater interest due to either design or functionality that helped them to stand out from the masses of competitors.

[+save2600]

+1 for the Tandy 1000 IBM clone that was much more than just a clone!

 

A relic from better times long since passed.

[jhd]

My very first PC was a Tandy 1000 SL. I received it for Christmas in 1988.

 

Alas, it was woefully under-powered compared to the competition.

 

It shipped with a 5.25 floppy drive and 384K RAM -- the hard disk, RAM upgrade, second floppy disk drive, etc. were all optional extras. A fully-upgraded system cost significantly more than the competition.

 

The video system used part of the main memory, so there was rather less than 384K available to DOS. Even the Deskmate Music program would not run properly in the base configuration; it required more RAM. Hence, many games required 640K RAM to compensate for the memory used by the video. (There was a configuration program that allowed one to reduce the amount of memory reserved for video, but this risked a system crash.)

 

I endeavored to upgrade the RAM, but nobody locally (other than RS) sold the chips required. I may be mis-remembering, but the hard drive required an unusual (non-standard) controller too, so that never got upgraded.

 

I bought a Dell 486 PC in 1993, to which I later made several upgrades.

 

On the other hand, Deskmate was far easier to use than (the then standard) WordPerfect 4.2. I never used any of the other applications very much; I was in Business School at the time, so we were obliged to use Lotus 1-2-3 for accounting assignments so we could submit them on disk. (I much later discovered that a Deskmate version of Lotus 1-2-3 existed, but it was not available/affordable at the time.)

 

For those games that supported it, the extra graphics modes were quite impressive -- especially as compared to plain CGA.

[Omega-TI]

There is a great deal on a 1000 RLX with a TON of stuff for an affordable price right now << CLICK HERE >>.

 

 

The shipping for all of this is NOT out of line either.

 

Now personally if I were going to buy this, I'd probably try to replace the disk drive with one of these...

 

 

It comes with both BLACK & WHITE face plates....

[boxpressed]

There's a ton of Tandy content on the excellent Nerdly Pleasures blog. Here's just one example:

 

http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2011/08/tandy-1000sx-best-overall-choice-for.html

[Omega-TI]

I have to admit I've forgotten quite a bit about those old Tandy 1000's. I believe they were 100% IBM compatible, which was not the case for the 2000 model. In this day and age, I'd be concerned about program availability & support. As Ebay prices go, that particular computer seems rather cheap... which makes me wonder.

[jhd]

I believe they were 100% IBM compatible, which was not the case for the 2000 model.

 

The Model 2000 was "MS-DOS Compatible", much like the DEC Rainbow or the Sanyo computers of the same vintage. It was then expected that it would be like CP/M -- the same software would be able to run on various hardware configurations.

 

The Tandy 1000 moniker covers a wide range of models, and some are more IBM compatible than others (e.g. one model has a non-upgradable DOS in ROM, some have limitations on memory expansion, etc.).

[Omega-TI]

I remember some specific customer complaints about the 2000. Regular graphics based programs didn't seem to run correctly and the computer had issues reading PC formatted diskettes, which made it hard for user's to copy and share programs with friends. Other than that all I remember is that damn demo program that was on the screen nearly 100% of the time with the color circles. It didn't sell very well either. I guess it can claim to be PC compatible... but not very in my experience.

[+Tarzilla]

The 1000sx was my first IBM PC compatible after years of Atari 8bit. I wish I still had it and the 10 MEG Hard Disk card that fit inside. I seem to recall paying over 1800 Canadian bucks for the hard drive. My friends that had CGA machines could not believe the 16 color graphics of Kings Quest and Starflight.

[Turbo-Torch]

I owned a 2000. I bought it from the local Radio Shack in the mall for $100.00...it was either a display or something they actually used in the store. It had every option that RS offered including the high res graphics/color boards, 768K and the internal HD so that both floppies could remain. Adding everything up from the catalog prices, it was a $9,000+ system and that's not including all the software it came with.

 

Technically, it was a powerhouse beast that blew away all other PCs at the time. I guess if you had a business and needed processing power and incredibly fast graphics, you couldn't ask for anything better. As a home PC, I was disappointed that I spent $100 on it. It was so damn close to being IBM compatible it was frustrating.

 

I already owned a 1000 EX and loved that computer...mowed a lot of lawns to save up the $600.00. I wish I never sold it to buy a 1000 SL. I still scan CL every so often in hopes of finding another EX just for the heck of it.

The SL was a good computer and was very easy to upgrade with standard XT stuff. First thing I did was upgrade the memory to 640K and then bought a 32mb RLL hard card. That was my last Tandy PC. After that I started buying parts out of Computer Shopper and attending Computer Shows (usually held at county fair grounds) to build my own PCs.

 

I gave the 2000 to my best friend so that we could play Trade-Wars on all the local BBSs. He had a IIe but I don't think it even had a serial card to attach a modem to. I know for a fact he still has the IIe and I bet the 2000 may still be stashed away at his parents' house. Not sure if I'd even want that one back.

[factus10]

We got an original 1000 (not even a 1000A, I think) back in 1985. It came with 128k and one disk drive. We got an off-brand amber monitor at some other computer store, clear across town. I wrote a simple stamp (philately) database for it that I would send to anyone who would send me a floppy and a floppy disk mailer (they were a thing back then). I got a *lot* of requests for that.

 

The 1000 was somewhere between a PCjr (it had similar video modes) and a PC. It wasn't fully compatible with either, I think mainly in the video modes. This was really only a problem for DOS programs.

 

We eventually upgraded to 640K and maybe an internal HD. That reminds me: the card slots were shorter than standard, so you had to be careful about the expansion cards. And Tandy did something odd with the IRQs (more PCjr like, I think) that made it less than PC compatible.

 

We had 2000s at our high school (this was suburban Dallas). They were really fast and fun to play on but really, really incompatible.

[digress]

I was actually actively considering developing and porting a game to tandy 1000 such as Mr Turtle or a tank game I'm working on for colecovision. I have several tandy 1000's and have an active tandy 1000tl setup that I use. Absolutely the best for playing dos games as

 

it gives you the option for tandy graphics for games that supported cga or tandy graphics. There are many that do not support vga or ega so tandy graphcis was often better than anyone else had.

 

Many games support the enhanced tandy sound.

 

My particular setup also has an original Adlib card and VGA card so I can also have those options for some games.

 

I also have a 32meg CF card hard drive so I can easily transfer new programs back and forth to a modern pc. I also have a zip drive hooked up to it which gives 3 extra partitions of 32megs each

 

Deskmate is a really good software and sometimes I do writing on it rather than a modern pc. The keyboard is really nice.

[Nebulon]

Thexder, Space Quest II, and Borrowed Time were games that I recall having a blast with on the Tandy 1000.

 

One of my favorite things was the sound chip. At the time it was much nicer than on most other PCs.

 

And yeah, the catalog ads were/are really neat.

[Omega-TI]

//Way back machine mode on.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl9kp2Pu6qs