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Tandy 1200 (Tandon XT Clone)

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zombienerd

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Joined
Mar 31, 2017
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Location
New Hampshire
Does anyone happen to have the setup program for the Tandy 1200, if there ever was one?

Does anyone know if the BIOS might support a 1.2mb 5.25" or maybe just a 720k (or 1.44mb in 720 mode) 3.5" like the original XT?

I have the users manual for the machine, but can't find a service manual. At least the user's manual covered how to upgrade the ram, and the DIP switch settings for video and the like.

There is very little information out there on this machine (or the other Tandon clones) out there that I can find.

I have the 7 slot 2FD model (25-3001), not the 1200HD with 5 slots.

It came with an MDA card made by STB, but I purchased a WD VGA (PVGA1A) 8 bit card and serial/parallel/game card for it which arrives today (I don't have an MDA monitor, and couldn't get my GBS8200 to sync to the MDA).

I also ordered 640K of RAM as the board only came with 256k, and have an XT-IDE on the way, as well.
 
It's an XT Clone, so there is no setup program. What drives it will support is based on the floppy controller that is installed. I built one of Sergey's 8 Bit Floppy controllers, so my 1200 supports all the different drives.

An XT-IDE works well with it.
 
Just finished installing the WD Paradise card, Serial/Parallel/Game card, and the RAM. The machine works flawlessly save for the B: drive (probably just needs a cleaning). I'm glad the new cards worked, as I purchased them "Untested / As-Is" off of eBay. I got the pair for only $25, which I think was a great bargain. The RAM was only $20 through Jameco.

A note about the VGA card, the chip is a PVGA1A, which I'd never seen in the 8 bit cards before, or in my searches, only the PVGA1A-JK. I'll have to send a picture over to the VGA Museum website.

I guess I'll try a 1.2mb drive and see if it works. If not, I'll probably leave it alone with the 360k drives. With Palmzip and my Z100P ZIP drive, I really won't need a higher capacity floppy once it's booting off of the XT-IDE. The only downside is that I only have about 6 working 360k floppy discs, while I have 30 or so 1.2's.

Al, do you happen to have, or know of, the software that would come new with the 1200? It would be nice to have it on hand just for historical purposes. I'm also searching for a paper copy of the manual(s) for the same reason.
 
Glitchworks XT-IDE Rev 4 built and installed. The machine will soon take its place on the KVM in my primary play station :p I just need to get another set of cables for it.

The B: Drive just needed a little grease, but now the A drive is making a horrible racket while spinning (although still working), however now with the XT-IDE and the Zip drive connected, I doubt I'll have much need for the floppies, so refurbing them will take a back burner for now.
 
Here she is, all reassembled. I installed an LED in the HDD area blank cover, but unfortunately, it turned out to be blue!! I'll have to track down a red one to replace it with later.

IMG_20171026_011633879.jpg
 
Attempted to install a 1.2mb 5.25" drive. It would seek at startup, but if I attempted to boot it gave an error. When booting from the XT-IDE to the DOM, typing A: would give a general read error with both 360k and 1.2mb discs. So, no go on 1.2mb drive.

I don't have an adapter to test a 1.44 / 720k drive, so I'll forget that one.

I also just ordered a 5mhz NEC V20 CPU. I'll test it when it arrives. Hopefully no funky BIOS timing issues :)
 
zombienerd said:
I don't have an adapter to test a 1.44 / 720k drive, so I'll forget that one.
Click to expand...
Do you mean to connect the 34 pin header to the card edge connector on the ribbon cable?

Card-Edge-Convertor-34pin_FDD_2.jpg
 
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