Show us your Tandy Computers!

[dJOS]

Yes, but the problem is finding one at a good price. Those babies do not run cheap. Average around $400 for the unit itself, and more with the MPU-401 card. :sad:

Besides, unless you're using the RSX, you're playing for the Tandy 3-voice sound anyways. The 1000 RSX does have the chip, but they put it on a different port, so excluding the version of Deskmate made for that system, most games that advertise Tandy video/sound don't even know it's there. Only a RARE handful of games are capable of using the RSX's 3-voice chip.

Not wrong, I was lucky add mine cost about 90 AUD a few years ago. I mainly use it on my k6-3 PC.

 

[Cloudschatze]

Average around $400 for the unit itself, and more with the MPU-401 card.

Looks like $150-$200 might be the current eBay average in the U.S. Still high compared to a few years ago, when it was closer to $50. The good news is that you don't need an MPU-401 for a lot of things, provided you can spare a serial port.

Besides, unless you're using the RSX, you're playing for the Tandy 3-voice sound anyways. The 1000 RSX does have the chip, but they put it on a different port, so excluding the version of Deskmate made for that system, most games that advertise Tandy video/sound don't even know it's there. Only a RARE handful of games are capable of using the RSX's 3-voice chip.

I generally appreciate the Tandy sound for titles where it represents "best" playback method, but I still like to have the option of choosing it when desired otherwise.

For what it's worth, applicable titles from Brøderbund, Disney, Sierra On-Line, and Virgin from about ~1990 onward tend to have native support for the alternate addressing of the 2500-class sound hardware. In addition, forum member "Scali" developed a TSR a few years back that, combined with some requisite hex editing, extends the compatibility even further. Through the latter ability, I'm able to play a large portion of the Sierra catalog with each game's ideal sound/music options on my RSX.

 

[blackepyon]

I'm in Canada, so that translates a bit higher up here. Also, note that the lower prices are for current bids, not buyout.

I remember reading somewhere that listed exactly which address the RSX and etc used for the 3-voice chip, but I've never been able to find it again.

 

[Cloudschatze]

I'm in Canada, so that translates a bit higher up here. Also, note that the lower prices are for current bids, not buyout.

Yep. It might be that results are masked differently depending on location, but going back to July 1st, the sales average that I'm seeing is $173 USD.

I remember reading somewhere that listed exactly which address the RSX and etc used for the 3-voice chip, but I've never been able to find it again.

1000-class:
00C0-00C3 (PSG)
00C4-00C7 (DAC, where applicable)

2500-class*:
01E0-01E3 (PSG)
01E4-01E7 (DAC)

* The RLX is unique in that it responds to both sets of I/O addresses.

 

[Patrick.B (TTR)]

Here is my TRS-80 Model 3, with a Radio Shack Factory installed High Resolution Graphic Card, 48K, dual ssd drives, and a Langley St-Clair Amber Monitor.

 

[dJOS]

Nice!!!!

 

[Jay Newirth]

Here's a Tandy you don't see everyday

What does the motherboard look like?

 

[mloewen]

My original Model 4 from 1984, with 1/2-height DSDD drives, 128KB RAM, Tandy 26-1126 Hi-Res graphics board, and Langley St. Clair amber CRT. It's displaying a picture of my HP 2113E exhibit from a previous VCF-East. Surprise: the OS is Montezuma Micro CP/M.

 

[blackepyon]

Here is my TRS-80 Model 3, with a Radio Shack Factory installed High Resolution Graphic Card, 48K, dual ssd drives, and a Langley St-Clair Amber Monitor.

Daymn. I'd love to get a model III or 4 at some point. Just something about the aesthetic that makes them seem like a cool machine to own! Unfortunately, they're pretty pricey, and the shipping charges are almost as bad!

 

[DPetnick89]

Debated waiting until the 5.25" drive was delivered but I'm just too thrilled with this recent 1000HX being finally together and working with its 640k expansion and CM-5 monitor.

 

[blackepyon]

Debated waiting until the 5.25" drive was delivered but I'm just too thrilled with this recent 1000HX being finally together and working with its 640k expansion and CM-5 monitor.

I've got all of that except the 5.25" drive. Those Tandy externals are REALLY hard to find. My RSX came with a parallel-port external 1.2MB, and that's currently the only 5.25" floppy drive I own atm.
That and my CM-5 is currently apart until I can get back to fixing it. Got a fault in the vertical output that I'm trying to trace (gives a single bright-white line).

 

[Eudimorphodon]

Here's the opposite of that lovely Model III with the high-res graphics displayed on it. Witness my humble 1000 EX equipped with a Gotek floppy emulator (you can see the USB key sticking out the side) and my experimental native Plus-bus homemade RAM (with 128k of UMBs now verified working to load DOS 5 and device drivers high!) and XT-CF boards running the CP/M-80 version of WordPerfect 3.30 in native 8080 execution mode on the NEC V20 upgrade CPU via 22nice:



Man, does that scruffy old Commodore monitor need a bath, *badly*. (My only defense is it looked even worse when I got it.)

(Been torture testing this poor machine all week to make *sure* my gobs of bad soldering were working, and at one point figured since I'd upgraded it to a V20 I should verify that it can weild its special power.)

 

[blackepyon]

Okay, I figure I've lurked in this thread long enough, so here's my Tandy stuff

Tandy 1000 RSX, with VGM-300 monitor and MMS-10 multimedia system.

• 25MHz AMD CPU
• 387 Math co-processor
• 9MB RAM (1MB soldered to the MB, 8MB in 2 SIMM slots)
• AcuMOS onboard SVGA video with 256KB extra video RAM (total of 512KB), so I can run 640x480x256 colours, or up to 1024x768x16 colours in Windows.
• Tandy 3-voice sound (currently unused, since it uses a different port than the rest of the 1000 line, meaning that most games can't recognize it without being modified).
• 340MB IDE hard drive
• Installed Sound BLASTER 2 Pro card
• Installed ISA Adaptec AHA-1520B SCSI card

To the side, you can see the Iomega Zip100 drive piggybacked into the Tandy 1.2MB external floppy (both are parallel). Those sit on top of an external SCSI enclosure with a working SCSI CD-ROM and a dead 1GB SCSI hard drive (which I'll have to remove, but I wasn't using it anyways). Upgraded as it is, it JUST meets the minimum specs to play Sim City 2000.


Tandy 1000HX, with a Hewitt-Rand EGA-44 monitor, Tandy joystick, and DMP-105 dot-matrix printer.

• 7.44MHz Intel 8088 CPU
• 256KB onboard RAM with installed 384KB DMA/RAM card, total of 640KB.
• Dual 720KB floppy drives
• Tandy 16-colour graphics, and Tandy 3-voice sound
• DOS 2.11 in ROM
• Installed SPG 660 8-bit ISA multi-I/O card for 2 serial ports (for a Microsoft Serial Mouse) and a bi-directional parallel port (plus unused game port and floppy controller).
• Installed Custom built variant of the Lo-Tech ISA-CF rev.2 (see below).

This is more or less identical to the Lo-Tech card, but in the stacking "PLUS" form factor that the EX/HX use. Space constraints with the ISA I/O card forced me to build a custom board, rather than ordering one from Lo-Tech and using an adapter. I added an extra circuit to drive a two-colour LED, which replaces the power LED over the HX's keyboard. This glows green normally, but switches to red when there's CompactFlash activity. I currently have DOS 5.0 installed.

This machine is excellent for playing pretty much any of the older Sierra games, Kings Quest, Conquest of Camelot, Leisure Suit Larry, Zeliard, etc.
...And it was the machine of my early childhood (I think this picture was taken around 1991 or so). This is the same HX I had back then (actually it was my Dad's machine at the time), though I had ditched the monochrome Packard Bell monitor years ago. I was banging away on this keyboard before I could speak coherently :smile:

Tandy 1100FD, a recent addition to my collection.

• 10MHz NEC V20 CPU
• 640KB RAM onboard (an EMS card was apparently available, but I don't have it)
• 640x200 nematic LCD, with CGA emulation (see pictures below)
• 720KB floppy
• DOS 3.2 and DeskMate in ROM

This machine can "emulate" CGA, so you can play games, but the colours are inverted whether you set them up for CGA or monochrome mode. It is "technically" playable, but this machine was designed as a portable business machine, and works best for text. Despite the quality of my potato of a cellphone camera, the LCD is actually quite crisp and readable, even without an installed backlight. Below are comparisons of a few games between the 1100FD and the 1000HX.

Chess (CGA emulation vs CGA)

Zeliard (CGA emulation vs TGA)

Leisure Suit Larry (monochrome vs TGA)

 

[blackepyon]

I've also got a Tandy CM-5 (for the 1000HX) that's currently under repair, due to a bad vertical output (just shows a super-bright horizontal line in the middle of the screen). At some point, I intend to continue working on that. Got too many things on the go.


And a couple Tandy 3.5" floppy disk boxes


I've got the original branded keyboard and mouse for the 1000RSX, but neither work very well ATM (also on my "to fix" list). Fortunately, the RSX uses standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse inputs, and those peripherals are dime a dozen, unlike the earlier 1000 models.

 

[dJOS]

Nice collection sir!

Btw I got offered a CoCo 3 last week, I can't wait to pick it up so my EX won't be the lone Tandy computer in my collection.

 

[blackepyon]

Nice collection sir!

Btw I got offered a CoCO 3 last week, I can't wait to pick it up so my EX won't be the lone Tandy computer in my collection.

A CoCo would be nice too! Sort of the "home-gamer" of the TRS-80 line. Apparently they use the same joystick as the 1000 models up to the RLX. Used to have second joystick at one point (that actually said "Tandy 1000" rather than "TRS-80," but I've no idea what happened to it over the years.

 

[keenerb]

I finally finished (mostly) unpacking from moving to a new house over a year ago.

Top shelf, left to right:
Tandy 1100FD with functional floppy drive
1000HX with 640kb upgrade, HXC gotek
1000EX with 640kb upgrade
Tandy Sensation (second model)
1000
1000A
1000SL with working hard drive
1000RL HD
1000RLX

Second shelf
1000SL (no drives)
1000TL/2
1000SX (Radio shack in-store computer, still has corporate emails and purchasing system on working hard drive)
1000TX (mint condition, I'm not sure it was ever even turned on.)
1000A
The remainder are non-Tandy machines

Not pictured/unpacked
1000HX
1000EX
1000TL (primary desktop tinker system)
2500SX/20
3x CM11, 1x CM5
VM390 monitor for Sensation II
2x CoCo 2
TRS-80 model 100
TRS-80 model 102

3 1000A/SX/TX keyboards and a few 1000 Enhanced keyboards

 

[blackepyon]

View attachment 55880

I finally finished (mostly) unpacking from moving to a new house over a year ago.

Top shelf, left to right:
Tandy 1100FD with functional floppy drive
1000HX with 640kb upgrade, HXC gotek
1000EX with 640kb upgrade
Tandy Sensation (second model)
1000
1000A
1000SL with working hard drive
1000RL HD
1000RLX

Second shelf
1000SL (no drives)
1000TL/2
1000SX (Radio shack in-store computer, still has corporate emails and purchasing system on working hard drive)
1000TX (mint condition, I'm not sure it was ever even turned on.)
1000A
The remainder are non-Tandy machines

Not pictured/unpacked
1000HX
1000EX
1000TL (primary desktop tinker system)
2500SX/20
3x CM11, 1x CM5
VM390 monitor for Sensation II

3 1000A/SX/TX keyboards and a few 1000 Enhanced keyboards

:wow:
I'm jealous.
And 3 CM-11's? This collection is worth a pretty penny!

 

[keenerb]

Forgot about my two CoCo 2's and TRS-80 100 and 102.

I jumped into collecting about eight years ago when you could still pick up 1000's on Ebay shipped for $50. I got two complete systems with monitor and keyboard for $100 each and free shipping.

I'd go bankrupt trying to re-buy these on today's ebay

 

[blackepyon]

No kidding!

I remember finding an EX in one of the local thrift stores when I was a kid, around the early 2000's. It was on for only about $15 or $25, not too high, even for my meagre pocket change at the time. I'm still kicking myself for not picking that up. The reason I didn't was because I already had my HX, which is technically superior, and I didn't have a whole lot that would run on 5.25" floppy.

Now? I'd have grabbed it.