Finishing up on the Tandy & #SepTandy Early, & YouTube

[creepingnet]

I know, I know it's not until September, but I'm trying to get ahead on my YouTube Channel stuff quite a bit since I've had a steady flow since May now.

The Tandy 1000A now is almost all upgraded. I got the V20 in yesterday and the performance increase is quite a lot more than I expected. The TopBench came up higher than the Tandy 1000EX I gave to a forum member years ago in Seattle. I'm just waiting on the 8087 to arrive, it's about 3-5 hours away in Cali ATM.

I also had to upgrade the XUB on my XT-IDE REV 1.1 card with the latest revision because it was over-stepping it's boundaries on the CGA/TGA Graphics Adapter video memory. This was causing games like Ultima V, Ultima VI, and Castlevania to fail to display anything if I ran the EXE, or even crash/hang the system. Odd it was hitting some games, but not others, but I also know Ultima and Castlevania DO tend to use a LOT of resources and so might have started stepping onto occupied memory. So I now have the 6/2022 XUB update - kind of weird seeing the (C) of 2022 on a 1985 era PC, I like it.

LPs are mostly done, some are in "mono" because I did not find the RCA "Y" splitter for recording mono devices like the Tandy 1000 until late.
- LSL is completely LPd
- Paku Paku was just added (in stereo)
- I have me playing Space Quest for the 2nd time in my life. I might expand it to be a full "Let's Play" at some point as well
- Arkanoid of course has to be there

That said, the Tandy won't be down fully once recording is done for #SepTandy because I'm planning to add Microsoft Adventure and Hoyle Book of Games for #DOSCember as a part of "Games to Relax With" series, might also include Sim City footage in there too since adding the V20 Sim City is comfortable as it is on my 286 on the Tandy 1000A - probably more-so once the 8087 is in there since I read that Sim City does make use of it.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

The Tandy 1000A now is almost all upgraded. I got the V20 in yesterday and the performance increase is quite a lot more than I expected. The TopBench came up higher than the Tandy 1000EX I gave to a forum member years ago in Seattle.

That EX wasn't running on just the built-in 256K of RAM, was it? Interesting trivia about those things: if you run a program out of the RAM that's shared with the video system (which is *all* the RAM in an EX without a memory expansion card) the CPU bus is effectively locked at 4.77 mhz whenever it access RAM. This almost completely negates the 7.16mhz clock speed.

(I have a 1000HX *with* a V20 installed sitting next to me right now, fitted with a homemade RAM card to take it up to 640k; if I run "topbench -i" it scores a "7" and the "memory" benchmark takes 1844us. Then if I run "eatmem 192", which uses the eatmem utility to eat up all the expansion memory so topbench has to run out of the motherboard memory, you can see what a huge hit it takes; aggregate score becomes "5", and the "memory" benchmark takes 2478us. Opcode times are 1111us and 1723us respectively.)

I also had to upgrade the XUB on my XT-IDE REV 1.1 card with the latest revision because it was over-stepping it's boundaries on the CGA/TGA Graphics Adapter video memory.

In the XUB configuration make sure you turn "Full Operating Mode" off. That is poison for Tandy 1000s.

 

[creepingnet]

That EX wasn't running on just the built-in 256K of RAM, was it? Interesting trivia about those things: if you run a program out of the RAM that's shared with the video system (which is *all* the RAM in an EX without a memory expansion card) the CPU bus is effectively locked at 4.77 mhz whenever it access RAM. This almost completely negates the 7.16mhz clock speed.

(I have a 1000HX *with* a V20 installed sitting next to me right now, fitted with a homemade RAM card to take it up to 640k; if I run "topbench -i" it scores a "7" and the "memory" benchmark takes 1844us. Then if I run "eatmem 192", which uses the eatmem utility to eat up all the expansion memory so topbench has to run out of the motherboard memory, you can see what a huge hit it takes; aggregate score becomes "5", and the "memory" benchmark takes 2478us. Opcode times are 1111us and 1723us respectively.)



In the XUB configuration make sure you turn "Full Operating Mode" off. That is poison for Tandy 1000s.

Not sure, I'll recheck tonight. Could have been. It was whatever Tandy 1000EX was in the database. Either way, felt around the same as the EX I had with 640K RAM. Though some of that swiftness is probably the HDD.

As for the XUB, I had FUll Operating Mode off. I'm thinking it may have been the BIOS file I used last time, either that or a flaw since the last version was a 2013 BIOS I picked up last year thinking that's all I could run on a 1.1 card. The really cool part is I flashed it off the HDD - no boot disk - reboot, and it worked. Last time I might have used IDE_XTP.BIN instead of IDE_XTPL.BIN, which is what I used this time. Either way, nice to know I can flash the Tandy's HDD controller faster than I can flash a modern Dell UEFI setup XD

 

[Eudimorphodon]

What are you getting with your 1000A? I'm going to guess around a six, that's what my HX gets in slow mode with its V20.

(Funny story there, apparently my HX in fast mode is right on the bubble between a 7 and an 8, it gets a 7 when you run interactively, but when you "add this machine to the database" it gets an 8. The "Tandy 1000 HX V20/NODMA" in the current Topbench database is this machine.)

Looking through my database, yeah, I have scores for this machine when I had the 8088 in it and it was a six at 7.16mhz, same score as the V20 at 4.77 Mhz. This is also the same score as and EX and SX from other benchmark-ers.