Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing! And this is the Tandy 1000, one of the
more influential PC compatibles of the 1980s, especially in terms of gaming. And
this was sold by RadioShack at the end of 1984.
*startup fans whir, beeps occur*
Not a very loud machine! And it started at a price of $1199 for a base unit like
this one with 128 kilobytes of RAM and a 4.77 megahertz Intel
8088 CPU and one double-sided floppy disk drive. There were plenty of later
versions of course but this one right here is an original 1000. Specifically
this one is the 1000A which was a motherboard revision that corrected a
few issues and provided some handy new upgrade options. And yes, I've talked
about more capable Tandys like the RL/HD in the past. But I think it's worth
taking a closer look at the original model since I find it fascinating and
it's also just becoming increasingly hard to find. Plus I just love the look
of these original machines they have a very friendly aesthetic and fewer angles
and more curves than anything IBM was doing. Which is notable since the 1000
was initially advertised as having "more features than an IBM PC for $1,000 less."
And it was true! The Tandy 1000 featured superior sound and graphics capabilities
compared to the IBM PC/XT, which when similarly equipped could run at least
another thousand dollars. Yet, amusingly they accomplished this not by imitating
the XT but rather by cloning the IBM PCjr -- which was IBM's ill-fated home
computer released in March of 1984. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here.
Because to understand the triumph of the Tandy 1000 you need to understand the
drawbacks of the TRS-80 line. You see when RadioShack first started selling
the TRS-80 in 1977 they were one of the few big players in the home computer
market in the USA, and they had plenty of success with the TRS-80 machines over
the next four years. But when the IBM PC came along in 1981 the market was shaken
up in an irreversible way. Suddenly the focus shifted from machines like the
TRS-80 Model 4 running the CP/M operating system to IBM PCs running
MS-DOS. And so begun, the clone war has. Tandy's first attempt at an IBM PC-like
was the Tandy TRS-80 Model 2000. Now there's a mouthful of a name. While the
2000 was built to run MS-DOS and sold rather well, almost no programs from the
IBM PC ran on it due to its differing architecture and
BIOS. Meaning consumers who preferred high PC compatibility looked to its
competitors. So Tandy began work on the 1200 and the 1000: two IBM PC compatibles.
The 1200 was a PC XT clone geared towards business users and the 1000
cloned the exciting new PCjr for the home market.
But while the 1000 was highly compatible with PCjr software, Tandy made some
smart adjustments to the hardware side of things. They removed the costly and
underutilized dual cartridge slots, added three PC bus expansion slots, and
replaced the awful infrared chiclet keyboard with a wired a full travel
keyboard. Representing Tandy, Ed Judg even described the Tandy 1000 as "what
the PCjr should have been" at one point. But being aware of the PCjr's
compatibility failings he clarified that by saying "we tried to maintain as much
compatibility with the jr and the PC as we could, but if it came down to being
more compatible with one than the other we leaned toward the PC." But also towards
the TRS-80 because the 1000 was intended as an upgrade path for existing TRS-80
owners, featuring ports that were capable of using the same keyboards, joysticks,
displays, printers, and various other input/output devices as the TRS-80 line.
Though while this was a great selling point for current RadioShack customers
what really made the 1000 so successful with PC gamers for a time was amusingly
the components of the failed PCjr it was copying.
Namely the graphics and sound.
*Silpheed plays with graphics and sound being all awesome*
Compared to the ridiculously limited MDA, CGA, and PC speaker sound of the PC and
the XT, the PCjr (and by extension the Tandy 1000) was miles ahead with its
16-color graphics and SN76489 tone generator. The odd
twist of fate here is that while the PCjr was a nasty failure for IBM, the
Tandy 1000 went on to become a huge success for RadioShack. So much so that
its graphics and sound modes became known as "Tandy compatible" instead. Talk
about a final death blow for the PCjr. I love stories like this and I was super
psyched to finally play with an original Tandy 1000 as a result. Unfortunately,
when I first got this machine, as shown in unboxing a while back, it had a few
problems, besides just being a bit dirty. Not only was I expecting it to be the
more capable SX model, which it wasn't, but it was also supposed to have a
working floppy drive, which it didn't. Thankfully getting inside the Tandy 1000
is quite simple. There are just two screws on the front of the case here and
then it just slides off, revealing a rather lovely interior. But unfortunately
getting to the floppy disk drive is much more of a pain. Everything is attached to
this metal assembly that's just really annoying to work with. There are three
screws on front, one screw around the side, and then you have to remove this
big plastic panel on the back that's covering up more screws. And then two
more come out right there. Thankfully they are at least standard flat head
screws. Unlike these that are actually attached to the floppy drive itself,
which are 7/32 sized hex head screws, or bolts. Not only more annoying to work
with but I don't have any tips that can convert to that size that are small
enough to fit in this little slot here. So you kinda have to balance it in place
and then get your driver in there, it's just it's an annoying thing. Anyway once
the floppy drive assembly comes out of there then you can get to the disk drive
itself. And then there's just a little metal piece on top of there which
thankfully unscrews normally, and you can get into the floppy drive here. And I was
just gonna clean the heads with a little bit of a swab alcohol tip thing right
there, and hopefully that'll be fine. And while I'm at it I'm gonna replace those
annoying hex head things with standard Phillips head screws. Because screw that
I don't wanna mess those again. And we'll put in the Tandy
version of MS-DOS 2.11 disk here that it came with. And lo and behold it works
just fine now! Just put in the time and date, and we can read the directory and
do whatever we need to. Yay working floppy drive! Now to get to
the cleaning of this and we'll have to remove the disk drive itself to see the
rest of the motherboard. And now as I mentioned earlier it's quite a
delightful looking thing, I think. Just a very nicely laid out, pleasing board
design. It's a nice blend of simplicity and complexity, I don't know I just like
looking at this thing. But it would look a whole lot better if it was clean so I
got a shop vac here and we're just gonna dust this thing out as much as I
can. And hey we can already see things a little
bit better here, including the 8088 CPU by Intel here. Although that is indeed an
AMD logo on the chip. Yeah this was back in the day when AMD was manufacturing
processors for Intel, not just making their own based on the compatibility of
Intel. This is an Intel chip under AMD's name. And you can also see that second socket
above it and that is a spot to put the 8087 math coprocessor if you wanted. One
of the features that was added to this 1000A revision. Now I thought that these
little specks were like some more bits of something to be dusted away, but
apparently not. They just appeared to be on the board.
So really the interior of this thing wasn't too terribly dirty, just had a
layering of dust. So I just went over everything with an anti-static brush and
just kind of loosened up the crap that was kind of caked on there and then went
over it with a vacuum again and everything seemed to be pretty good.
And yeah check out the view of the Tandy speaker there, it's a little larger than
the one that's on the IBM PC and it's ridiculously loud. Also quite enjoyable
is this power switch. Needed a little bit of a dusting as well and yeah. It's not
as enjoyable to me as say, the IBM PC's big clunking red one. Still though, feels
pretty nice, a lot better than modern power switches. Really the biggest thing
that needed cleaning on this machine, at least on the base unit, was the fan in
the back. And yes it does have an exhaust fan -- many PCs didn't at the time, but this
one does. And yeah I'm just glad that this thing was in such nice shape when I
got it. Just a light dusting for everything from the tray bracket metal
thing that holds the floppy drives to the
plastic in the back of the computer just needed some light dusting. And there we
go! And since we're in here may as well do some quality of life upgrades.
Starting with this 1MB RAM board from Lo-Tech. I've bought a few of
these now and they're really handy for upgrading computers that don't have a
lot of conventional RAM. In this case since it's an original 1000 it only has
128K of RAM. Not much at all, so I configured this to upgrade it to
640K. And once its installed in there and you boot up the computer and lo and
behold you have the full 640K! Which "ought to be enough for anyone," har har.
Unfortunately this does not add DMA to the system so it still lacks that. And I
also have another Lo-Tech card here that I want to install, this is the
XT-IDE, or really their version of it: the XT-CF ISA compact flash adapter. This
right here will allow me to use one of these IDE to CF adapters and then a
compact flash card as a hard drive. So you just stick one of those in there
then stick the card in place and then attach it to the back. I've got one of
these that installs to the rear bracket. You can use any of them but I just find
this one to be rather convenient. And then connect it with a cable there and
tada! We have a hard disk solution so we can boot directly into DOS without
having to rely on floppy disks or anything like that. I'm actually not sure
if this will run on the original 1000 but I know it does on the 1000A. And
yeah this is not one of the computers that has DOS or Deskmate or anything
built into the ROM, you needed to boot from something. So this is a nice
convenient solution in my case. And yeah check it out: now we can boot into
GW-BASIC from the DOS installation that I put on the compact flash card, allowing
me to run one of my "favorite" programs of all time. And we can also run Tandy
Deskmate version 1.01 which this came with. Now this is just a
text-based version, this is before Deskmate went all graphical. It's just in
black and white, it's incredibly simple. But it does allow you to view files for
text and print out things that way, and also allows you to manipulate some
worksheets to do budgets and stuff, and kind of a Rolodex filer system for your
clients, and a calendar for your agenda. You know, business-oriented kind of
home management office type of stuff. It was a nice bonus and came with Tandy
computers for a very long time. Although every single one of them that came after
this were better, this one is darn simplistic. Yeah I gotta cleanse my
palate a little bit with a game here let's try out Paku Paku!
*Pac Man-like sounds play*
*yep, sounds are still playing*
Oh yeah that is awesome, I love how versatile this game is even
though it's not necessarily using a whole lot that is specific to the Tandy.
In this case it is using the Tandy / PCjr sound. But it's actually using
the 160x100 16-color [text] mode of CGA here. Whereas something like King's
Quest 2 is actually using Tandy sound and graphics and just looks and sounds
amazing, check it out.
*subjectively amazing graphics and sounds proceed to play*
All right well now that we know everything is working fine then it's
time to get to the rest of the cleaning process. And yeah the case needed a
little bit of attention, there were some scuffs and grimy bits. And you could
tell where fingerprints had kind of touched a few places a little too much
over the years. So yeah just a little bit of basic cleaning with water and vinegar
and then just going over that very lightly with a magic eraser to pick up
any of that excess dust. Because this is one of those plastic cases that's not
painted, but it does have a pattern in there that mimics kind of a powder coat
paint. So you don't have to worry about lifting paint off of there you can just
sort of scrub and get the dirt out of there that way with a magic eraser.
It works pretty well in my experience as long as you don't go too hard. Honestly
sometimes even like, just water and a microfiber cloth and a tiny little bit
of baking soda will do the job, anything that's just a light abrasive
should work fine. The keyboard itself was looking quite nice as well all things
considered. It even had the cork feet still intact
on the bottom. But then around the front yeah, you can tell there were some little
droppages of like, food or drink or something, who knows what. I started
scrubbing away with my wood grain toothbrush here and then I noticed that
the little doohickeys above the function keys -- these are actually removable. I knew
that these were spots where you would slide in overlays to let you know what
the function keys did in say, Lotus 1-2-3 or whatever. But I didn't know that
this one actually had the little blank pieces installed still. So yeah I
just removed those really quick and got to scrubbing away and yeah, that's much
better. Time to scrub the rest of this thing down and enjoy the satisfying
satisfaction of cleaning old hardware.
*satisfying brushing and scrubbing sounds occur*
Well I dunno know about you but I'm feeling better. And while I was at the keyboard I
wanted to take a look at the switches underneath the keys themselves, because
somebody was telling me it's a form of mechanical something or other. I'm just a
keyboard geek so I always want to check it out. This looks a little bit different
than a lot of the photos that I've seen online but apparently these are Fujitsu
leaf springs, the third generation of them. They're not clicky keyboard keys
but they are pretty darn satisfying. They're very light to the touch but
they're not too light, and they're not terribly loud either. I mean they're just
pretty decent keyboard keys for the mid-80s like this on a computer that was
cheaper and didn't do buckling springs. I'm also quite fond of the way these
little feet in the back flip up: you actually press down on them from the top
of the keyboard and then rotate them around to make them do their thing.
I don't have any other keyboards like this and it amuses me. And no, in case you're
wondering this does not come with a mouse. That was still considered an
optional peripheral at the time. And it wasn't uncommon to see people using a
light pen instead, which it has a dedicated port for in the back of the
computer, right next to these RCA outputs for connecting to a TV instead of a
monitor. That's not to say that mice weren't available because they certainly
were, especially a couple years later. Now the original Tandy 1000 could also make
use of the TRS-80 Color Computer mice but this one is pretty much just your
standard 9-pin serial connector and works just like a regular Microsoft
compatible mouse. And yeah after wiping everything else down with a little bit
of water and vinegar once again and then inserting those little overlays into the
top of the keyboard right back where they used to be, everything is back in
order and it's a very clean-looking Tandy 1000 personal computer keyboard
once again! Now onto the monitor, which in this case is a Tandy CM-11 CGA and
Tandy compatible RGB monitor. And it's looking a bit dirty, especially this spot
right here where there's some sticker residue that looked rather stubborn.
Thankfully though this is not a problem, just gonna be using some Goo Gone
(not sponsored) and rub it in there. Let it soak for a minute then then just kind of
rub it out and then repeat quite a few times over the course of about 10
minutes. And there we go, it goes away eventually and you're left with a nice
clean looking CM-11 monitor. Well at least it will be once I wipe down the
rest of it. It was uh, quite caked in just dusty residue.
Uou couldn't really tell until you started wiping it down with paper towels
and then you looked and you're like "wow everything is really dark brown." So yeah
much cleaner now, everything is looking good, it is time to set this thing back
up and enjoy some games. So enjoy!
*lots of game sound effects and music play through the Tandy speaker*
*they just kind of keep playing for a while here*
Well that's about it for this video of the Tandy 1000 Revision A! I think it is
a wonderful little machine. I am infinitely fascinated by the Tandy
graphics and sound mode because it does what the PCjr set out to do, but then
does it so much better because they had so much better support. And yeah you
could upgrade it and do all sorts of cool things! Still though, it's obviously
rather limited. You saw Lemmings there running kind of like garbage. I mean, this
is still a 4.77 MHz 8088 CPU. And then games like
LHX here just barely run at all, even though it technically supports it.
Like it meets the minimum requirements but just barely. You know, that's to be
expected though, these are games from like the early 90s. However, everything
from 1981 to 1989 or so runs pretty darn well all things considered. And often
looks better than it would running on like a standard IBM PC or compatible
with CGA graphics. And of course you have that Tandy sound -- the sound is one of the
biggest appeals to this, and in fact I will be revisiting that in the future.
Because I have a card that actually lets you add Tandy sound to any PC-compatible,
more or less. That's gonna be fun to mess with but anyway, that is all for this
video. And I hope that you enjoyed watching what I just showed! And if you
did then perhaps you would like to stick around and check out more LGR things.
There are always new episodes coming out every Monday and Friday right here on
this very channel. And let me know in the comments what kind of experience you
have, if any, with the Tandy 1000 series of computers. I love hearing firsthand
stories about Tandy computers from back in the day.
And as always thank you very much for watching!