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Tandy 1000 TL/2 System Looking For A Good Home

TangentDelta

TangentDelta

Member
Joined
Jan 25, 2015
Messages
41
I have a Tandy 1000 TL/2 system with the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and joystick. I also have an ISA NIC installed (not pictured) and set up to work with mTCP.

The hard drive does not have any bad blocks other than the ones listed on top of it from the factory.

I'd be looking to get around $100 for it. The price is negotiable.

I live in the south-east part of Michigan close to Toledo and Detroit. I'd be more than happy to drive and meet you with the system if you're interested.

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That's a beautiful system and I'm close (Flat Rock). I have a PCjr and a 5150 (monochrome Hercules) already though, so I'm not quite sure what I'd do with it.

Is it possible to slow this system down to 8088 speeds to play older games? If so I might be able to use it replace my two systems since I think it can do all the PCjr modes (Tandy) and Hercules modes.
 
Slowdown is a memory-resident utility that slows down faster
computers, especially 286 and 386 PCs so that games (and other
programs) that run too fast on these machines can be used.


To start the program, enter


SLOWDOWN n


where n is a number from 1 to 100,000. The higher the number, the
slower the machine will run. It will take some experimentation to
determine the exact slowdown that will work on your computer.


To remove the program from memory, type SLOWDOWN 0. Note that SLOWDOWN
can only be removed if it was the most recently loaded TSR. For this
reason, it is not recommended that slowdown be run before loading SideKick,
or other memory resident utilities.
 
Interesting. So could a system like this replace the need for a PCjr and a 5150 with Hercules? Just slow it down for older games and the Tandy/Hercules graphics are already built in?

What about the hard drive? I think I read somewhere that the TL series used an odd XT IDE drive which didn't go above 40MB? How hard is it to put a bigger drive in one of these?
 
Heheheheh... DOSBox will let you run nearly anything on your contemporary computer thus eliminating the need entirely for any old computers. :)
 
tempest said:
Interesting. So could a system like this replace the need for a PCjr and a 5150 with Hercules? Just slow it down for older games and the Tandy/Hercules graphics are already built in?

What about the hard drive? I think I read somewhere that the TL series used an odd XT IDE drive which didn't go above 40MB? How hard is it to put a bigger drive in one of these?
Click to expand...

Graphics wise, the Tandy Graphics Adapter is pretty much an upgrade IBM PCjr graphics adapter that should be backwards compatible. The TL/2's graphics adapter supports a monochrome 720 × 350 Hercules mode. Using a slowdown program like moslo should slow the older 8088 games down enough, but I've never tried it so I don't know for sure.

The hard drive is indeed a non-standard interface. If you wanted to put a larger drive in, you could probably use the XT-IDE card (https://www.lo-tech.co.uk/tag/xt-ide/). I don't think you could boot to the drive, but it should let you use pretty much any IDE drive you want, even compact flash cards.
 
Hmm... Why wouldn't you be able to boot to the XT-IDE card (I have one for my 5150)? Is it the special Tandy BIOS? Just curious.

Does that monitor support the Hercules mode?
 
tempest said:
Hmm... Why wouldn't you be able to boot to the XT-IDE card (I have one for my 5150)? Is it the special Tandy BIOS? Just curious.

Does that monitor support the Hercules mode?
Click to expand...
Yes, the Tandy BIOS is special. The system actually has DOS in ROM, so it boots to that (extremely quickly) by default. You can run a utility to modify the EEPROM flags to boot to the C drive directly, which uses a controller built into the motherboard. In theory, the XT-IDE should be able to override the default HDD controller routines in the BIOS but I've never tried it.

I don't think you need a special monitor to display the Hercules graphics. The video generation circuitry should be able to emulate it and throw it out to the monitor.
 
Really? I always thought you needed a special monitor for Hercules stuff (like a 5151 that supported TTL).

I'm really tempted now. :)
 
tempest said:
Really? I always thought you needed a special monitor for Hercules stuff (like a 5151 that supported TTL).

I'm really tempted now. :)
Click to expand...
I can't find much information on the Hercules compatibility of the TL/2. It looks like it might actually require a TTL monitor when in that mode, but the Tandy monitor might double as a TTL monitor.

I don't have the system with me at the moment (I have it in storage) so I can't test it to see for sure.
 
To use the TL/2's built in Hercules compatibility, you will need to connect the computer to a 5151. Tandy's color monitors won't work. Many games will become confused by the Hercules adapter in a Tandy system, so if they have an installation option or command line parameter to choose Hercules, use it. Sometimes games fail to restore text mode properly on exiting to DOS, typing in MODE MONO usually works. Sierra's AGI engine games will not work properly in a Tandy system with a Hercules, you will either get graphical anomalies with good Tandy sound or PC speaker sound anomalies with correct graphics.

A 4MHz 80286 is still quite a bit faster than a 4.77MHz 8088 in most situations. It isn't a perfect slowdown solution.

An XT-IDE card will work fine in a TL/2.
 
Hi TangentDelta,

Just curious if you still have the Tandy TL/2 and if so, would you be willing to ship to Canada or would it be for local pickup only?

Thanks

TangentDelta said:
I have a Tandy 1000 TL/2 system with the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and joystick. I also have an ISA NIC installed (not pictured) and set up to work with mTCP.

The hard drive does not have any bad blocks other than the ones listed on top of it from the factory.

I'd be looking to get around $100 for it. The price is negotiable.

I live in the south-east part of Michigan close to Toledo and Detroit. I'd be more than happy to drive and meet you with the system if you're interested.

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