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Tandy 1000 Upgrades.

Tupin

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 7, 2009
Messages
436
Location
St. Louis, MO
Okay, so I have a pretty basic Tandy 1000 with a memory expansion card so it has 640k, a 5.25 inch drive, and a 3.5 inch drive that I believe is 720k. I would like to put in a hard drive and install MS-DOS 3 on it, but I'm not sure what I need to do. Plus, is there a way I can copy files from a modern PC onto a 3.5 inch disk and use them in the 1000?

One final question: Would this work and allow me to use the multitude of Gameport joysticks on the 1000?:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Vintage-PC-XT-8...emQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item35a341ac3b
 
Only from memory, there are MFM hard drive upgrade cards, parallel port cards, CD rom plus card kits, all kinds of things for Tandy specifically. Which 1000 is it? Pics!
 
Here's a picture of it:
IMG_2775.jpg


It's an original 1000. It has composite out, and 640k.

How would I take the Tandy 1000 files that I download and load them on an original system?
 
Cool! I love the keyboards in particular, they have personality. I have the same joystick, these are such fun machines. Do you have the deskmate software for it?

As far as the 1000 goes, I actually compared it to the Xbox360 in that this one has intelligence behind the cooling system, and that we've known about how to have good cooling for a long time. Tandy used to make really cool machines.

/edit We were posting at the same time. You can use a machine with a similar disk drive or format it at 720K and transfer that way. There's also serial transfer, need a crossover serial cable (null modem) or all-out ethernet, if you can find one that will work with it. I'd try on Win98 if you have a machine with it on it. I've had good luck formatting floppies in 720K more than anything newer.
 
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I can format disks in 720k even on my modern PC, but I'll have to try on my Windows 98.

I don't have Deskmate, all that has been running in this was DOS 3.1 and literally nothing else. I'm looking at a couple of games on eBay like Alien Syndrome and Sim City, but I think I should add a serial port expansion card to use a serial mouse. I could also add a Gameport adapter, since I have two open ISA slots.

Do those just plug in and work, or do they need installation?
 
I have a Tandy 1000 SX with the same setup , 3.5 inch and 5.25 inch floppies.
Mine also has a Tandy hard card, I think its 20MB. Looks like a standard small
Miniscribe hard drive mounted on a metal frame with a Western Digital controller
card.
 
Any pictures of your setup?

I just formatted some floppies on Windows 98 and tried to run them in the Tandy 1000, and it gives me a "file not found" error when I try to pull up the directory of the B: drive. :(
 
I just formatted some floppies on Windows 98 and tried to run them in the Tandy 1000, and it gives me a "file not found" error when I try to pull up the directory of the B: drive. :(
That is normal when the disk is blank and has no files on it yet. :)

I also have an original Tandy 1000. It is possible to add a hard drive, but it's really not ideal, due to the limited number of expansion slots and drive bays. So you really already have the ideal configuration: 640K RAM, and 5.25" and 3.5" floppy drives. And an official Tandy monitor and joystick, too!

You could replace the 8088 chip with a NEC V20 for a slight performance boost (10% to 30%) and improved compatibility with newer DOS programs (many which would otherwise require a 286 or higher will also run on a V20), but those are getting hard to find and expensive.
 
It did have files on it, ones downloaded from DOS game sites.

Might have to look for a V20 chip. Is this what I need?:

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEC-D70108C-8-V20-Chip-Plastic-Dip-Package_W0QQitemZ350320734509QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item5190be312d

Yes... in fact, I had my eye on the ceramic V20 from that seller. In your case, the Tandy runs cool enough that you'd be just fine with the cheaper plastic version, especially since you'd be underclocking the chip at only 4.77 MHz vs. its rated speed of 8 MHz.
 
Check that disk, and also run a head cleaner through both drives. I think there is a setting somewhere in Win98 that you can tell it how to format, probably in the format command. Also you may want to try to format it in a DOS window, http://www.computerhope.com/formathl.htm, there's a site to some more info if you need it.

What I would really love to find is a SCSI card for mine, and a nice heavy enclosure for a full height drive-- just got a 2GB SCSI full-height and would love to have it linked up to my Tandy.

Anything in DOS has to have drivers, every piece of hardware that I can remember, be it a card or drive or anything had a setup disk.

Thinking of that, a SCSI card would have an external connector to let you use things like SCSI hdd's and CD-roms.
 
I guess I could try to clean it, the one time I got anything out of floppies was when I was trying old Apogee software and it just gave me gibberish. I don't have a cleaner, and I don't know how to get through the metal casing to get to the floppy drive.

The 8088 is socketed, correct?
 
I have a 20MB hardcard but it's too big to fit inside my SX. I took it apart, made a holder out of cardboard for the drive, and it now recognizes it. Still won't boot but I'm working on it. I think I need to change a jumper on the motherboard to allow it to boot. I'll keep reading through that awesome Tandy 1000 FAQ. :)
 
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I have a Tandy 1000 similar to yours (except with dual 360K Floppy Drives), and that I've added a SCSI Card and 500MB SCSI HDD out of a Power Macintosh 7500/80, and a 3COM EtherLink II TP network card so I can transfer files without disks.

My hard drive is mounted internally, well, more like "wedged in" between the floppy cage and the PSU using a cardboard mount (which clears any vent holes so the PC can breathe properly) and wired in using a cable split between the top floppy and the hard drive. It's been running like this for 2 days straight now with no issues. The cable runs along the top of hte floppy cage to the controller card in the 3rd slot, which is a cheap Advanced Information Concepts SCSI Card which is both internal and external (it does look funny booting in the 40 column text mode at start though).

I prepared the drive by installing the SCSI card into my 286 and installing the Operating System and Networking (with NetBEUI and IPX/SPX protocols) with Microosoft LAN Manager 3.0 from floppies on that machine. Then I installed the pre-setup hard disk and controller + card into the Tandy, configured the config.sys and autoexec.bat files to multi-boot to a clean boot, a standard startup, and the networking startup. I used the network startup to map to my file shares on my modern computer (Pentium-D) and pulled all the software over to the Tandy from there.

A quick way I used to pull a huge amount of software over to the Tandy was I wrote batch files on the host machine that basically did all the DOS commands I needed to copy the files over. I'm not the best programmer in the world so it basically looked something like this...

Code:
echo "DOS FIles For Tandy 1000"
echo "Script for Quick Installation of DOS Programs"

md c:\sierra
echo "now installing Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards"
md c:\sierra\lsl
cd\dosgam~1\sierra\lsl
copy *.* c:\sierra\lsl
echo installation of Leisure Suit Larry Complete....(and repeat this code ad nausium)

After pulling over my programs I had a pretty much was able to run whatever I wanted off the hard disk drive. Whenever I want to install some more software, I just reconnect to the network and either run a batch file, or in some cases install by hand. The only thing that does not work right most of the time is running real iinstall programs from the host machine, might just be because it's an 8088 and 8088's can't run multiple programs at once like may be required to do a "server" based install.

I'll also put a plug for the XT-IDE card in here, I may eventually buy another as a backup for the Tandy 1000 in case I run out of SCSI Drives (as I don't have any left that work with that computer, the 1.2 GB is too slow and has write errors because it expects a MUCH faster interface, and about 8-9 IDE drives I can use without issue on the XT-IDE card). There is plenty of power in 65 watts for a hard disk and a network controller of more modern spec (it's not like I"m running a large (in size, not capacity) Stepper hard disk from the 80's but rather a 500 MB "energy star" compliant drive out of a md-90's apple).
 
I don't have a SCSI card, but I have a CD-ROM interface card, but I doubt it would be of any use.

I have a 250 MB SCSI drive made by Apple, I guess I just need a SCSI card.

I still don't know how to get files to the Tandy with the floppies.
 
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Nevermind, I need an 8-bit one. Anyone know a good, readily available 8-bit SCSI card?
 
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