• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Ideal DOS on a 1000TX?

H

Hatta

Experienced Member
Joined
May 27, 2010
Messages
314
Location
Omaha, NE
The 1000TX shipped with DOS 3.2, what are the pros and cons of switching to a newer version of DOS?
I gather DOS 4 is a piece of crap, so DOS 5 would be the best upgrade? I know I'd get support for larger partitions, but is the tradeoff in RAM use worth it? If I don't go all the way to 5, is there a point to going to 3.3?

Also, any drivers or other commands you've found useful in your config.sys?
 
DOS 3.3 has support for 1.44 MB floppies baked in. Not a needed upgrade but if you find it real cheap and you have the floppy you might want to. Oh, and multiple partitions on a single hard disk.

DOS 5 uses about 4 KB more than DOS 3.3 but can be reduced if the Tandy 1000TX supports high memory. The 1000TX has a 286 so it should but Tandy did things a bit differently. I'm pretty sure that DOS 5 is also the earliest geared to work with the CD ROM extensions.

Drivers I will leave to others; beyond a diskcache and memory and mouse drivers, I used a minimal config.sys.
 
Last edited:
As long as you have at least 640k, you can't go wrong with 5.0. himem.sys and ansi.sys
I remember all my drivers I used on my 1000sx worked in 5.0 when I upgraded. Can't remember if it was from 3.2 or 3.3, 3.2 iirc.

Or you could be really brave, and go os/2 warp. I actually ran that on my 1000sx during the beta. (hey, it was 30 free diskettes!)
 
Last edited:
There is no such thing as High Memory on a Tandy 1000TX, so HIMEM.SYS is useless. The system's built-in disk controller does not support 1.2MB or 1.44MB floppies.

Tandy DOS 3.2 has support for up to four 32MB partitions, but the partitioning is not standard. DOS 3.3 allowed for FDISK extended partitions, allowing up to 26 partions.

MSCDEX requires PC-DOS or MS-DOS 3.1 or higher.
 
Last edited:
A 286 but with 8-bit ISA slots wasn't it? What are you using for mass storage?
 
Great info so far. I'm using the hard disk that came with the TX for now. I was wondering why I couldn't partition the whole thing, but looks like that's a DOS issue. I'll at least have to upgrade to 3.3 it looks like. I do have an XT-IDE for the thing, I haven't had any luck booting from it yet.

I did look at the FAQ, is this a real issue?

The 1000's have also shown problems with hard drive FAT tables being scrambled or corrupted by DOS version higher than 3.2, thereby rendering the hard drive inoperable!
Click to expand...

If something like that happened, it would be fixable by zeroing out the drive right? Can I do that in DOS or would I have to boot something like minix and use dd?

Also, the FAQ says that DOS 5 uses 17K more than DOS3.3. That may be something I have to verify for myself. I'd definitely like to have a 2 gig partition on this thing, but not if I can't run a lot of software. I'll try it out when I get my XT IDE in working order.

Looks like cache and ctmouse are about the only things I'd need in config.sys. Nice.
 
I'm going to offer you a slightly different answer to your question: If you're really concerned about memory usage on your TX, don't worry about which DOS version you have but rather add the four memory chips to those four extra sockets on your TX motherboard. Doing so will increase the amount of memory from 640K to 768K, with the extra memory dedicated to video memory. With 640K on a TX, running a program that uses Tandy 320x200x16 graphics mode can take either 32K or 64K out of the lower 640K. With base memory expanded with those four chips, it's all dedicated to video memory.

I got my chips last year for roughly $30 from jameco IIRC. The TX uses 4 64k x 4 120ns DRAM chips. The chips go in the sockets labelled U54-57. Remove the jumper labelled E9-E10.
 
I use DOS 5 on much 768K T1K TX which also has an IDE hard drive and it works fine for the job I need the system for (making DSK images using READDISK.EXE).

The only problem was getting the 720K 3.5" floppy to format as 720K, but theres info in the Tandy 1000 FAQ on how to correct that, and the system works fine.

Ian.
 
The copy of Tandy's DOS 3.3 I got on tvdog's site doesn't have a 'mem' command. What's a good replacement?
 
Great, that works. One more question.

My 1000TX appears to have an aftermarket hard card that is set to use IRQ5. (as reported by IRQ Info 1.6). By default, this model is supposed to have vertical sync on IRQ 5, and it provides a switch on the motherboard to turn it off. However, that switch is set to its default enabled position.

So what does the vertical sync actually do? It's enabled, but it doesn't seem to conflict with my hard disk. Is it only used by specific software? What are the tradeoffs involved in turning it off on the motherboard?

Oh yeah, one more one more question. I have an addon IO board I mostly want for the parallel port. However it has a gameport on it. This is likely to conflict with the built in game controller yes? I don't think I can disable or relocate the gameport on the IO board. Can I disable it on the Tandy? Is there a software solution to this?
 
Hatta said:
My 1000TX appears to have an aftermarket hard card that is set to use IRQ5. (as reported by IRQ Info 1.6). By default, this model is supposed to have vertical sync on IRQ 5, and it provides a switch on the motherboard to turn it off. However, that switch is set to its default enabled position.

So what does the vertical sync actually do? It's enabled, but it doesn't seem to conflict with my hard disk. Is it only used by specific software? What are the tradeoffs involved in turning it off on the motherboard?
Click to expand...

I've run across only PCjr-specific titles that use the VIRQ; it never got much use. Your hardcard BIOS steals it on bootup, so as long as you don't run software that assumes an early model Tandy/PCjr and tries to use it, you should be fine. That being said, you should disable it on the motherboard.

Oh yeah, one more one more question. I have an addon IO board I mostly want for the parallel port. However it has a gameport on it. This is likely to conflict with the built in game controller yes? I don't think I can disable or relocate the gameport on the IO board. Can I disable it on the Tandy? Is there a software solution to this?
Click to expand...

I'm not aware of any solution to that problem, but someone else here might. I'd recommend finding another I/O board.
 
The switches allow swapping the video IRQ from 5 (default) to 2 (for XT HD controllers that are hardwired to use IRQ5). I would swap it.

Trixter said:
I've run across only PCjr-specific titles that use the VIRQ; it never got much use. Your hardcard BIOS steals it on bootup, so as long as you don't run software that assumes an early model Tandy/PCjr and tries to use it, you should be fine. That being said, you should disable it on the motherboard.

I'm not aware of any solution to that problem, but someone else here might. I'd recommend finding another I/O board.
Click to expand...

Often, you can disable the gameport on an IO card by removing the 74LS244 and NE558 chips from their sockets, if socketed and implemented with the basic logic.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top