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Yet another score for Mad-Mike (Tandy 1000)

creepingnet

Veteran Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
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Location
Reno, NV
So I was dilly dallying through the local Value Village this fine evening, and I came across this along side an AST Bravo 386 SX (which I skipped over, I have enough early 32-bit machines to start a Beowulf cluster, heck, I use the towers as furnature now)....an original 1984 Tandy 1000 (well maybe not exactly an 84', but 84' style no-less).

Bought it for $10.00, took it home, looks like a good canvas for some tricking out (probably network and some sort of hard card), I could not find the keyboard though, so I'll keep tabs, but I doubt it'll turn up, so yeah, I'm looking for a keyboard for this thing now. It has a 640K memory expansion card too, so it'll fit in nicely with my 2 other 640K 8088 boxes (a T1000 EX and my IBM XT Half-Clone hot-rod).

Here's some pics
tandy1000.jpg


tandy1000back.jpg


tandy1000frontwithcoveroff.jpg


tandy1000inside.jpg


tandy1000memoryexpansion.jpg


tandy1000planar.jpg


tandy1000biosversion.jpg
 
for $10 that's pretty nice, as clean as it is. is the speaker supposed to face inward like that? Also, that's a honkin big case fan! Are those empty rom slots I see? Good score.

Nathan
 
Nice catch Mad-Mike, it sure looks good.

The Tandy 1000 was my first (mostly) PC-compatible computer. I happily hacked away until the wee hours of the morning countless times on it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did mine! :)
 
Nice catch Mad-Mike, it sure looks good.

The Tandy 1000 was my first (mostly) PC-compatible computer. I happily hacked away until the wee hours of the morning countless times on it.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did mine! :)

Thanks, actually, that's why I picked it up, my first computer was a Tandy 1000 SX, which is very similar to the earlier version in a lot of ways (though I wonder if the case for the SX was bigger, because it seems a tad smaller than I remember the non all-in-one 1000 series being).

Ah yes, I remember the 1000 fondly, writing lyrics for my high school rock bands in Deskmate II at the wee hours of the morning, and playing Ultima VI on it.

An awesome thing here is I can now copy diskettes for my 1000 EX, especially if I can find a hard drive and a network card for this thing (or use the ones from my project XT).
 
Very nice find! I managed to snag one of those at a thrift store for $3.99 awhile back. I just couldn't get into it, and sold it.

If you're intrested in a 1000SX, I've got one...

--Ryan
 
Great find for a great price.

Again this was one of those machines that are common in the US, but rare as, here in NZ. I've never seen one.
 
Very nice find! I managed to snag one of those at a thrift store for $3.99 awhile back. I just couldn't get into it, and sold it.

If you're intrested in a 1000SX, I've got one...

--Ryan

My wife would beat me with one of my AT&T PC 6300 keyboards (very heavy!!!) if I took you up on that ;-)

Actually, I'd love to find a defunct Tandy 1000 that has a mint case and keyboard. I'd "mod" it and put an ATX motherboard in it with a modern dual or quad core processor. I'd have to mod the case somewhat to get more modern parts to fit inside, but still, it would be cool.

(No, I'd never do that to a working vintage computer, or even one that could be resurrected, just to defunct ones. Imagine a TRS-80 Model IV powered by a 3.2 GHz quad-core Zeon!)
 
Ah yes, being beaten with an AT&T 6300 keyboard would be awful. Closest I've gotten to it--one fell off the closet shelve right on to my head last month. That was the worst headache I'd had in years.

I was thinking about doing something similar with my IBM 5150(parts unit) as seems it is wider, there is more room for modding. For it, a mATX would work perfectly, for the Tandy, you'd need something even smaller. Instead of mini-ATX, I think micro-ATX will work find. Or was there a different term for it....

Also Dr. Pepper, even if you wanted it I couldn't let you--I've got an offer.

--Ryan
 
Ah yes, being beaten with an AT&T 6300 keyboard would be awful. Closest I've gotten to it--one fell off the closet shelve right on to my head last month. That was the worst headache I'd had in years.

I was thinking about doing something similar with my IBM 5150(parts unit) as seems it is wider, there is more room for modding. For it, a mATX would work perfectly, for the Tandy, you'd need something even smaller. Instead of mini-ATX, I think micro-ATX will work find. Or was there a different term for it....

Also Dr. Pepper, even if you wanted it I couldn't let you--I've got an offer.

--Ryan

Not to veer too far off subject....

Actually I managed to re-design a TL3 case to where an MATX and PSU would fit into it, you have to do kind of like my new modern desktop annd put the PSU on it's side next to the motherboard.

Just a word of warninng about modern processors like the Pentium D dual cores and such, some of those require a LOT of heat dissipation, so this job will be more than modding the backplane, you may even need to put a blowhole on the top with a fan to pull air out of the system, I'm working out a way to do this without disallowing the use of a CRT.

As for me, I'm redoing my GEM's mods. For the past several years, I've been running that computer with an mATX backplane, but now I'm going to go full ATX with that particular computer, since I'm sure 22.5" wide is plenty of room for an ATX Motherboard and backplane, plus even keeping that cool right rear corner power button.

As for the 1000, I slapped in The Black CAuldron last night to see if it could boot off it's uncomfortably quiet floppy drives, and lo and behold, it seems to be working great (as far as I can test without a keyboard).
 
lol awesome. I used to play that on my Zenith 8088. Is your copy of Black Couldron a Tandy version? I heard on the tandy the game had 3 voice sound vs my Zenith which played a pleasant but one note little song while you wandered around.
 
lol awesome. I used to play that on my Zenith 8088. Is your copy of Black Couldron a Tandy version? I heard on the tandy the game had 3 voice sound vs my Zenith which played a pleasant but one note little song while you wandered around.

Well, I got a score awhile back of old DOS games that utilized the Tandy 1000 sound features, the Black Cauldron was one that was listed as a "booter" on retrograde station, so I use it for testing XT class hardware to see if it's floppies are good or not, as well as to see what level of sound we are dealing with here.

Here's the games, I meant to post them about 4 months ago, but never got around to it (work has been pretty busy)....

Police Quest
The Colonel's BeQuest
Gold Rush
King's Quest IV: The Perils Of Rosella
The Black Cauldron
King's Quest III: To Heir is Human
Space Quest
Space Quest III - Vohaul's Revenge
Sierra's Value Pack - Police Quest 2, Manhunter 2, Hoyle Card Games
Manhunter

ALL of these have Tandy 3-voice support, and PC Jr. video support, I should make more videos of them in action, that's actually another reason I got another Tandy 1000, was because some of these act a little funny on the EX, and I know the EX has some minor flaws (no DMA, certain bits missing from circuitry to cut down costs...etc), a lot of that has been giving me problems every so often.

Some other games I've had with support for the 1000 Series enhanced features include
Ultima VI: The False Prophet and The Secret Of Monkey Island, I have not tried the latter though, and I remember running the former on my 640K 1000 SX off of 11 360K floppies, man what a chore it was just to play the game on that thing with no hard drive, I have fond memories of making it a Sunday ritual to get that game going on the Tandy, ad then spending an hour or two, walking from town to town

Me: "Almost There......"
Tandy: "Insert Disk 11"
Me: (puts disk 11 in drive and presses return)
Tandy: "Insert Disk 8"
Me: (puts disk 8 in drive and presses return)..."dangit, I'm almost through Skara Brae"
Tandy: "Insert Disk 4"
Me: (puts disk 4 in drive and presses return)....
Tandy: "kadonk kadonk kadonk............error reading drive B:, Abort, Retry, Fail"
Me: oh hell....
 
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