Show us your Tandy Computers!

[dJOS]

I'm dropping this here with some trepidation because it's the first YouTube video I've ever made for public consumption and, man, it shows, but if anyone's interested...

Here's me showing off my 1000 EX and the bits I made to go inside it in utterly excessive and rambling detail.

I was inspired to make this because of the "SepTandy" event that's been mentioned in another thread. Jump to 27:30 if you want to skip the machine's secret origin story and my long-winded digression about what DMA is for and just see some prototype PCB boards.

And yes, that poor 1084D monitor is in sad shape. Not my fault, I swear.

I really enjoyed your video, in fact I’m not sure I’m going to bother finishing my IDE + ram expansion as yours is better than what I’d come up with so far.

Btw I’ve shared it on the Tandy Facebook group where it’s getting a lot of likes.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2209645526/?ref=share

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I really enjoyed your video, in fact I’m not sure I’m going to bother finishing my IDE + ram expansion as yours is better than what I’d come up with so far.

Wait, I definitely don't want this to discourage anyone... How far along the development path are you? I really was sort of stupid ambitious with that memory card, throwing all those kitchen sink items (clock/calendar, UMBs, flash integration) at the first rev. It's amazing it worked... after adding a bodge wire, anyway.

I'm thinking of asking Santa for a GAL/CPLD programmer for Xmas. If I can combine the functions of any two of the three cards in my stack it'd leave room for an ISA adapter, which should be enough to scratch most "reasonable" expand-a-1000EX/HX itches. (I'd love a chance to play with a real network card instead of EPPPD, but I adore my new serial ports too.) I think I *might* be able to get IDE and Serial on the same card "as is" if I either significantly level up my trace routing skills or give in and break the 100x100mm barrier.

 

[ngtwolf]

I'm thinking of asking Santa for a GAL/CPLD programmer for Xmas. If I can combine the functions of any two of the three cards in my stack it'd leave room for an ISA adapter, which should be enough to scratch most "reasonable" expand-a-1000EX/HX itches. (I'd love a chance to play with a real network card instead of EPPPD, but I adore my new serial ports too.) I think I *might* be able to get IDE and Serial on the same card "as is" if I either significantly level up my trace routing skills or give in and break the 100x100mm barrier.

I was definitely impressed with what you were able to accomplish with all those features. I know a couple people have been working on cards to do the memory expansion functions, but yours is more full featured than anything i've seen yet. Agree it would be great to find a way to clear a slot so you can still do networking. If that form factor could be made full featured with full networking, that would be very impressive (and force me to hunt down an EX, which i would have preferred it's form factor to the SX I currently have). Anyway, I did enjoy your video and commented/subscribed/etc. Looking forward to what you do in the future.

 

[dJOS]

Wait, I definitely don't want this to discourage anyone... How far along the development path are you? I really was sort of stupid ambitious with that memory card, throwing all those kitchen sink items (clock/calendar, UMBs, flash integration) at the first rev. It's amazing it worked... after adding a bodge wire, anyway.

I'm thinking of asking Santa for a GAL/CPLD programmer for Xmas. If I can combine the functions of any two of the three cards in my stack it'd leave room for an ISA adapter, which should be enough to scratch most "reasonable" expand-a-1000EX/HX itches. (I'd love a chance to play with a real network card instead of EPPPD, but I adore my new serial ports too.) I think I *might* be able to get IDE and Serial on the same card "as is" if I either significantly level up my trace routing skills or give in and break the 100x100mm barrier.

I haven’t finished it or produced any PCB’s yet. Mine was a mashup of the Lo-tech 1 MB board and a heavily simplified CF-IDE. I hadn’t gotten around to adding a clock either. Your design is very elegant and you clearly understand digital logic better than I do (which to be honest is not that well).

 

[Eudimorphodon]

If that form factor could be made full featured with full networking, that would be very impressive (and force me to hunt down an EX, which i would have preferred it's form factor to the SX I currently have).

The form factor of these machines is great. Once you've solved the mass storage problem with the XT-CF it's really a kick to have a full-featured enhanced XT clone that's so self-contained and portable but still something other than a laptop. An interesting side benefit of swapping the mechanical floppy drive for the Gotek is it gets rid of a big chunk of steel inside the case; it's kind of remarkable how light it is without it.

 

[dJOS]

The form factor of these machines is great. Once you've solved the mass storage problem with the XT-CF it's really a kick to have a full-featured enhanced XT clone that's so self-contained and portable but still something other than a laptop. An interesting side benefit of swapping the mechanical floppy drive for the Gotek is it gets rid of a big chunk of steel inside the case; it's kind of remarkable how light it is without it.

I went with the external Gotek drive simply because the EX can boot from either internal or external drives and I wanted to keep it visually stock.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I went with the external Gotek drive simply because the EX can boot from either internal or external drives and I wanted to keep it visually stock.

I definitely didn't want to hack the plastic on mine, but elected to go with internal for portability/practicality's sake. (I've dragged the machine to the living room a couple times and hooked it to the TV, although I'll admit that's a suboptimal way to experience it until/unless I invest in some kind of RGBI-to-HDMI adapter scheme. And I also didn't have any nice external boxes.) I did discover while perusing the schematics of the machine that unlike some PCs Tandy hooked up the line necessary to run the disk controller in single density mode, so I have been wondering if it might be worth putting the floppy drive back and just for fun seeing if the machine might be able to make disks for older TRS-80s.

I haven’t finished it or produced any PCB’s yet. Mine was a mashup of the Lo-tech 1 MB board and a heavily simplified CF-IDE. I hadn’t gotten around to adding a clock either. Your design is very elegant and you clearly understand digital logic better than I do (which to be honest is not that well).

At its heart that basically describes mine, mostly what I came up with was a couple semi-clever tricks to minimize the parts count while maximizing the utilization of each chip. (There are zero unused inputs/gates in the decoding logic on the memory card.) Basically played Tetris with logic gates.

 

[dJOS]

I definitely didn't want to hack the plastic on mine, but elected to go with internal for portability/practicality's sake. (I've dragged the machine to the living room a couple times and hooked it to the TV, although I'll admit that's a suboptimal way to experience it until/unless I invest in some kind of RGBI-to-HDMI adapter scheme. And I also didn't have any nice external boxes.) I did discover while perusing the schematics of the machine that unlike some PCs Tandy hooked up the line necessary to run the disk controller in single density mode, so I have been wondering if it might be worth putting the floppy drive back and just for fun seeing if the machine might be able to make disks for older TRS-80s.

Same here - I used a 3.5" to 5.25" bracket in the Tandy OEM external drive chassis so I didnt have to mod it. I'll get around to painting the Gotek and drive adapter to match better at some point. That said the drive from the OEM chassis was completely dead so it'll never go back to OEM config.

Aside from my CM-5, I do have a CGA-VGA converter too which produces a superb picture and is very handy for taking my EX to user group meets:

https://www.serdashop.com/MCE2VGA

At its heart that basically describes mine, mostly what I came up with was a couple semi-clever tricks to minimize the parts count while maximizing the utilization of each chip. (There are zero unused inputs/gates in the decoding logic on the memory card.) Basically played Tetris with logic gates.

I'm still super impressed by your approach - maybe when I pick up my damaged ego off the floor i'll have another go. :-D

I'd love to use CPLD's too but I dont think any of my EEPROM programmers can program them. That said I do have JTAG & FPGA programmer kits that could interface with a CPLD programmer eg This Kit.

 

[blackepyon]

Aside from my CM-5, I do have a CGA-VGA converter too which produces a superb picture and is very handy for taking my EX to user group meets:
https://www.serdashop.com/MCE2VGA

I was looking for a similar solution, one that hopefully used component output so I could drag a small LCD TV around with my Tandy instead of one of my precious CRTs. Turns out H2Obsession already thought of something clever to convert RGBi to RGBa for use with a much cheaper CGA to VGA converter device.
https://sites.google.com/site/h2obsession/CBM/C128/rgbi-to-vga

I built it as a dongle, and it works without a CGA to VGA converter IF (and this is a big if) you have a TV/monitor that can accept a 15.7KHz refresh rate (CGA resolution), such as the Daenyx DN-153. I showed him what I had, and he posted pictures at the bottom of the page. Since then, I replaced the 1n4001 diodes (what I had on hand at the time) on the dongle with the 1n4148 diodes he recommended, and it cleared up the colour bleeding. I'll have to try a direct RGBi to component dongle at some point, to see if I can get better compatibility, but that's a project for later.

That said, dJOS, it still boggles my mind that you were able to find THREE external drive cases for that EX of yours.
As I recall, the EX supports up to two drives total? One internal, one external? The HX supports three (two internal), and this is built into the circuitry from the floppy controller.

 

[dJOS]

I was looking for a similar solution, one that hopefully used component output so I could drag a small LCD TV around with my Tandy instead of one of my precious CRTs. Turns out H2Obsession already thought of something clever to convert RGBi to RGBa for use with a much cheaper CGA to VGA converter device.
https://sites.google.com/site/h2obsession/CBM/C128/rgbi-to-vga

I built it as a dongle, and it works without a CGA to VGA converter IF (and this is a big if) you have a TV/monitor that can accept a 15.7KHz refresh rate (CGA resolution), such as the Daenyx DN-153. I showed him what I had, and he posted pictures at the bottom of the page. Since then, I replaced the 1n4001 diodes (what I had on hand at the time) on the dongle with the 1n4148 diodes he recommended, and it cleared up the colour bleeding. I'll have to try a direct RGBi to component dongle at some point, to see if I can get better compatibility, but that's a project for later.

That's a nice neat solution - there's a nicely developed comercial version available here in Australian:

http://www.microbeetechnology.com.au/vga-video-converter.htm

That said, dJOS, it still boggles my mind that you were able to find THREE external drive cases for that EX of yours.
As I recall, the EX supports up to two drives total? One internal, one external? The HX supports three (two internal), and this is built into the circuitry from the floppy controller.

I got really lucky, I bought the only 2 working Drives that I've ever seen come up on eBay in Australia and I bought the 3rd drive as a shell from one of the members here as the drive in it was toast.

You are correct that you can only connect one external drive at a time - I just like having a tower of tandy drives next to my CM-5.

Technically the HX can support 4 drives, however the DS3 pin on the NEC floppy controller is not connected to anything leaving support for only 3 drives total.

 

[blackepyon]

Back to the topic. Remember the Tandy 1000HX I showed earlier? The one from my childhood?


Well, my mom was cleaning out some of my dad's old stuff, and came across these invoices from when my dad bought the thing. All prices are in Canadian dollars, and I've adjusted the prices for inflation. This would have been on the tail end of when they were selling these, I think he got it on clearance. If anybody knows what an HX retailed at when it was new, I'd be interested to know.

Tandy 1000HX

Packard Bell monochrome CGA monitor


This is about what one would pay for an entry level system today, I figure.

She wanted to toss them. I figured they were worth keeping.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

This would have been on the tail end of when they were selling these, I think he got it on clearance. If anybody knows what an HX retailed at when it was new, I'd be interested to know.

$249 CDN in April 1990, wow. They must have really wanted to get rid of them quick, because they were still listed at $699 in RSC-21, the "1990" catalog. (I'm not sure when Radio Shack's yearly catalogs came out, a few months before the year they went with I *think*.)



$699 would have been highway robbery for a 256k XT in 1990. I wonder if that hit them right after the printing presses ran.

 

[blackepyon]

No kidding! I've no idea what the circumstances were. My dad's friend told him about it, and he rushed out to get it. Or so I heard, I was about 2 1/2 at the time.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I think I vaguely remember them blowing these out (I was a jaded teenager with a 286 in 1990 so I didn't get one), I'm guessing corporate realized it just wasn't a viable product anymore and decided to cut their losses. Maybe someone fell asleep at the production switch and they ended up with a couple excess warehouses full before they realized it how underwater they were with it.

I wonder if anyone has online an archive of old Radio Shack sales flyers, because one of the more interesting things they used to do on a semi-regular basis is have "Where-is, As-is" sales to get rid of excess stock of a product line they'd just shot in the head at literally pennies on the dollar. I have specific memories of them doing one of those for the Tandy 2000 around the time my family was shopping for its first PC compatible. We managed to not fall for it but I do wonder how many people ended up with some severe buyer's remorse. (I wish I could look up what they were selling them for, I remember it was shockingly cheap. Like, not much more than a Color Computer cheap.)

 

[blackepyon]

I got stuck on the time waster called facebook.. But they banned me last week after making a new account in my real name.. So apparently now I'm some evil spammer.

Happened to me too, but it was just after I made the account. Apparently, there's somebody else with my name living in Vancouver, and after seeing my face, Facebook decided I was lying. Tried disputing it, but the help system is automated and nobody ever got back to me. No phone number or email I could use to contact them, so I'm stuck.

All I wanted was to be able to keep up with my local retro computer group

 

[blackepyon]

I think I vaguely remember them blowing these out (I was a jaded teenager with a 286 in 1990 so I didn't get one), I'm guessing corporate realized it just wasn't a viable product anymore and decided to cut their losses. Maybe someone fell asleep at the production switch and they ended up with a couple excess warehouses full before they realized it how underwater they were with it.

I wonder if anyone has online an archive of old Radio Shack sales flyers, because one of the more interesting things they used to do on a semi-regular basis is have "Where-is, As-is" sales to get rid of excess stock of a product line they'd just shot in the head at literally pennies on the dollar. I have specific memories of them doing one of those for the Tandy 2000 around the time my family was shopping for its first PC compatible. We managed to not fall for it but I do wonder how many people ended up with some severe buyer's remorse. (I wish I could look up what they were selling them for, I remember it was shockingly cheap. Like, not much more than a Color Computer cheap.)

I ought to have looked through my Byte magazine before asking the retail price.

$699 for the HX in October 1987.

 

[Eudimorphodon]

I ought to have looked through my Byte magazine before asking the retail price.
View attachment 56460
$699 for the HX in October 1987.

Still remarkable that it stayed at that price through its last catalog appearance. The EX dropped $200 when they introduced the HX, and I'm pretty sure they were selling them off for even cheaper before the end of the year. (They didn't overlap long.)

 

[ilporcupine]

That's for sure... been keeping an eye out for a reasonably priced 1000EX or 1000HX, but no such luck yet. I have a fondness for the days when computers had distinct looks, before they all became beige boxes...

What would you consider reasonable? Maybe I can help.

 

[John(Wales-UK)]

Greetings from Wales.



https://www.flickr.com/photos/nhsob/49044484847/in/dateposted-public/

https://www.flickr.com/photos/nhsob/49044273611/in/dateposted-public/

 

[blackepyon]

Greetings from Wales.

View attachment 57233View attachment 57234

Hmm. Some nice TRS-80's there.