New Tandy 1000sx owner

[Dopy25]

I just got my hands on a Tandy 1000sx that had a memory error. Everything looks clean so I tested out the RAM. First I removed the "extra" RAM with no luck. Then I moved the "extra" RAM to the base slots and voila! It started up but prompted me for a system diskette. I do know I need to find replacement RAM chips but I want to run something on it first to know if the floppy drive even works.

 

I only got one floppy with this system and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work anyway. All signs point to 360k floppies and the one that came with it was much larger. 

 

While it's open I notice there's a hard drive installed. I have no idea how to boot from the hard drive. Is there a way? 

 

Can I boot any other software without having the system start up diskette? I assume this is DOS. Do I need DOS to start before putting in a different disk?

 

I'm at a loss here now that the system is "running".

 

Any help or information is greatly appreciated. 

 

 

[Dopy25]

Does anyone know if I can make a boot drive for this with another PC?

 

https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/

 

Everything I've found says to use DOS to partition, format, and install DOS from a floppy. Is there a way to do it without a floppy DOS?

[onlyinajeep]

I'm pretty sure if ya somebody with an already setup CF card made an image of theirs...you could write that image to a similarly sized CF card...I know a guy that might be able to help

 

Otherwise, your could probably partition with Win10/11 but not sure how you would SYS it.

 

[82-T/A]

On 8/9/2024 at 1:34 AM, Dopy25 said:

I just got my hands on a Tandy 1000sx that had a memory error. Everything looks clean so I tested out the RAM. First I removed the "extra" RAM with no luck. Then I moved the "extra" RAM to the base slots and voila! It started up but prompted me for a system diskette. I do know I need to find replacement RAM chips but I want to run something on it first to know if the floppy drive even works.

 

I only got one floppy with this system and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work anyway. All signs point to 360k floppies and the one that came with it was much larger. 

 

While it's open I notice there's a hard drive installed. I have no idea how to boot from the hard drive. Is there a way? 

 

Can I boot any other software without having the system start up diskette? I assume this is DOS. Do I need DOS to start before putting in a different disk?

 

I'm at a loss here now that the system is "running".

 

Any help or information is greatly appreciated. 

 

So... yes.

 

The Tandy 1000 SX, if memory serves me... only has two floppy drives, and does not come with a hard disk drive. You can of course add one, but what you'll need is this:

 

- 512mb DISK ON MODULE (DOM): https://www.ebay.com/itm/143410745650 ($9)

- IDE Extension Cable: https://www.ebay.com/itm/292816327320 ($4)

- XT IDE / 8-Bit ISA IDE Controller: https://www.ebay.com/itm/276278630659 ($39)

 

This effectively gives you 512 megabytes of internal storage, in the absolute fastest means possible. Everything mounts internally and takes up a single one of your (6?) card slots.

 

 

No, in order to actually do anything with it, you'll need to have a DOS disk with the DOS utilities already loaded on it. I prefer DOS 5.0 for something like this, because it's the newest and leanest DOS version you can possibly install, with the best memory management. Others will tell you to install DOS 6 or higher, and respectfully, they are wrong. I lived the time, and DOS 5.0 was the most compatible DOS version, with all the enhanced features, and least "bloated."

 

There may be something you need to run to enable the XT IDE card and configure the "hard drive." It's usually something like running DEBUG and typing something like g=c800:5 to access the memory address, and you set some parameters. But I don't think you need to even think about that... but that's worst case.

 

Anyway, booting from a DOS 5.0 disk, you then run FDISK from the boot disk. You select "create new partition on logical drive" and it should automatically find it. This will come up as disk 0 or something (going by memory). You then basically allocate all 512mb to it. Don't be concerned about only having 512mb. It's the largest logical partition you can have (around there) for a DOS 5.0 system. And to that point, you'll never be able to fill 512mbs with software that will actually run on the 1000 SX ... or I would say, that you would WANT to run on that system. So 512mb is like... absolutely the most you can possibly need / want. 

 

Anyway, once you've "FDISK'ed" the hard drive, you then exit (it may reboot), and you still boot from the DOS disk, and in DOS, you type "FORMAT /S C:" ... it'll be all like... "World is going to end and you'll lose everything..." there's nothing on there so don't worry. Just don't accidentally put A:... it should say C:, otherwise you're wiping your DOS disk, which isn't good. Now, this should only take a couple of minutes, but when it's done, you'll have effectively loaded the essentials for DOS on your C drive, and it should boot naturally now without needing a boot disk.

 

Don't know how much you know about DOS, but you'll still want to copy all the utilities... like EDIT.COM and QBASIC.EXE, and all those other files. If you can, try to now "install" DOS from your DOS install disks if you have them, or copy the dos utilities if you've gotten them from somewhere else. Beyond that, you'll also want to create a CONFIG.SYS and an AUTOEXEC.BAT on the root "C" folder.

 

Autoexec.bat should look something like this:

 

prompt=$p$g

Set Path=C:\;C:\DOS;

 

 

And that's all you really need until you start doing some other stuff.

 

for CONFIG.SYS, it should look something like this:

 

DOS=UMB

FILES=30

BUFFERS=30

 

 

I've not done this in like 30 years, so I may be a little off... but that should get you started. You can then basically load and install any game you want. I'd also recommend attaching a secondary CF-Card solution that allows you to copy things back and forth from your main computer to your Tandy 1000. Some people recommend you just run off the CF card, but I disagree... it's not as quick, and you'll have better performance and reliability with a DOM.

 

 

Keep in mind, what makes the Tandy 1000 particularly popular (compared to possibly other XT machines), is that it has "Tandy Voice" which is a 3-Voice polyphony built in sound card... which sounds quite cool... better than the default PC Speaker that comes on most IBM/PC Compatibles. They also came with dual joystick ports that allow you to use some of the cool joysticks from back in the day.

 

 

If you already knew all of this, and I totally missed the point of your question, then I apologize... hahah...

 

 

EDIT: Also... if you don't already have DOS 5.0, or a means to burn a 5.25" floppy from somewhere else, then you'll want to buy something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/355813480212

That is a BASIC DOS 5.0 installation disk set. It's only two disks, so it has all the core DOS tools on it, and it's what you need to boot into DOS. I don't know how old you are, but if this is the first time you're really using DOS... it's not hard, but I'd imagine it's probably somewhat like trying to learn to use Linux as an adult. If you didn't grow up with DOS or something like that, it can be a little bit challenging at first. It's second nature for me since my first computer was a DOS-based machine when I was 7... but I promise you that it opens up a whole new world of software opportunity and experiences that you're likely not used to, or won't really get to fully experience the fun of through DOSbox. 

 

All I can say is... (as a 46 year old)... the DOS days were a simpler time. There's so much amazing software out there, and even if it doesn't have modern Call of Duty graphics, it's still a ton of fun, and you'll really enjoy experiencing all of these things.

Edited August 13 by 82-T/A

[Dopy25]

Well I got my booting taken care of. I was able to load DOS and play Tetris.

 

But then I had a very sad moment when my Tandy got the same memory error. 

 

I bought replacement RAM and still get the same error. It's not registering anything over 128k and stopping there. 

 

Does anyone know if faulty capacitors will cause this issue? They don't look swollen or anything, but they do seem to have some oxidization on some of the legs that connect to the board. I checked voltage on the pins of the ram and they read 4.9v on pin 1(I think it's pin 1). 

 

Anyone have any ideas at all as to what can cause the memory error other than RAM? Should I find a way to test the RAM outside of the machine? 

 

Thanks for any help 

[Dopy25]

Does anyone know if this "chip tester" will give me accurate status and information on the ram chips? 

 

https://www.instructables.com/Smart-IC-Tester/

 

I also bought a set of capacitors to replace anyway, but I want to test the ram.

 

[onlyinajeep]

There's definitely one RAM chip not turning on, the left byte is writing A5 but reading A4 consistently. So whichever chip is handling the least significant bit is not working. Another RAM chip is looking flakey, there are two misreads in the right byte where the 2^1 bit is not on when it should be. 

 

Written -> Read

A2 -> A0      10100010 -> 10100000
AA -> A8      10101010 -> 10101000

I'd remove the RAM from bank 1, replace the jumper at E1-E2. Reboot, if still error replace one RAM chip at time until you get 384k

[Dopy25]

Thanks for the advice @onlyinajeep!

 

I did remove bank 2. That's only bank one with the correct jumper in place. 

 

The issue I have is the RAM chips came from AliExpress so I'm not even sure of their failure rate. I'm hoping to find a way to test them out to see if there's an obvious fail. 

 

I bought 20 ram chips and I can't get it to boot with pretty much any combination of chips. 

 

Do you think the capacitors may play a part in the bits you mentioned staying off when it should be on? 

 

I'll give it another go when I can make some time. Maybe I just wasn't swapping out the right chips in the set. At times I would get a blank screen. No cursor, no ram errors. It just sat at a blank screen. Rebooting and it would either do that again, or throw the memory error. 

 

Also, is it recommended to unplug before swapping ram, or is turning it off enough? I know newer machines have built up charge in the PSU but the power switch in this machine seems to immediately cut power to the board. 

 

Thanks for all your help!