here is my tandy 1000sx with the cover removed this is the computer that you can see in the
background of almost all of my videos i've already done a video about this computer and
some of the upgrades i've done to it so i won't go into too much detail about it
i've also done a video about this microsoft import bus mouse card and the original microsoft mouse i
use with it and behind it is an original tandy 2400 baud internal modem card which came with
the computer when it was new i recently did a video using this card to dial several bulletin
board systems and hiding behind that is the one piece of new hardware i have in this computer
is a lo-tech one megabyte ram board which i used to add
upper memory blocks to load drivers into i may do a video about this in the future
and previously i had another piece of new hardware in this computer it was an
xt-cf card which lets you use a compact flash card as a hard drive for vintage pcs like this
but as you can see i've since replaced that with a period correct
hardcard it has a 40 megabyte seagate ide-xt hard drive on it because even though the xt-cf card
worked fine and is much faster i just prefer having a real hard drive in my vintage computers
and here hiding below the system rom bios chip
is another period correct upgrade that i'm lucky to have and that is a dallas smartwatch
module that's because this system like many xt class machines does not have an onboard
real-time clock so ordinarily every time you turn on the computer you would have to enter
the time and date otherwise the computer would always think it's midnight on january 1st 1980
so back in the day you could add one of these smartwatch modules which has a little battery
built into it which keeps the time and date and its memory so that you don't need to
enter it every time you turn on the computer but unfortunately these modules haven't been built in
probably over 20 years and those batteries in them are starting to go dead with time i'm very lucky
that this one is still working but many of them are not even if you buy one on ebay that claims
to be new there's a very good chance that it will come with a dead battery and will be unusable
luckily there is now a modern replacement for the smartwatch module which uses a user replaceable
external battery is called the smartwatch plus it's made by derek osborn in australia
better known as cybernetic systems and i'm going to show you a version of it that i
actually helped develop because he previously had a version of it
designed for the tandy 1000 ex and hx but that version would not fit into this tandy 1000sx
because it would overlap with and be obstructed by these expansion slots
so to help him develop a version that would fit this machine i sent him the board layout
of the tandy 1000sx and a photo of my machine which he used to develop this version of it
which is the new tandy 1000 smartwatch plus module which does fit this computer he also
still has the version for the ex machines it's available on tindie.com and the price is 19.95
plus shipping which because it's coming from australia cost about 15
so all told you're going to be spending about 35 dollars to get one of these
but there you can see it it's the tandy 1000 smartwatch plus and there's the socket for
the system rom bios chip and you plug this into the motherboard and then you install
a cr1632 battery which does not come with it because you can't send batteries by
airmail so you'll need to buy your own battery for it but they're readily available
so i'm going to take out this old vintage dallas smartwatch module
and replace it with this new reproduction smartwatch plus module and hopefully it
will work exactly the same so i'm going to use my chip puller to remove the system rom chip
and the original dallas smartwatch module which may or may not come out together as one piece here
so gently pull up and yes it did come out as one piece
so if your tandy did not originally have the smartwatch module installed
you would just remove the system rom chip and that would be it but since
i do have this smartwatch module i'll have to carefully pry off the rom chip
from the smartwatch module which may be better done off camera but we'll see how it goes
i don't want to bend any of the pins i think it's coming out
there we go there's the dallas smartwatch module and you can see the date code of 9622
so this has a battery in it from 1996 that's still good
but for how much longer i don't know sooner or later the battery in this thing would go
dead and i would need to replace it with this reproduction anyway so might as well do it now
now i can install the rom chip into the new smartwatch plus module
and you notice this notch which indicates the side that
has pin one on it and there's a similar notch in the rom chip so just pay attention to that
line up the side with the notch in it with the side of the socket with the notch in it
the rom chip is now installed into the smartwatch plus module i also installed a new battery and the
good thing is there's only one way to put this module in because the other way would
be blocked by these expansion cards so the only way can go in is like this
and there it is installed it may actually help to remove these expansion cards
and also the metal side bracket of the tandy case that way you can look in
from the side and double check that you're getting the pins into the socket correctly
just to make sure you don't bend any of the pins when you install it
now when i boot up the computer i still have the
driver installed for the original smartwatch module
which just loaded now you can see it set itself to january 1st 2000 because this new module
has not had its time and date set yet
and there's two programs i use for the smartwatch module there's
rtclock which loads and sets the time and date
and there's also testclk which tests to make sure the clock is working which i'm going to run now
and it's set to january first 2000 but i'm going to see if i do rtclock first you enter
the date you have to enter the leading zeros so september first will be 09/01 and you only
do two digits for the year so for 2021 you just type 21 and for the time you have to enter in 24
hour format right now it's 8:37 pm so i'm going to type in 20:37 and just 00 for the seconds
and there the clock is set september 1st 2021 20:37. i'm gonna do testclk again
to see if that's working and yes it is you can see the time advancing
but did you notice something strange september 1st
2021 is not a sunday it's a wednesday but don't worry this is not a problem with the smartwatch
chip instead the problem is caused by the old driver i was using as i'll show here
okay i found the original tandy smartwatch driver this is the updated version from the
tvdog tandy 1000 archive which is y2k compliant and now i can see the problem
whereas dos thinks the year is 2021 the smartwatch chip thinks it's 1921.
so the way to fix that is to enter the correct date and time into dos using the conventional date
and time commands as you see and then you enter the command smwclock c which copies the time and
date from dos into the smartwatch chip and there you go now it says wednesday september 1st 2021
so the lesson is ignore what i said about the rtclock and testclk programs
and instead just use the updated y2k compliant version of the smartwatch driver from the tvdog
tandy 1000 archive website which i will include a link to and now with that driver you can see
everything is fine it's showing the correct day of the week the correct date and the correct time
and then as instructed in the readme file you add the command smwclock s
to your autoexec.bat file to automatically set dos to the date
and time that's stored in the smartwatch chip whenever you turn on your computer
now that i've thought about it for a while what i believe was happening was that other program i was
using was not y2k compliant because when you enter the date in that program it only accepts a two
digit year so it was actually setting this chip to 1921 however dos does not recognize dates before
1980 as valid so dos was seeing that date in the chip of 1921 realizing that's not a valid date
and automatically corrected it to 2021 and i just didn't realize it until i noticed that discrepancy
in the day of the week but now that i'm using the updated y2k compliant smartwatch driver
from the tandy 1000 archive website now both the smartwatch chip and dos are correctly set to 2021
so that's my rather timely video for september 2021 about the new reproduction smartwatch
plus module from cybernetic systems in australia for older tandy 1000 computers
although i don't believe there's anything necessarily tandy specific about that module
if you have any old xt class machine that does not have an onboard real-time clock
and it uses a single 28-pin bios rom chip and it has space on the board to fit that module
you could install it and it should work fine just like it does in this tandy
and yes i know there's ways to hack into these old dallas modules disconnect the battery that's
in them and install an external battery to get them working again but that's messy and difficult
and i'd rather support a new piece of hardware that's on the market
that accomplishes the same goal much more elegantly