Tandy HX/EX (not sure which) Keyboard?

[Doctorx]

I can never recall if its the HX or the EX that is the all in one unit thats super low profile sort of like an atari 800 but has a disk drive and (sometimes) a hard disk?

 

I’ve wanted one of these for the longest time but they are just stupid expensive on ebay.. As far as I know Ive never laid hands on one - and I’m curious - how is the keyboard on these? Seems like I recall most tandy/TRS computers having pretty decent keyboards… 

[ventrra]

42 minutes ago, Doctorx said:

I can never recall if its the HX or the EX that is the all in one unit thats super low profile sort of like an atari 800 but has a disk drive and (sometimes) a hard disk?

 

I’ve wanted one of these for the longest time but they are just stupid expensive on ebay.. As far as I know Ive never laid hands on one - and I’m curious - how is the keyboard on these? Seems like I recall most tandy/TRS computers having pretty decent keyboards… 

The answer to which one is the all-in-one unit is: yes. I own two HX systems and the keyboards are reasonably good. (They're not bad on the RL line which has seperate keyboards, either.)

[Doctorx]

So - since im speaking with a person who is knowledgable - did these guys have a TV/RF output or did they have a 9 pin output? And regardless of the answer to that question have there been mods come out that allow them to connect to vga/dvi/hdmi like have been developed for most old school systems?

 

next question is did they have a standard RS232 9/25 pin port?

[Turbo-Torch]

They have a composite out and CGA (actually TGA which is much better than CGA, but not quite as good as EGA).

Composite to TV sucks.  There's a TV mode/40 column text mode that you can use by holding down a function key when booting, but it's still horrible without a proper CGA monitor.

 

Games that use TGA mode are awesome and they almost always support the Tandy 3 voice sound.

 

It's an old IBM compatible PC, so you're not going to have HDMI or component mods like a game console.  They come with 256K, a parallel printer port, 2 joystick ports, external disk drive port and one internal Plus Expansion slot which is a non standard ISA.  There is a Plus Ram expansion board that allows you to expand to 640K...it also adds DMA and 2 more Plus ports.  

The EX/HX did not have an RS232 standard.  Radio Shack sold that separately as a Plus card or you could buy a 300 or 1200 baud internal modem (also Plus cards).  Unfortunately Radio Shack never sold a hard drive kit for this series.

 

Today there are riser adapters that convert the non standard ISA Plus pins to a standard ISA edge adapter.  They allow you to use standard small ISA cards which is extremely useful.  Best of all, those adapters are very inexpensive.

Technically you can now add a VGA card, but it's not very useful imo since most software utilizing VGA will need more than an 8088 processor. 

 

The Tandy Plus Expansion RAM board is rare.  If you buy an EX/HX without one already installed, you'll have a hard time finding one.  There are modern 3 in 1 replacements available.  There are pros and cons when comparing them to the original Tandy board.  They give you 640K (plus an extra 96K UMB), a serial port and an XT-CF interface.  It gives you pretty much everything you need at a very reasonable price.  Downside is it doesn't have DMA or give you any expansion slots...so you're locked out of expanding further by using ISA adapters, ISA boards or any of the Plus boards Tandy offered. 

 

My EX has the original Tandy Plus expansion board (with full 640K) and two ISA adapters plugged into it.  First slot is a dual port RS232 (port one 25 pin, port two 9 pin) and second slot has a Blue Lava XTIDE CF.  Also an external 3.5 floppy drive, a CRT CGA monitor and V20 processor upgrade.  The XTIDE is the equivalent of a superfast 2,000 MB hard drive using DOS 6.2.

 

Back to monitors...CGA is crazy rare and expensive these days!  TexElec sells a nice RGBtoHDMI converter for $120 which works perfectly with modern LCD TVs.  If you have an old VGA monitor, you can use any $2 hdmi to vga adapter with it.

 

This is a photo of the expansion port section.

 

 

Edited March 9, 2023 by Turbo-Torch

[ventrra]

Also note that the difference between Tandy graphics and EGA isn't really all that big. Most common Tandy modes are: 160×200 with 16 colors, 320×200 with 16 colors, and 640×200 with 4 colors (from 16). While EGA uses: 640×350 w/16 colors, 640×200 w/16 colors and 320×200 w/16 colors. With a standard CGA monitor the differences are more difficult to discern than some screenshots found online would lead you to believe.  

Also, as Turbo-Torch commented, the 3-voice sound from a Tandy computer is quite a bit better sounding in general than the single "beeper" sound in most computers of that era.