HoJoPo
Veteran Member
I just picked up a Tandy 1000EX off of eBay, as it was my first real experience with an IBM PC type computer (before that, it was all Apple ][s). It was my friends PC, he ended up upgrading it to a 30MB external SCSI drive that used an ST-02 card connected via a card edge to header adapter cable. He also built a small, three slot back plane to hold additional cards, playing around with a home made Intel 8255 board to interface all sorts of things to the PC.
Mine came with the technical reference manual and some copies of system disks, along with an external 5.25" drive and a fully populated PLUS memory expansion card (woo, 640k RAM!)
Looking in the tech. ref., the silkscreens are all there for the PLUS cards. I wonder if I can make a serial interface board and still get all the components...
I had an old Toshiba 3.5 720k floppy in a 5.25 half height form factor, with the adapter board to go from the header to card edge. Unfortunately, it was backwards from the Teac 5.25 drive that was in the enclosure... so I had to flip the little internal adapter board upside down. Doesn't quite line up (I may have to shave 1/8" of metal off of the connector opening), but it works now as it is.
DOS 2.11 has no problem treating the 720k drive properly, looks like I'll need a DRIVEPARM command in config.sys for my PC-DOS 7 boot disk to work properly. I'll probably keep using 2.11 for now, no point in DOS 7 without a hard drive... it was more just to show it could be done.
I've also ordered a CGA/EGA (9 PIN) to VGA (HD-15) to see if any of the monitors I have on hand will work, as I no longer have a CGA monitor around. The NEC Multisync LCD1560V+ I have is supposed to run 15kHz sync, so it may work (undocumented feature). The Dell FP2001 that I have might sync it as well, people have had good luck with them and 15kHz. Right now it's on composite video to my FP2001 and the text is UGLY. I tried using my Apple Monitor //e with it, but the text is shifted to the far left and there's no external horizontal adjustment (works fine on my Apple //e). I do have an Amdek amber monochrome composite monitor on my Apple ][+ I could use if there's nothing else... or maybe one of my Apple Color Composites, since you can switch between color and monochrome. They match the color scheme a bit better too.
Mine came with the technical reference manual and some copies of system disks, along with an external 5.25" drive and a fully populated PLUS memory expansion card (woo, 640k RAM!)
Looking in the tech. ref., the silkscreens are all there for the PLUS cards. I wonder if I can make a serial interface board and still get all the components...
I had an old Toshiba 3.5 720k floppy in a 5.25 half height form factor, with the adapter board to go from the header to card edge. Unfortunately, it was backwards from the Teac 5.25 drive that was in the enclosure... so I had to flip the little internal adapter board upside down. Doesn't quite line up (I may have to shave 1/8" of metal off of the connector opening), but it works now as it is.
DOS 2.11 has no problem treating the 720k drive properly, looks like I'll need a DRIVEPARM command in config.sys for my PC-DOS 7 boot disk to work properly. I'll probably keep using 2.11 for now, no point in DOS 7 without a hard drive... it was more just to show it could be done.
I've also ordered a CGA/EGA (9 PIN) to VGA (HD-15) to see if any of the monitors I have on hand will work, as I no longer have a CGA monitor around. The NEC Multisync LCD1560V+ I have is supposed to run 15kHz sync, so it may work (undocumented feature). The Dell FP2001 that I have might sync it as well, people have had good luck with them and 15kHz. Right now it's on composite video to my FP2001 and the text is UGLY. I tried using my Apple Monitor //e with it, but the text is shifted to the far left and there's no external horizontal adjustment (works fine on my Apple //e). I do have an Amdek amber monochrome composite monitor on my Apple ][+ I could use if there's nothing else... or maybe one of my Apple Color Composites, since you can switch between color and monochrome. They match the color scheme a bit better too.