A500 VS Tandy 1000EX or HX

[christo930]

Given they share the all-in-one "wedge type" form factor and were aimed at a lower end market, what do you think would have been the better choice in 1987 when the A500 came out, the A500 ($699 w/o monitor), the Tandy EX ($599 w/o monitor) or the Tandy HX ($849 with monitor)? I think both Tandy machines had 256k, while the Amiga had 512k. I think the HX has a rom with Dos and Deskmate built in (though DOS will still take conventional ram), but you can boot without a disk). The Tandy machines can be upgraded to 640k, not sure if LIM EMS cards were available though. I am pretty sure they have mouse support. Both have an 8088 that can run at 4,77Mhz of 7.16Mhz One has a 360k drive, the other has a 720k 3.5" (Pretty sure the HX is the one with the 3.5" drive).

 

The Tandy machines have composite out (supporting extra colors for many CGA games) along with support for CGA or Tandy monitors (I'm pretty sure they can use EGA monitors as well).

 

Of course, there is the extended Tandy graphics and sound. Though much better than regular CGA, the Tandy machines have fewer colors than the Amgia. Judging by my ears, the Amiga blows the Tandy machines away in terms of sound.

 

Where the Tandy machines really shine though is PC compatibility. Despite all the warnings on boxes for software about 100% IBM compatible devices, the Tandy machines could run any software that would work on any XT class computer. The Tandys were well supported in America.

 

Obviously there are a lot of Amiga fans here, but I think the Tandy has its merits as well. Even when it comes to games, which is the Amgia's strong point, there were quite a few games you could run on one of these Tandys. While the graphics and sound were not as good, there were a lot of them and they were much easier to find in America. I cannot recall ever seeing an Amiga game in a store in my life (and I was always in those stores back then). There were also lots of BBSs where you could download games from in my city. I'm sure they existed for the Amiga in my area, but I never heard of one. There was even a C64 BBS that I could download games from in the late 80s.

 

I never personally owned a Tandy, but I know quite a few people who had it as their first computer. My friend had a Tandy 1000 that we used to play games on.

 

Which do you think was the better buy? Is there anyone who actually would have gone for the Tandy? Did anyone have a Tandy back then? They are almost as in demand today as Amigas. I found one quite a few years ago at a flea market for $10 (though it's a TX, not an all-in-one).

 

[JamesD]

The Amiga 500 and 68000 CPU are more powerful IMHO, but lets face it, a lot of software publishers ignored the machine.
So, it depends on what you wanted to do. If you had to have PC compatibility, the Tandy was the better option.

I've owned both the EX and HX machines in recent years. They were certainly well made.
The EX supposedly came out in '84, so it had been around a while by the time the Amiga 500 came out.
With the addition of an NEC V20 or V30 (my EX had one), they weren't bad speed wise as far as PCs go and would have also supported CP/M, though I never used that.
But capability wise, they really don't compare to the Amiga 500, and there were probably faster PC clones at the time.

The biggest problem with the EX/HX is the non-standard expansion connector and lack of a built in DMA chip which is needed for the best compatibility.
Machines with the RAM+DMA upgrade seem to be rare on ebay. I'm guessing the upgrade was expensive and by the time 640K was required, it was better to get a new machine.
The oddball expansion connector pretty much eliminated adding a hard drive back in the day.
There were also some compatibility issues with certain DOS versions according to the Wiki, but there must have been patches.
As far as PC compatibles go... yeah, it had better graphics and sound at the time, but you were probably better off with a different model.

The Wiki says intro price of the EX was $1200, but maybe that was with a monitor or just the intro price?

[zzip]

Given they share the all-in-one "wedge type" form factor and were aimed at a lower end market, what do you think would have been the better choice in 1987 when the A500 came out, the A500 ($699 w/o monitor), the Tandy EX ($599 w/o monitor) or the Tandy HX ($849 with monitor)? I think both Tandy machines had 256k, while the Amiga had 512k. I think the HX has a rom with Dos and Deskmate built in (though DOS will still take conventional ram), but you can boot without a disk). The Tandy machines can be upgraded to 640k, not sure if LIM EMS cards were available though. I am pretty sure they have mouse support. Both have an 8088 that can run at 4,77Mhz of 7.16Mhz One has a 360k drive, the other has a 720k 3.5" (Pretty sure the HX is the one with the 3.5" drive).

 

The Tandy machines have composite out (supporting extra colors for many CGA games) along with support for CGA or Tandy monitors (I'm pretty sure they can use EGA monitors as well).

 

Of course, there is the extended Tandy graphics and sound. Though much better than regular CGA, the Tandy machines have fewer colors than the Amgia. Judging by my ears, the Amiga blows the Tandy machines away in terms of sound.

 

Where the Tandy machines really shine though is PC compatibility. Despite all the warnings on boxes for software about 100% IBM compatible devices, the Tandy machines could run any software that would work on any XT class computer. The Tandys were well supported in America.

 

Obviously there are a lot of Amiga fans here, but I think the Tandy has its merits as well. Even when it comes to games, which is the Amgia's strong point, there were quite a few games you could run on one of these Tandys. While the graphics and sound were not as good, there were a lot of them and they were much easier to find in America. I cannot recall ever seeing an Amiga game in a store in my life (and I was always in those stores back then). There were also lots of BBSs where you could download games from in my city. I'm sure they existed for the Amiga in my area, but I never heard of one. There was even a C64 BBS that I could download games from in the late 80s.

 

I never personally owned a Tandy, but I know quite a few people who had it as their first computer. My friend had a Tandy 1000 that we used to play games on.

 

Which do you think was the better buy? Is there anyone who actually would have gone for the Tandy? Did anyone have a Tandy back then? They are almost as in demand today as Amigas. I found one quite a few years ago at a flea market for $10 (though it's a TX, not an all-in-one).

The Amiga

 

My friend had a Tandy 1000, and compatibility was a problem. These days you expect a PC clone to just run everything, but back then, that wasn't always the case. My friend bought a lot of games for it that just didn't work. Performance wasn't great either.

 

My Atari ST easily blew it away, the Amiga would have as well.

[christo930]

The Amiga 500 and 68000 CPU are more powerful IMHO, but lets face it, a lot of software publishers ignored the machine.

So, it depends on what you wanted to do. If you had to have PC compatibility, the Tandy was the better option.

 

I've owned both the EX and HX machines in recent years. They were certainly well made.

The EX supposedly came out in '84, so it had been around a while by the time the Amiga 500 came out.

With the addition of an NEC V20 or V30 (my EX had one), they weren't bad speed wise as far as PCs go and would have also supported CP/M, though I never used that.

But capability wise, they really don't compare to the Amiga 500, and there were probably faster PC clones at the time.

 

The biggest problem with the EX/HX is the non-standard expansion connector and lack of a built in DMA chip which is needed for the best compatibility.

Machines with the RAM+DMA upgrade seem to be rare on ebay. I'm guessing the upgrade was expensive and by the time 640K was required, it was better to get a new machine.

The oddball expansion connector pretty much eliminated adding a hard drive back in the day.

There were also some compatibility issues with certain DOS versions according to the Wiki, but there must have been patches.

As far as PC compatibles go... yeah, it had better graphics and sound at the time, but you were probably better off with a different model.

 

The Wiki says intro price of the EX was $1200, but maybe that was with a monitor or just the intro price?

 

 

I got the prices from commercials archived on YT. The reason I chose those 2 specific models is because they have the same form factor as the A500 and were aimed at similar markets (home and small business) and games was a selling point for the Tandy. Also, some of the other Tandy 1000 machines, though XT class machines, had 286 chips in them.

I don't know how much the ram upgrade boards were, but I'm pretty sure they didn't need proprietary chips to fully populate the board. I saw one that had 128k on it, but allowed an addition 256k to be installed, bringing the total to 640 (including the 256 on the MB). I don't think the Tandy chipset steals any of that ram and that they have their own ram.

 

As for a HD, I'm not sure if the Silicon Valley ADP50T (T for Tandy) will work in these two models, but according to the Tandy FAQ, they are compatible with all of the Tandy 1000s including the original (perhaps there is an adapter?) to install a hard disk. Not sure how much it was at the time, but adding a hard disk to an A500 was not cheap either. Amiga stuff tended to be really expensive.

 

I'm pretty sure one of these two machines came out in 87, the same year as the 500. $849 monitor included doesn't seem to be that bad.

 

I think the DOS version that gives trouble is DOS 4. Personally, 3.3 is fine for this machine, though I'm pretty sure 5 and 6.x work with them. IMHO, DOS 5 was the best version of DOS ever made.

 

I was unaware of the lack of a DMA controller caused compatibility issues.

 

I never got into PCs until the early 90s and I got my first Amiga around the y2k! But I think I would have chosen the Tandy had I not been a poor teenager in 1987 and had wanted a new computer and could afford one. Though it was later on, I really liked DOS and I had a pretty good mastery of it. It really wasn't until long file names made the DOS prompt unwieldy that I stopped using DOS Unlike normal people, I always thought the command line interface was very straight forward and easy to use, while GUI interfaces were difficult, repetitive, cumbersome and slow. I used to have to file these reports on a terminal and once you got used to it, you could get 30 or 40 strokes past what is on the screen and there was nothing to slow you down. Then they switched to a GUI and what once took a minute or 2 now took 10 minutes. Things you could just type in, now become drop-down fields and you always had to wait for the computer before going to the next field or typing in a free-hand part of the report.

[christo930]

The Amiga

 

My friend had a Tandy 1000, and compatibility was a problem. These days you expect a PC clone to just run everything, but back then, that wasn't always the case. My friend bought a lot of games for it that just didn't work. Performance wasn't great either.

 

My Atari ST easily blew it away, the Amiga would have as well.

Though I never owned (or supported) a Tandy when they were still viable machines, I found that compatibility issues were really overblown back in the day and were largely used as an excuse to not give support, especially for things like games. People were always bitching about incompatibility with anything other than an IBM PC. I supported many different brands of computers (though mostly running productivity applications) under many different OSes in many different environments and compatibility just wasn't ever an issue. I suppose it's possible that the procurement people did thorough testing before ordering said PCs, but I just haven't seen this problem, even back in the 90s. In the rare instance something would pop up, it was usually a configuration problem like a TSR that didn't play well with others or other configuration issues.

 

Two instances of true compatibility were QEMM and certain Cyrix processors. QUEMM could give you ridiculous amounts of conventional memory with some trickery, but had major compatibility issues, One of the later Cyrix processors also had some compatibility issues.

 

Though admittedly, having an XT class 286 might very well cause certain troubles.

[spacecadet]

Tandy 1000's are interesting machines. They're just not as "exotic" as Amigas, so I think a lot of people pass them over when thinking of classic computers nowadays, and they did back then too! In 1987, there were a lot of PC clones available already. I don't think these "wedge shaped" all-in-one machines ever really took off in the PC market. The PC market was always all about expandability. People really gloss over that fact nowadays, but I specifically remember in those days that a lot of people thought a computer was a toy (or worse) if it didn't have expansion slots. You bought a PC specifically because you cared about expandability. If you didn't care about expandability, then you probably weren't a PC person. I can't imagine these two Tandy systems sold all that well at the time relative to other PC clones. I know I didn't know a single person with one of them in the 80's. I did know a few people with Amigas.

 

I have a Tandy 1000RL HD, which is a bit later of a machine but is barely any more powerful. It has a 9.56mhz 8086 and 512KB. It also has Tandy graphics and sound, but the thing about those modes is that the CPU and graphics hardware was too slow to really do much with them. Stuff like the Sierra On-line adventure games would work ok, because they were *dog slow* - have you tried those games recently? Holy crap, I can't believe we used to play stuff like that and enjoy it. I fall asleep on the first screen. But anything fast just *chugs* on Tandy graphics, even with a 9.56 8086. Some games also have weird limitations when using Tandy graphics, like Lemmings has no music and Wings of Fury won't let you use the joystick. So you have to just go back to CGA anyway.

 

So personally, I'd say if your goal was to play games, I'd have bought an Amiga back then. If you did need to run some PC software but you also wanted to play an occasional game, then one of those Tandy models may have been a better choice. But really, a proper PC with expansion slots was probably a better option than either one by then, if you could afford it.

[christo930]

Tandy 1000's are interesting machines. They're just not as "exotic" as Amigas, so I think a lot of people pass them over when thinking of classic computers nowadays, and they did back then too! In 1987, there were a lot of PC clones available already. I don't think these "wedge shaped" all-in-one machines ever really took off in the PC market. The PC market was always all about expandability. People really gloss over that fact nowadays, but I specifically remember in those days that a lot of people thought a computer was a toy (or worse) if it didn't have expansion slots. You bought a PC specifically because you cared about expandability. If you didn't care about expandability, then you probably weren't a PC person. I can't imagine these two Tandy systems sold all that well at the time relative to other PC clones. I know I didn't know a single person with one of them in the 80's. I did know a few people with Amigas.

 

I have a Tandy 1000RL HD, which is a bit later of a machine but is barely any more powerful. It has a 9.56mhz 8086 and 512KB. It also has Tandy graphics and sound, but the thing about those modes is that the CPU and graphics hardware was too slow to really do much with them. Stuff like the Sierra On-line adventure games would work ok, because they were *dog slow* - have you tried those games recently? Holy crap, I can't believe we used to play stuff like that and enjoy it. I fall asleep on the first screen. But anything fast just *chugs* on Tandy graphics, even with a 9.56 8086. Some games also have weird limitations when using Tandy graphics, like Lemmings has no music and Wings of Fury won't let you use the joystick. So you have to just go back to CGA anyway.

 

So personally, I'd say if your goal was to play games, I'd have bought an Amiga back then. If you did need to run some PC software but you also wanted to play an occasional game, then one of those Tandy models may have been a better choice. But really, a proper PC with expansion slots was probably a better option than either one by then, if you could afford it.

 

While they don't get the level of love Amigas get, there seems to be a pretty healthy collectors market for them (not necessarily these wedge computers). While there were certainly better computers, I think it would have been difficult to beat the price. Here's one for $999 with monitor in 1984

 

They had 8 bit data paths that really helped slow them down and the 4.77mhz 8088 was no speed demon. I guess you get what you pay for, though the 5150 was no speed demon either.

For most types of work, they were probably better than an Amiga and maybe somewhere on par with a NES as far as games went. There seems to be quite a few games for them or compatible with them.

 

While I only knew one guy who had one (his father's) when I was young, there seems to be a lot of people who say some Tandy 1000 was their first computer (though few of my friends at the time owned a computer or were interested in owning one. I was kind of the geek of the group). Also, a lot of the CGA games had better graphics through the composite port, which the early Tandys all had, so it opens up a lot more games for it.

[Osgeld]

they were popular around here, and there was a radio shack with fairly knoledgeable sales people (for sales people) with in 10 min of any direction you pointed at

 

+ pc software + little extra sound / graphics made the whole tandy pc series an attractive package for someone who wanted one box to do work and home things

 

amiga and atari, yea they were at toys r us right next to the xegs, the 65Xe the C64 and some who give a shit video tape things, your entire sales pitch was printed on a 4x6 index card and your support was hoping someone would fetch it for you from the security cage

 

ffs tandy had a mostly fully featured office suite in rom by the 286 machines, one box for one price and it did most of what people actually wanted without even loading a disk was a big selling point back then

Edited June 23, 2018 by Osgeld

[Turbo-Torch]

I bought a brand new EX back in the day. It was on sale for $599 ($200 off) in 1987. The HX did NOT come out at the same time, it was released in 1988 and at that time the EX had a price drop to $599 and the HX was $699.

Everything was always on sale for those machines. The 3½" external floppy drive had a list price of $279 but was constantly on sale for $99. The 5¼" external floppy was normally $249 but almost always available for $149. Odd that it was more than the 3½" drive.

The Memory Plus Expansion Adapter was not expensive even at their regular price. For $129 it added DMA, bumped memory to 384K and added two more expansion slots. Additional standard memory then bumped it up to 640K. I believe I paid $79 for that adapter.

It didn't come standard with an RS232 and I wasn't happy paying $79 for that.

I used a CM4 color monitor that was on clearance for $99 when the CM5 was released.

 

That computer NEVER had any compatibility issues! I had free access to two of the largest BBSs in the world, one being Rusty & Edie's which allowed me access endless amounts of software...I probably had 500+ disks full of commercial software. With 640K, it ran anything I threw at it.

I had been using BBSs with my Model III for at least 4 years before buying the EX in '87. BBSs and software was the main point and made it a no brainer to choose the EX over an Amiga. There were no Amiga BBSs in my area, never once logged into one. Lots of Atari, C64, some TRS-80 and then endless amounts of IBM. While the Atari and C64 were usually run by kids after their parents went to sleep, the IBM systems were the big ones with hundreds of megs of storage and multi lines.

[spacecadet]

While they don't get the level of love Amigas get, there seems to be a pretty healthy collectors market for them (not necessarily these wedge computers). While there were certainly better computers, I think it would have been difficult to beat the price. Here's one for $999 with monitor in 1984

That's the original 1000, which launched the line. It's a mix of PCjr and XT. It has no DMA controller, like the PCjr, plus the PCjr's graphics and sound modes (which is what would later be called "Tandy" graphics), but it had 3 standard ISA slots and used XT-class peripherals.

 

It certainly would have been a great deal in 1984, when even most PC clones still cost thousands of dollars. If you need to take your work home with you, like this guy in the commercial says he does, then it was probably the cheapest way to do that at the time.

 

They had 8 bit data paths that really helped slow them down and the 4.77mhz 8088 was no speed demon. I guess you get what you pay for, though the 5150 was no speed demon either.

For most types of work, they were probably better than an Amiga and maybe somewhere on par with a NES as far as games went. There seems to be quite a few games for them or compatible with them.

The 5150 was no speed demon in 1984, but then it was 3 years old by then. By 1985 IBM (and other clone makers) had 8mhz 286 machines on the market, and by 1987 they had fully 32 bit 386's. So the Tandy 1000EX would have been considered ridiculously low end at that point, with a 7mhz 8088 and no expansion slots. It wouldn't have been able to run *current* games of the time very well; it would be like having a Core i3 with a GeForce 6600 or something today.

 

I think the 1000 models with more expansion slots and drive bays could have been a good deal in those days, but I don't think the low-end, closed systems versions were a very good value even with their lower prices, especially given that they came later and were relatively less powerful. Sometimes cheap is just cheap. I think they're more interesting *today* because you can buy one and see what you can run on it, but that wouldn't have been fun when these were current. Nobody wants to buy a brand new machine and find out that it's not powerful enough to run the latest game they want to play.

 

btw, it might not be *the* most representative game but one of the titles I always test old PC's with is OutRun, just because I like it and it's simple to play. (Really too easy, actually.) It also relies on a sense of speed and fluidity for gameplay, so I feel like it's a good test. It was released in 1987, so would have been one of the titles someone who just bought a 1000EX might try. My 9.56mhz 8086 1000RL absolutely chugs on it in 16 color Tandy Graphics mode. It's unplayable. It's ok in CGA or monochrome. So I can't imagine a 7.5mhz 8088 would have done better. For current games like that, the Amiga would definitely have been better.

Edited June 23, 2018 by spacecadet

[christo930]

That's the original 1000, which launched the line. It's a mix of PCjr and XT. It has no DMA controller, like the PCjr, plus the PCjr's graphics and sound modes (which is what would later be called "Tandy" graphics), but it had 3 standard ISA slots and used XT-class peripherals.

 

It certainly would have been a great deal in 1984, when even most PC clones still cost thousands of dollars. If you need to take your work home with you, like this guy in the commercial says he does, then it was probably the cheapest way to do that at the time.

 

The 5150 was no speed demon in 1984, but then it was 3 years old by then. By 1985 IBM (and other clone makers) had 8mhz 286 machines on the market, and by 1987 they had fully 32 bit 386's. So the Tandy 1000EX would have been considered ridiculously low end at that point, with a 7mhz 8088 and no expansion slots. It wouldn't have been able to run *current* games of the time very well; it would be like having a Core i3 with a GeForce 6600 or something today.

 

I think the 1000 models with more expansion slots and drive bays could have been a good deal in those days, but I don't think the low-end, closed systems versions were a very good value even with their lower prices, especially given that they came later and were relatively less powerful. Sometimes cheap is just cheap. I think they're more interesting *today* because you can buy one and see what you can run on it, but that wouldn't have been fun when these were current. Nobody wants to buy a brand new machine and find out that it's not powerful enough to run the latest game they want to play.

 

btw, it might not be *the* most representative game but one of the titles I always test old PC's with is OutRun, just because I like it and it's simple to play. (Really too easy, actually.) It also relies on a sense of speed and fluidity for gameplay, so I feel like it's a good test. It was released in 1987, so would have been one of the titles someone who just bought a 1000EX might try. My 9.56mhz 8086 1000RL absolutely chugs on it in 16 color Tandy Graphics mode. It's unplayable. It's ok in CGA or monochrome. So I can't imagine a 7.5mhz 8088 would have done better. For current games like that, the Amiga would definitely have been better.

A Dell 386 with color monitor (EGA) started at $4,799 An XT class with 20MB HD EGA was $1699, the low end 286 with EGA is $2300 https://www.turbinecar.com/Byte-1990/Dell1987.htm

 

The 386 may be slightly on the high side, but not by much. I seriously doubt that anyone was spending this kind of money to primarily play games. Most of these computers were being sold to businesses that could write them off. Even as late as 1994, very few people had PCs or MACs in their house. The market penetration in homes was still in single digit percentages (from what I recall, it was about 4-5%). This changed VERY rapidly over the next two years and has risen to maybe 20-30% by 1996, and that was largely the internet which was hyped to death.

 

My Tandy 1000 is a 286, so I can't really use it as a benchmark. I used to have a Compaq luggable XT class computer, but I sold it years ago. In fact, I bought it i n 1993, just 5 years after 1987 for $100 and it had a hard drive! That was $3600 new and only came with 128k (mine had 640k) in 83. (the screen was excellent and perfectly clear and readable and had CGA Hercules compatible graphics for a 720 pixel display). I wish I still had that.

 

I think the Tandy just had different types of games than the Amiga. The Amiga could handle graphics and sound in a way that PCs just couldn't. IIRC, Super Frog for the PC requires a 486!

[Turbo-Torch]

By 1985 IBM (and other clone makers) had 8mhz 286 machines on the market, and by 1987 they had fully 32 bit 386's.

 

Serious question...how old were you in 1987 and what type of computer were you using?

 

In my world of the Chicagoland area, most people were using the C64 and Atari 8 bits and a floppy drive was a luxury item that the luckiest of kids had. Adults with money had an 8088 XT or clone and was often used when bringing their work home.

Tandy made it affordable with the EX and HX. For under $1000 you could have 2 disk drives, 640K along with better graphics, sound and speed than most clones at twice the price.

 

In 1987 a Tandy 3000 with HD was $4,300 and that's a 286! That's nearly $10,000 today...did you have that kind of money back then?

A loaded Compaq 386 Deskpro was $12,500 (or over $28,000 today) LOL! I'd love to know how many households had a 286 or 386 system back in '87.

 

And FWIW Outrun for the PC came out in '89 (2 years after the EX) and my EX ran it just fine along with Test Drive and all the expansion packs.

I later bought a new 1000SL so that I could add a 32 Meg hard card and Sound Blaster. I had no issues with its 8086 running games.

[Osgeld]

I was 8 my parents had an apple IIe

 

that thing probally cost as much as a good used car (or a really cheap new econobox car) but my dad ran his entire biz off of it ... it was not for games, that's what the colecovision was for

Edited June 24, 2018 by Osgeld

[Turbo-Torch]

I was 8 my parents had an apple IIe

 

that thing probally cost as much as a good used car (or a really cheap new econobox car) but my dad ran his entire biz off of it ... it was not for games, that's what the colecovision was for

 

Exactly. My best friend was still using his IIe in '87 (still has it too).

 

I remember browsing the giant Computer Shopper magazines and the 286 and 386 systems advertised were a fantasy...no different than looking at ads and articles for the latest Lamborghini and Ferrari.

 

I don't know of any PC games from the mid to late 80s that required a business class machine that cost as much as a modest new car.

[christo930]

 

Serious question...how old were you in 1987 and what type of computer were you using?

 

In my world of the Chicagoland area, most people were using the C64 and Atari 8 bits and a floppy drive was a luxury item that the luckiest of kids had. Adults with money had an 8088 XT or clone and was often used when bringing their work home.

Tandy made it affordable with the EX and HX. For under $1000 you could have 2 disk drives, 640K along with better graphics, sound and speed than most clones at twice the price.

 

In 1987 a Tandy 3000 with HD was $4,300 and that's a 286! That's nearly $10,000 today...did you have that kind of money back then?

A loaded Compaq 386 Deskpro was $12,500 (or over $28,000 today) LOL! I'd love to know how many households had a 286 or 386 system back in '87.

 

And FWIW Outrun for the PC came out in '89 (2 years after the EX) and my EX ran it just fine along with Test Drive and all the expansion packs.

I later bought a new 1000SL so that I could add a 32 Meg hard card and Sound Blaster. I had no issues with its 8086 running games.

 

In 1985 I was 15 and I had a C64 and a Datasette, The C64 was a Christmas present and the Datasette I already had that I purchased with my own money for a VIC-20 I bought. There was a guy in my area who used kids to sell flowers on the street corners and during certain holidays he needed extra guys and a friend of mine hooked me up. I worked Fri evening, Saturday and Sunday and Earned just over $200, which was enough to buy the disk drive. My parents had just bought be the computer that year for Christmas so there was exactly zero chance of getting a disk drive anytime soon any other way:) I got sunburned as shit too standing in the intersection selling flowers.

 

During that particular period I didn't know anyone with a PC. Very few people even had game consoles and the ones who did had the old ones like me. 1985 was just a totally dead year for home video games unless it was 8 bit computers.

[Turbo-Torch]

Good story, many people were still using cassette storage throughout the 80s.

 

In June of '87 I turned 17 and had already been working 30+ hours a week in a grocery store for a year. When the EX went on sale for $599, I saw my chance to leave TRS-DOS enter the MS-DOS world. At first I was using the composite out hooked to a TV but got lucky and found a CM4 color monitor on clearance for $100.

Within a few months I had the system where I wanted. Color monitor, 640K (DMA), RS232 card and a 3½" external drive. All that and I still had one expansion slot open. Sure the slots were proprietary, but I think some people were (and still are) under the impression the EX/HX had no expansion slots at all. Only major thing it lacked was a HD kit, but there were many 3rd party companies that produced them.

 

Cost for all that was slightly under $1,000. Now yes, I could have bought the "expandable" SX for $1,000 right from the beginning. I would have had NO MONITOR, 256K, one disk drive and no RS232 to use with my modem. Basically I would have been right where I started with the EX but for $400 more, and $400 was a hell of a lot of money to a teenager back in '87. The car I was driving cost $800 and was very nice.

 

Now if my parents were mega rich and buying things for me, a $6,000 286 setup would have been sweet...gotta have a high end monitor, 60 Meg HD and blazing 2400 baud modem too! I also would have been driving around in a new Porsche instead of a Chevy Vega.

 

As to the Amiga, I had little experience with it since Commodore didn't really put it out there. My friend who had the IIe was hell bent on getting one but that never happened. While stores like Sears, Wards and Service Merchandise offered C64, Atari, Apple clones and countless XT clones, I don't recall ever seeing an Amiga.

One day our mall had a big computer expo and there was to be an Amiga booth so we made sure to get there early. I remember being somewhat impressed with the bouncing ball until I found out it wasn't a game, only a demo. I also remember a short video clip of a blond woman saying something and it was on a model that cost over $2,000.

Then there was the software. Go into a place like Egg Head and you have row after row of software titles for IBM, Apple, C64 and Atari. The Amiga section looked like the Betamax corner of a video rental store in the 90s.

And as I mentioned earlier, where were the Amiga BBS systems with all the freeware, shareware and warez?

Edited June 24, 2018 by Turbo-Torch

[christo930]

Good story, many people were still using cassette storage throughout the 80s.

 

In June of '87 I turned 17 and had already been working 30+ hours a week in a grocery store for a year. When the EX went on sale for $599, I saw my chance to leave TRS-DOS enter the MS-DOS world. At first I was using the composite out hooked to a TV but got lucky and found a CM4 color monitor on clearance for $100.

Within a few months I had the system where I wanted. Color monitor, 640K (DMA), RS232 card and a 3½" external drive. All that and I still had one expansion slot open. Sure the slots were proprietary, but I think some people were (and still are) under the impression the EX/HX had no expansion slots at all. Only major thing it lacked was a HD kit, but there were many 3rd party companies that produced them.

 

Cost for all that was slightly under $1,000. Now yes, I could have bought the "expandable" SX for $1,000 right from the beginning. I would have had NO MONITOR, 256K, one disk drive and no RS232 to use with my modem. Basically I would have been right where I started with the EX but for $400 more, and $400 was a hell of a lot of money to a teenager back in '87. The car I was driving cost $800 and was very nice.

 

Now if my parents were mega rich and buying things for me, a $6,000 286 setup would have been sweet...gotta have a high end monitor, 60 Meg HD and blazing 2400 baud modem too! I also would have been driving around in a new Porsche instead of a Chevy Vega.

 

As to the Amiga, I had little experience with it since Commodore didn't really put it out there. My friend who had the IIe was hell bent on getting one but that never happened. While stores like Sears, Wards and Service Merchandise offered C64, Atari, Apple clones and countless XT clones, I don't recall ever seeing an Amiga.

One day our mall had a big computer expo and there was to be an Amiga booth so we made sure to get there early. I remember being somewhat impressed with the bouncing ball until I found out it wasn't a game, only a demo. I also remember a short video clip of a blond woman saying something and it was on a model that cost over $2,000.

Then there was the software. Go into a place like Egg Head and you have row after row of software titles for IBM, Apple, C64 and Atari. The Amiga section looked like the Betamax corner of a video rental store in the 90s.

And as I mentioned earlier, where were the Amiga BBS systems with all the freeware, shareware and warez?

 

Prices were just way too high in 87, especially for young people. I turned 18 in July of 87 and I wanted to buy a car and was looking at one that was about $1000. I called around for insurance and they were all around $3,500 a year for the bare minimum insurance! I live in one the most expensive car insurance markets in America and it was way worse back in the 80s. My parents had stipulations in their contracts that nobody else in the household could drive the cars. My sister had moved about an hour away and paid like $50 month for car insurance. It was so bad that people from Philadelphia would register their cars in NJ (the highest insurance state in the country) to save money. Needless to say, I lacked both a PC and car insurance! What kid can afford $300 a month just for car insurance?

 

The next year after the disk drive, I also got a job in a grocery store. Got paid minimum wage and had to pay union dues to earn MW ($3.35/hr)

 

I was able to get some software for free from BBSs and copying disks from friends or even the store, because back then some of them would take returns. Programming was far more accessible on the 8 bit machines as well. Lack of money is also an inventive to learn!

 

I'm sure there were quite a few kids who were very happy with their Tandy. They probably wouldn't have had anything at all without it because computers were just so expensive.

[rpiguy9907]

It cannot be understated how HUGE of a difference the extra 128K video ram makes in the TX, TL and TL/2.

 

See the attached benchmarks - the speed difference is amazing on the order of 3X to 4X speed increase.

 

Tandy Graphics simply stole too much bandwidth from the processor.

 

Games that were previously unplayable on Tandy graphics run at reasonable speed.

Edited June 26, 2018 by rpiguy9907

[Casey]

While I didn't have a Tandy 1000 EX or HX (I wanted an HX bad when they first came out but couldn't afford it), I did have a Tandy 1000 RL, then RLX (286) then RSX (386) in quick succession and had no problems running anything on any of these machines. The 1000 RL, when upgraded to 768K of RAM, which gave 128K to the video subsystem, had no trouble with games using the Tandy graphics modes. I think the only issue I ever ran into was trying to run Windows 3.0 on the RLX - there was something special about the mouse that needed a specific mouse driver to work right in Windows.

 

As a former Commodore user (I had a 128), I did want the Amiga 500 when software started to dry up for the 64, but by then, it was clear a PC was the way to go so I went that route.