The Tandy 1000 - The best MS-DOS computer in 1984.
RadioShack. Was a big player in the computer business starting, in the 1970s. With the trs-80, line of computers in fact, by the mid 80s RadioShack, was selling at least, a half a dozen different computers, and I don't just mean different variations, but rather completely. Different, and incompatible computer. Architectures, for. Example think we're still selling the trs-80, line of computers mostly, as Business Machines at this point and these were extremely, expensive often, selling, for thousands, of dollars and, for the home market they also had the color computer which was much cheaper starting, at, $239. In fact at even lower cost, that had the short-lived color computer MC 10 which. Was a separate, Architecture, from the regular one you, could get one of these for just over $100, they, also had the popular, model 100, portable computer and, if that was too large then, there was their line of pocket, computers in the, early 1980s, it was not uncommon for computers, to be completely. Incompatible, with one another now I would include big players from companies, like Commodore, or Atari. Or pretty, much anybody else in fact it will probably a hundred, different computer, architectures, at the time that were completely, incompatible, with each other however, in 1984. That started to change with the introduction, of ms-dos, compatible computers. And RadioShack. Also, saw an opportunity here now. They had already been selling their Tandy, mm, line of computers which claimed to be ms-dos, compatible, however. It wasn't nearly compatible, enough and more, or less only worked with text-based, ms-dos, software, it also started around. $2,750. Which wasn't, exactly cheap at the time but. It did have an 81 86 running at twice the speed of IBM's, product however, it was never a huge market success due to the lack of compatible, software, but. Tandy success with IBM compatibles, would change in November of 1984. With the introduction, of the Tandy, 1000. Radio. Shack here, it is Tandy, 1000, SL computer system IBM, pc-compatible and sale price for under $9.99, to understand the Tandy 1000, we really need to look at IBM's, own PC, jr. product which had come to market eight months earlier the. PC jr. was supposed to be IBM's way to better. Enter, the home market however. It had several problems keeping, it from succeeding, notably, it had a terrible, chiclet, style keyboard, very. Little ram compared, to the regular IBM, pc and it, wasn't a hundred percent compatible. Either what's. Worse it's sold at a price much, too high for the home market however. The PC Junior did have two things going for it for, one thing they had upgraded the CGA graphics so, that it could finally, display a full 16, colors even on an rgbi monitor which. Was the standard monitor type most people were using IBM. Also included a three voice sound chip based on the Texas Instruments SN, 76, for 96 sound generator this, same sound chip was already used in dozens of arcade, machines and in several home computers such as the ETI 1994. A and the, BBC micro and, also in several notable game consoles, such as the Sega Genesis, and the ColecoVision. When. Tandy set out to make a new IBM, compatible, system they were actually shooting to make an IBM PC Junior. Compatible, system and thus they incorporated, the graphics, and sound from, the PC jr. into their new Tandy, 1000, system however, by the time the Tandy 1000 came to market it became, clear the PC jr. wasn't doing, as well as they thought so. They kind, of dropped the PC jr. aspect, from all the marketing material and instead just said the Tandy 1000, was an ms-dos, computer. But. What Tandy ended up making was, actually, a better IBM, that IBM was making themselves the.
Tandy Had a more modern appearance than the IBM, and most other clones there. Are a few things that really set, the Tandy 1000, apart from IBM for one thing a lot of things were actually integrated, onto the motherboard such as the video the, audio a, serial, port a somewhat proprietary, printer port and even, two joystick, ports all, of these things were actually separate cards on an IBM system and even. On most clones of the time and, this helped to reduce cost in fact the concept, of having eight chipset on a motherboard started, right here with the Tandy 1000, as it was the first computer to integrate, most of the glue logic, disk, controllers, and other things into a single, chip, so. While some criticized, the original Tandy 1000, for only having three expansion, slots the, reality, is it didn't need very many because it came with everything already, on the board where, an IBM, would come with five slots and four of them would be filled up right from the start the. Keyboard was a bit unusual as, well they, tried to make the keyboard smaller but still retain a lot of keys and so everything's really crammed, together and, there are some keys that are in unusual, places such, as the locations, of ctrl + alt in fact, doing the reset of Control, Alt Delete is, very unusual on this keyboard but. I think the thing that annoys me the most is this placement, of the hold key directly above the arrow keys and, since the arrow keys are not split, off from the rest of the keyboard it's quite possible to wind up pressing other nearby keys in the heat of playing a game because you can't fill the arrow keys as being separate. But. This hold key is the most annoying thing to press because it actually pauses, the entire, computer, so if you learnt accustomed, to this you'll at first think the computer is locked up for whatever reason, but pressing, the hold key again will resume, it the. Joystick ports were non-standard. For PCs but instead, used these same joystick as was used on the Tandy, color computer already meaning. The joysticks were easily available and contained he could share at least that one peripheral, between the computers joysticks.
Were Actually not that common at the time anyway, since IBM never intended, their pcs to really be used for games after all IBM, felt that marketing, their computers, as game machines would, probably, hurt the reputation in the business market and, what place this was particularly, apparent was in their choice of video cards, even. After IBM, had given up on the PC jr. they continued, to sell their pcs with standard. CGA graphics so. While games on an IBM XT, would look more or less like this, the. Same game on a Tandy would look like this and while. Games on the XT sounded, like this. Games. On the tanning machine centered, like this. And. Thus. The graphics and sound eventually, became known as Tammy graphics and Tandy, sound even though it actually originated, on the PC jr. the. Interesting thing is detaining, machines, used these same monitor, type as any IBM computer with a CGA card with use and that's because the four color limitation, of IBM's CGA, card was, actually, not a limitation, of the monitor itself rather, it was a limitation of the video card and thus you can use any CGA monitor on, your Tandy 1000, and enjoy full 16 color graphics just to clarify the graphical, capabilities regular. CGA had essentially, three modes yet a text mode with all 16, colors then he had the 320 by 200 which. Was. The most common mode used in games and then, you had a high resolution mode with only 2 colors there's, some business applications, and a few games made use of this but this, is essentially, what you got with a regular IBM PC or compatible clone, and, yes there were some other modes like composite, mode and some undocumented, tricks that could get you some extra color with various, trade-offs but. The reality, is this is what most PC users had to deal with at the time with. Tanning machines you also had a low resolution mode, with 16, colors I believe. Some of the early Sierra games like King's Quest used this you.
Also Got the 320, by 200, miles. And. This was the mode most games made use of then. There was a high, resolution, mode with 4 colors which was seldom, used and later. Model Tandy machines even added a 16, color high resolution, mode which is even more rare because software developers would be hesitant to use this and advertiser, software, works with Tandy 1000 machines because, most, customers wouldn't know if their 10 to 1,000 supported this mode or not one. Other interesting tidbit, is the way in which Tandy graphics worked, on composite, video you, see on an IBM PC the, CGA card would help put a different set of colors depending on whether you were viewing it on composite, or RGB, monitor and this, software companies would have to write special support to handle both or. Just do like most in and just support the RGB mode and forget about the composite mode since not that many users had composite, monitors but, with, the Tandy it actually outputs exactly, the same colors more or less on composite. And RGB, thus, giving Tandy users another choice for video. Let's talk about the sound chip that typically you'll hear it referred to as the Tandy, 3 voice system, and that's because the chip has three programmable, square-wave voices they, can't really produce any other sort of waveform, and they don't even have an adsr, system like the sid chip has on the commodore 64, however, each, channel does have an independent volume, control, so, it's certainly possible to use the cpu to artificially. Create an adsr envelope so that sounds like bells or flutes can be created, however, the system is actually more powerful than it would seem in fact it, has a fourth voice for a noise channel so, really. They should have called it a four voice system but, wait there's, more you, see they needed the pc speaker to be backwards compatible with other IBM, software, so that sound is mixed in with the sound output giving, you essentially, a fifth, voice if you want and to. Top it off later. Tandy models even included an 8-bit, digital to analog converter as a sixth of voice which is meant for playback of digitized sounds, however, because not all Taney machines had this a few games actually made use of it, beyond. Just the hardware a Tandy 1000, ships with a product, called Deskmate it, was a graphical, operating system but it can be controlled with a keyboard or a mouse and, included a variety of productivity, applications such, as a very minimal word processor, and, while it's not as advanced, as macwrite or other graphical, word processors, it could get the job done it, also had a pretty functional spreadsheet.
You. Know a lot of the stuff has to be compared with what was available at the time and how much all of these things would had cost had. The user bought them separately and this, came with the computer. It. Also had a very nice calendar program that would allow you to schedule appointments, and stuff it. Had a little drawing program sort of like Windows paint of the era speaking. Of that I should point out this whole suite of software runs, on the high resolution 16, color mode of Tani's graphics, chip which, no, other IBM compatible, would have had the ability to do at, least not until EGA graphics became, widespread speaking. Of that it also included, a musical. Composition application. Which took advantage of the Tandy's 3 voice sound Hardware again something. Not available on other computers. And. Last but not least it had a terminal application for, using your modem so. For the home user of the time desk mate gave functionality. Almost, equivalent to Microsoft, Windows I mean, keeping in mind that during this time windows wasn't all that much more advanced than Deskmate. The. Tandy 1000, started off selling for. 1199, dollars which was actually, quite a steal in fact, RadioShack, said it best themselves right here in their catalogue indeed. An IBM PC equipped, with 256, K of RAM and a color monitor will run you over, $3,100. The, equivalent, Tandy 1000, is only 2048. And gives you superior graphics and up to four times as many colors, the. Techne 1000 was a great sell success from day one in fact sales were higher the first month after all understand any other computer in RadioShack's, history of, course not all Tandy enthusiasts, were on board with this this, article in info world talks about Hell Tandy users are disappointed. That the firm is no longer setting standards but following, them however. History shows that Tandy, did in fact made the right move with this computer and over time they would slowly phase out all of their other computer, architectures, this, was really the start of an industry-wide, phenomenon. Up to this point nearly every computer was incompatible, with the next which meant that software, had to be designed separately for every computer but. 1984. 285 is when a lot of IBM clones or ms-dos, computers, would start to show up on the market but, none of them would have these 16-color, graphics and, three voice sound of the Tandy or the, visibility, of seeing them on the Shelf of every RadioShack, store thus, providing, the Tandy 1000, an edge for years to come of. Course in order to use Tandy graphics and, sound games had to be specially, designed to support it if it. Didn't include support, then Tandy users could still run their games in regular 4 color CGA, however. This was a huge problem since many software, companies saw, the success, of the Tandy 1000, and thus more, and more started to integrate support, for graphics and sound into their games in fact. If you look on mobygames you'll see there are 861. Games claiming to have Tandy, graphics support, that's. No small number, the. Tandy 1000, was selling so well that in 1986. It enjoyed a 9.5, percent market. Share of all computers, sold in the United States of. Course Tandy continued, to make new versions, of the Tandy 1000, but it's important to understand that not all Tandy, computers, are Tandy, 1000s, not even their ms-dos compatible computers. Take this Tandy 1400. Laptop for example you. Know it's made by Tandy, it does run ms-dos, compatible software. And it even has a name that sounds a lot like 1000. Because it's, 1400. But, it, doesn't have the special. 16, color CGA, or, the, 3 channel sound system that the Tandy 1000, does only models that are called Tandy 1000. Have. Those modes so. In order for them to keep the Tandy 1000, name they just added different letters at the end like 1000, SX or TX or TL, one. Of the next models they produced was the 1000s. X which looks almost identical. To the original except, the floppy drives are beige instead, of black, however. It did include a faster processor, and internally, it had 5 card slots instead of three like the original, a popular. Upgrade for this computer was to have a hard card which was a hard drive integrated, onto a single expansion card, now. One really popular version was an all-in-one cost reduce version called the 1000, DX which came out in 1987. It, almost looked like a big brother to RadioShack color computer 2 it had. A single floppy drive on the side similar to an apple 2 C or, an Amiga or an Atari ST of, the day also. On the side you get a volume control for the internal, Tandy sound a headphone, jack and two joystick, ports again, still using the same joystick, ports as the color computer series, and placing, this stuff on the side where it's easy to reach makes far more sense than most pcs of the era where this stuff was on the rear, speaking.
Of The rear they were still sticking with their proprietary printer. Port and, this export is a proprietary, port for an external floppy drive like this one this, way you could have two floppy drives just like most desktop style pcs also, you get composite, video RGB. Video and three expansion, slots you could put whatever you wanted to in the, e.x model came with a faster processor, clocking in at 7.16. Megahertz and, one interesting thing probably, done in the name of, Magnus was that had non-standard. Expansion, slots so, the top cover comes off like this and then inside you will see three expansion, slots this. Model already has a modem, here on top along, with one free slot if we, remove the modem you'll see a memory upgrade card in here that brings the memory up to 640, K then. As you can see it has a pass-through for two more cards to sit on top these. Slots are proprietary however. It is possible to use an adapter such as this one and it will give you a standard, - a slot so, assuming the card is small enough such as this xt ide card you can use standard is a cards in there also. An external drive was available if you wanted to have two floppy drives which was a common setup for most pcs of the era. One. Awkward issue with this computer however was always monitor, placement I mean it looks like maybe you could set a monitor, on top but, you can't ideally. You'd want a computer desk with a monitor, shelf or you could use the shelf that they advertised, along with the computer the. HX model sold for seven hundred ninety nine dollars which was actually a really good deal at the time for an IBM compatible, computer of any sort much less one with superior graphics and sound plus a faster, CPU and. This computer was very popular, however. Five and a quarter inch floppy disks were starting to go out of style in the late 1980s, so the very next year in 1988. They. Replaced the e X with the HX model and the HX move the floppy drive to the front along with a second drive bay where you can mount either an additional floppy drive or even a hard drive however, one, neat feature of the HX model is that it can boot from wrong so. If you have no disc in the drive and presumably, no hard drive it'll, boot ms-dos, 2.11, from, ROM that's, really handy because that means if you wanted to play a game from disk for, example you don't have to boot a DOS disc first the. HX, model was better but sold, for only six hundred ninety-nine dollars which, was $100 cheaper than the previous model this, was one of the best selling Tandy 1000, machines ever made an. Interesting comparison to make would be with the Amiga 500 which, was also selling for six hundred ninety nine dollars at the time there's, no question the Amiga was better in terms of graphics and sound but the Tandy certainly had an advantage of a much larger software, library of course, by the 1990s. The Tandy 1000, was starting to lose its competitive, edge and the competition, was coming on multiple, different fronts. For one thing Tandi 16-color, graphics and, 3 voice sound was no longer at the head of its game computers. With 256, color vga cards, had become somewhat, common, and seemed to be the new emerging standard, and, by this time sound, cars like the ad-lib and sound blaster were starting to become standardized, as well, what's, worse Microsoft. Had continued, to improve Windows and thus Deskmate had fallen drastically behind, in fact. By 1991. Even RadioShack's own catalog, actually recommended, that customers, run Microsoft Windows, on most of their high-end computers, relegating. Desk mate - they're less expensive computers. The, all-in-one computers like the e x HX, had disappeared, from their catalogs although. It can still be seen as a prop for advertising, their monitor stand, later.
Models Like the 1000, RLX actually, removed the 16-color, graphics system, that made the attaining machine so successful, and instead, included, 256. Color vga graphics much, like the rest of the market however it did still retain the 3 voice sound chip which, wasn't necessarily a bad thing after all most pcs of the era still didn't ship with a sound card from the factory it, was typically something the user would buy and install themselves. So. A Tandy system still sounded, better than a regular PC, by. 1993, Tandy, was no longer competitive in the PC market and so they sold all of their facilities in Fort Worth Texas to ast, computer, which. Is interesting because I ended up working for AST starting, in 1996. In their tech support department and so, I actually ended up taking calls and right now and then for Tandy machines because, ast had, agreed to handle all the remaining support, for those machines while. The Tandy 1000, hasn't appeared in many movies or TV shows it is featured prominently in the current hit series young Sheldon, in many episodes shacks. Tandy, 1000, SL was my drug of choice and. So that about wraps up this documentary, on the Tandy, 1000, I hope, I was able to shed a little bit of light on what made the 1000. A special, computer at the time it was far, more than just an ms-dos compatible computer. In fact I think that at one time in, history it was the best ms-dos, compatible computer. That, you could buy obviously. That didn't last long but, nevertheless, I think it's very. Historically, important, to put this computer in its place and tell. The real story about what it was so anyway, that's. About it so uh thank you guys for watching.
2018-12-30 18:20
but can it run crysis
Between 1984 & 1986 we used the Tandy 1000 in every Tandy store in the UK as the main store computer. It had a 10MB Hard card fitted and a modem, all the sales would be entered into it at the end of each day and sent to head office over the modem.
look at that old amd processor- water cool it throw in a 2080rtx and have it run crysis
I had that same shirt!
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ oh how I miss my Tandy 1000 HX. learned so much on it. Programmed a lot of music in deskmate. Wish I still had that machine. I would dump my desktop, which I loathe. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Btw: if you see me at your door......I’m not stalking ......I’m just wanting some Sierra time. :-)
Now I'm wanting a Tandy 1000, though I want an Amiga 500 before that. Also, that Ctrl/Caps swap is still used today. My Apple Magic Keyboard (the one that uses 2 AAs) is a JIS-layout, and has that swap in place.
The Tandy 1000 was my first MS-DOS computer. My very first computer was a Sanyo CPM machine. I never really liked the 1000. Primarily because I hated the MS-DOS software Tandy packaged with it. Ended up buying an Apple IIc and later an additional HP MS-DOS computer. Back then most of my time was spent writing with Wordstar and then later Microsoft Word. Rarely played games. Mark
The last time I went to Radio shack before it closed they accused me of shoplifting a tiny speaker. He was really sorry and offered me all of their cables so now I have a rats nest in a box.
Wasnt this in BunderSnatch movie ?
Cool video man, thank you for sharing.
Awesome content Thanks but change the fucking mic
Anyone else thinking about the old strongbad cartoon after seeing this. Maybe I'm just old now lol
I bought my Tandy 1000 at a divorce sale. She was selling her soon to be ex hubby computer and sold everything he had to me for 500 bucks. Being a father of 3 kids and wanted my kids to have access to computers at home I was happy to buy it all. My friends all scoffed at my purchase and yet they all wanted to meet at my house for gaming night most weeks and there was a line waiting to play space quest or police quest on the Tandy. I have to say the Tandy 1000 was a computer that was kept and used longer then most computer systems I ever had. Even when it was getting old and I moved on to a vga machine my kids were still playing and learning on the Tandy. They learned how to write batch files and load a RAM disk with the huge memory upgrade that was in this machine. Made we made a boot disk that created the RAM disk and we had a menu of batch files written down to fire off games and load them or ask to put in a disk and hit enter. My kids really loved dos and were mad when I moved to windows. They thought is was way to slow once the boot disk we made loaded. To this day my kids talk about the fun they had with that machine. Thanks for the video brings back lots of memories of the hours of fun on this machine.
Used to work for Radio Shack ( Tandy in Australia) miss the products, made my 1st sales commission on a Tandy 1000 system in Goulburn Australia whilst on relief management duties. Happy days Andrew
Brings back memories, thanks!
Where is the first 8 bit guy book? You are a Wikipedia! Very impressive video, lots of knowledge and hard work done here!
What is the name of your intro song? I really love that 80s Sound :D
Woooow so i had been searching for this game i played on my first PC running Linux that my Brother had built me back in probably 2006. I had vivid memories of this weirrd game creeping me out but never the less i wanted to play it and the only thing I was able to remember was that there were Towers and a small dragon. I was never able to find it again but then at 6:42 it hit me like a train. This was the game i was playing back then. Not this exactly but the PC fan remake. A quick google seach and boom there it was Tower Toppler on sourceforge. Downloaded the game, started it and the menu was exactly as creepy as I remembered it. What a nice way to start my Morning. So thank you again for your great content. I have been watching and enjoying your videos for a while now! :)
Great stuff! I had a Tandy 1000 SL and TL after my Color Computer 3, and I thought both were great machines. I would add that another awesome feature NO computer at the time had was a built in Sound Digitizer! You could pop a microphone in the front of these things and digitize sound, and as a kid this provided us with endless entertainment!
Cool stuff.
I made a bit of folding money in high school converting (BASIC) game programs between various platforms for other students.
It's amazing how advanced we thought the computer generated sound was back in the day, with real instrument sounds today we can actually compose music that sounds like it's being played on real instruments, not to mention graphics that almost look like looking at the real thing; not to mention virtual reality. I remember who slow 24,000 Kilo bytes per second dial up used to be, and how it would take a long time just to download a (at the time) high resolution 640x480 16 color image. Today the fastest desktop processor is 8.429GHz, over 1,000 times the speed of the 7.16 Mhz model he is speaking of; this processor will more realistically run at 5Ghz due to the impracticality of using liquid helium to cool the processor. Our cell phones are in most ways more powerful then the Cray super computers of the 80's which were among the most powerful computers back in the day. Looking back I am not only surprised how far we have come; knowing technology doubles in capacity about every 18 months, I ponder how far we will have gone since 1960, when the world's most powerful super computer was performing 500 kiloflops, or 500,000 complex math functions per second, to today's fastest super computer running at 200 petaflops or 200 trillion floating point operations per second, which will quickly become exoflops or 1 Quintilian floating point operations per second. These computers are close to performing more calculations then we can imagine, and being able to render a simulation of human brain activity in real time, compared to today's super computers taking 40 minutes to render 1 second of brain activity, enabling us to simulate unhealthy brain activity to help us greater understand, mental illness, neurocognitive disorders, traumatic brain injuries, etc. These computers are already being used to help us find ways to undo the damage we have done to our own planet, and may be our key to undoing global warming.
Coming from post-communist Europe and pretty much a 90s kid (that is I only came into contact with computers in the 90s) I only knew Tandy from sound options in DOS games. I always thought it was some kind of special sound card. This was very informative for me.
Must have been hard doing tech support without remote login back in the day.
About the PC Jr. sound chip, a better example in consoles would be just the Master System, it's still in the Genesis, but as a backup or complementary chip, it's also used for backwards compatibility
I never got to use the Tandy computers myself, but seems like it would've been neat for the era! especially with that more advanced sound hardware pretty impressive compared to what everyone else had at least early on!
R.I.P. rat shack.
Tandy was far from the best dos computer in 1984
So, you program a game then introduce viewers to a computer that people should have less trouble finding and purchase. Very shrewd.
Thanks for the content
Wow it looks like new.
Wow, who would have thought Tandy were ahead of the game back in the eighties. Bravo Tandy.
18:53 WOW i have the same watch as you!
That ad, they can teleport but they need a Tandy 1000.
I can remember walking into the Radio Shack at our mall and seeing how good the Tandy machines were for the price, compared to the others at the time. I was equally surprised when two years later the whole display was gone from that store and the few machines that were left were only at the larger standalone stores in town.
really good video... lots of good info.... i liked it
Lets play games on our Tandy 1000. lol
I had the TRS-80 and the Tandy 1000.
Our first computer was a Tandy 1000 SX with a Monchrome Composite Monitor, and MS-DOS 3.2. My parents still have the old Dot Matrix Printer sitting in their basement and a Tandy 1000 5.25" Floppy Disk Holder.. We got rid of the computer when the monitor/video output died on it. I made a Basic program for our tandy that turned both Joysticks into an instrument where you can make various sounds based on the position of the two joysticks and the position of thier buttons. We may also still have the Sticks kikcking around too. Have you got a Tandy Dot Matrix Printer David?
heeeeey, I have a 1000 EX
Ah, the days when you were ostracized because you used a computer.
Please explain the Tandy Sensation? I've heard it was made by AST.. were they just trying to clone current IBM's? The Sensations was my first PC growing up. Great Video!
The Orville sucks. Doctor Who died with the 11th doctor.
Wow, MS DOS on the ROM of a full-blown computer (instead of just a cash register or MIDI musical keyboard)? Huh, I had never heard of that until now! Why weren't more computers like that, in which upgrades would just be made on ROM also?
Lovely to see young David =)
Oops! 14:54: this "isn't" a desktop PC? It's not a laptop PC. What would _you_ call it then?
NOPE!
He emphasized _other_ desktops.
Two of what: disk drives? No, there is a lot of old desktop computers with 1 or even 0 drives, especially back in those days. Besides, he emphasized "desktop," as if this weren't one. How would you figure you know what he meant: Are you a mind reader?
Most desktops have two, but this one only has one. So, you add another one to match other desktops. That's what he meant.
Of course a Tandy 1400 isn't a 1000. Duh. 4>0!
Wow, it's impressive to think what the now almost defunct Radio Shack came to be at that point in time! A retailer company becoming a full-fledged hardware developer, even putting their name into a graphics standard (nice while it lasted).
Great review of the 1000. I worked for Radio Shack during the Christmas retail season in 1987, and sold a few 1000 SX systems. The first one I sold was thanks to a demonstration of Black Cauldron. I still have a Tandy 1000 TX in my collection that occasionally gets to stretch its legs with a game of King’s Quest.
I agree, doctor who has gotten worse, they are trying to dull down the violence and reuse past story’s
Ahh Tandy... the pc I drooled over as a kid at our local Radio Shack. Such memories. Great Video!
I, too, am looking forward to The Orville Season 2.
1:30 The Incredible Hulk
If I had to make opposite version of you, that would be, The 64bit guy. Formerly known as The ASUS ROG guy. This guy reviews upcoming future technology ahead of its time. Also there is Active Game Review that reviews Odd hardware from future.
One missing model, the Tandy 1000 AX. It really just was an SX but sold by Walmart.
The HX was fun because you could run 3 disk drives on it.
Glad to see some love for The Orville. :-)
+adric22 *Thanks for the primer on a milestone in x86 MS-DOS systems.* The Tandy 1000 series packed the intel® D8088-2 and one of the first integrated chipsets produced for a competitor to the International Business Machines Type 5160; the TTL graphics were class-leading until IBM developed the Multi-Color Graphics Array for the Types 8520/8525/8530, the sound subsystem able to keep up with the then-class-leading MOS Technology 6581.
What are these small arcade cabinets on top shelf?
Odd that Radio Shack stores were called Tandy in the U.K but their components were branded Radio Shack, kinda the opposite was round to the USA.
I'm excited for the new Orville season as well. The first was done so well.
My parents had a Tandy 1000SL, absolutely great machine which inspired me to go and have a career in IT. Very nostalgic video, thanks so much :-)
My first PC that was mine was a 1000SX.
Thanks for this video, nice work! I had two 1000SX and a 1000RLX growing up, nice to see them both in here. A friend had the 1000HX, I was already jealous at the time since he could easily take his with him to various places.
I bought my own Tandy 1000 TX after a summer of work and added a 20 MB hard disk to it. It was a great machine. I wish I still had it. They don't come up on ebay very often. I used it connect to my university's computer systems over 2400 baud.
You could buy an IBM AT 5170 when this released, with EGA graphics. The only way this was superior to an IBM was using the sound chip from the Colecovision and BBC micro and just about every sega arcade. What it was, was CHEAP. for an office machine, but it was also kind of a machine that didnt know what it was for, an office machine with gaming features. It was also VERY expensive compared to gaming computers.
Theeeeere we go.... a triumphant return to form. More of this type of content, please!!
Been on a hunt for the Tandy 1000EX since I got a new/sealed official Tandy/RadioShack-brand dust cover for $0.50 at a flea market. Been several years now and none have turned up locally. :( Now I see that there is a successor that I may be able to use it with (Tandy 1000HX). Thanks! :D
Fun with flags. Jk.
But what about the Dick Smith Challenger? http://messui.polygonal-moogle.com/comp/challenger_cat.pdf
Great video and wow.... After 21 years, i finnaly know what Tandy meant..... Thank you! A happy New year!
So are you doing the CoCo documentary next?
I wonder if you'd be willing to investigate a new mic setup for your non-camera video sections. It sounds like you have a perpetual cold.
Great video, had no idea PC gaming was around before the late 90's. The graphics look really great too even compared to other consoles I've seen made during that era.
Tandy 1000 was a great computer in it's day, I got to play many games on my best friend's Tandy 1000SX in the late 80s and I knew people using them all the way through the mid 90s because they still played many basic DOS games very well.
The TRS80 MC10 was my first computer. I got it for Christmas 1984. I used that thing until I got my Amiga 500 in 1988.
In the fall of 1990, I started my freshman year of college. I had spent the summer working at a new and used computer store...I saved my pennies and bought a Tandy 1000 that our store had taken on trade for a DTK 386 PC compatible system. I remember going to CompUSA, which had just opened up, and buying a 2400 baud internal modem for it (made by AST), so that I could dial into the campus modem pool and do my engineering homework on the mainframe, and my computer science homework on either the DEC VAX or the Unix systems, and putting a 3.5" floppy into the system so that I could run the floppies included in my text books on it. I also remember dialing into the campus modem pool from my mom's Apple //e at home on weekends!
privileged idiot :) i have jew claws very similar to yours
Thanks. I remember every one of these from back in the day. I appreciate you doing this.
awesome thank you for this!
I worked for Radio Shack at the time. I was so glad to see that they weren't completely proprietary for once.
It was the Sega MASTER SYSTEM that used the same Yamaha sound chip as the Tandy 1000 / PCJR, not the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) which used a FAR superior sound chip and was released many years later.
16:33 that texan accent
That control key is in the *correct* position.
0:37 lol
The Sega Genesis used a Yamaha YM2612 sound chip.
Great documentary! Especially loved seeing the good ole Aspect phone from your AST support days. We used the same ones at Keane in Seattle when I did MS Windows support in the late 90s.
Interesting documentary about this PC! And I am still waiting for Amiga documentary...
Wait, I had a PC Jr. with a simplified buckling spring keyboard and composite monitor. Was that an option or did my mom McGyver something together?
In the mid / late 1980s, the Korean PC market was in a transition period to MSX and IBM compatible models. Radio Shark, which has little in Korea, made an IBM compatible machine.
I miss the old Radio Shack. Back before they went down the cellphone resale business model, that eventually killed them.
8:44 sneak peek at the new game i think
Yeah but can it run Crysis?
I remember a lot of good times at my friends house playing on a Tandy HX. Shame Radio Shack had to die... no wait...
I never got into computers until 1990s
18:44 Time can be so cruel...
Hey wait a minute... At the 10:55 mark, isn't that the same soundtrack from the TI/99-4a Music Maker cart?
Thanks for presenting this. Back in the day I had a Tandy 1000ex and simply loved it. I did everything on it from my taxes to games and basic programs. It was a solid and reliable computer. Kind regards, Al
I loved my Tandy 1000EX and did some cool Basic programs back in the day.. Although I never could get the damned mouse to work with it.
you are buy far the best retro-tech guy on yt. thx!
Thankfully I have a 1000 RH/HD. I installed a ISA-Card with a CF-HDD :)
I don't know what version I had for sure. It was one of those all in one, meaning the keyboard attached. My issue was it only had 128k of ram so I couldn't get any of the Tandy modes to run for games.
8:43 you might be red-green colourblind, 8-Bit Guy! The colour palettes were significantly different here, with green terrain on the composite and red on the RGB.
Leave dr.who alone >:(
1984 introduction of MS-DOS compatible computers? The IBM PC Model 5150 was 1981. Columbia Data Products introduced the first clone in June 1982, followed shortly by Eagle. Compaq introduced their clone in November 1982. If you mean Tandy/Radio Shack introduced their PC compatible in 1984, you should be more specific. The Tandy 1000 and its descendants are NOT PCjr video and sound compatible. There are differences in how the enhanced video modes and the sound chip are addressed. Software must be specifically written to use them for a PCjr and Tandy. Some software was written to use both, some (not many programs) can only use the enhanced stuff on a PCjr while most can only use those features on a Tandy. A PCjr can have its hardware modified to be BOTH PCjr and Tandy compatible. I did the video mod on a few PCjrs. After paying way too much to PC Enterprises for a cheap 7400 series TTL chip, a bit of wire and instructions, I did the others by scavenging the chips off various dead or obsolete PC boards like ISA floppy and MFM controllers. PC Enterprises sold a mod kit for the sound but I never bought one and I've not found documentation of the mod anywhere. I figured *someone* would buy the PC Enterprises kit, get ticked over being gouged for a simple hack, then share the info. The video mod is easy to find online, even IBM Canada published it on their website. In all the time I had PCjrs I only ran into one program that required Tandy sound in order to use Tandy graphics. All others I used could use the beeper sound with Tandy graphics - as though the programmers were expecting it to be used on a PCjr with the simple video mod. So *please* stop saying the Tandys are PCjr compatible when they are not, not without some hacking of hardware or software. P.S. Has anyone ever hacked a Tandy to run software that can only use the enhanced video and sound on a PCjr?
Is the hold key essentially like the SYSRQ key?
18:48 Damn, you look rad
Damn i saw one of these a week ago in a thrift shop, but passed it cause it was so yellowed, but damn didn´t know what it was. Now i´m bummed.
I had a buddy with a Tandy 1000 Ex which had the 5 1/4 floppy drive on the side. He also had a 720k 3/12 external floppy drive. I had just gotten a IBM XT Clone with a 5 1/4 floppy drive and he somehow had tons of games and we copied and split them from 3 1/2 720k to 5 1/4 floppys. Man, those were the days....
my first pc. yay
I got into computers on a Tandy 1000 HX & later I bought a Tandy 1000 RL. I loved DeskMate. I wish we could still it today through Win 10. I ran my house through DeskMate.
DOGSHIT. GROW UP FUCKHEAD.
You had so much hair
I still Loved Them..
It never ceases to amaze me how a company that started out making leather belts went in to become one of the largest computer manufacturers of an era!
As someone who cuts their teeth on a Tandy CoCo1, but always (and still do) kept an eye on and found other architectures interesting, I found this video fascinating. For my own machines I went from CoCo1 to C64 to Amiga, but also used a CoCo3 a lot at a friends (point being I never left the "Tandy-verse"), so didnt have a lot of early hands-on experience with x88/x86 systems. I was aware of the Tandy 1000 machines, but until this day I never realized it was such an interesting machine. My relative ignorance of x88/x86 machines in the day had me always assume that Tandy's reputation for poor DOS machines was a universal thing. Had thought they were always bad, but it now appears that I became more aware of them after their heyday, when their machines were average at best for the time. p.s. Please excuse the slightly incoherent nature of this post. It's way too freakin' hot to think straight here in Australia right now
Also you could add another floppy drive if you want to.
Dang, the 8-bit guy is surprisingly (sorry, no offense) cute back in the 90s.
What's the music at the very start?
I always wondered what people did for color graphics in the 1980s since most IBM PC compatibles only had 4 color CGA until EGA came out in 1987. But I've heard a lot about people having 16-color graphics not unlike EGA in the mid-1980s, and I always assumed before those people were on Amiga, or using composite video on a TV or something. Knowing about what a big deal Tandy was and why it's listed as a compatibility mode in older DOS games kind of fills in the missing link. I think if it wasn't for this machine, Amiga might have become the PC for home and gaming while the PC was a business machine only.
This was very well done...thank you!
When I was really young we had several Tandy computers. Each one was usually two or three years after their release. I used an upgraded Tandy 1000 until 386 PCs became affordable.
This was my baby growing up!
7:15 Have you forgotten your own video explaining why CGA is actually better than this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niKblgZupOc
3:32 Does anybody else remember IBM’s second attempt at a low-cost home-oriented machine after abandoning the PC Jr? Namely, the PC-JX? If you’ve never heard of it, it was probably because it was only released in Japan and Australasia. And it flopped just as badly as the Jr.
2:07 What was the standard for “IBM PC compatible"? It was the ability to run Microsoft Flight Simulator. Thus, from the beginning, the arbiter of compatibility was not IBM, but Microsoft. Really, these machines were, and still are, “Microsoft-compatible”.
1:13 Maybe 100 different computer architectures, but how many actual CPU families? Maybe only one-tenth that. Most of the incompatibilities lay in the rest of the hardware systems.
I thought the Victor 9000 was the best.
2:52 im impressed
Maaan. I'd love to get my hands on a 1000 sl/2 again (if I could do it cheaply) and Max it out just to see what could be done with it :)
very cool
Is that young Sheldon ? Cause he wouldn’t be old enough for Tandy .......that’s why that show sucks and is GAY
I like Young Sheldon, I love BB Theory. Using the term "gay"to describe something is outdated and insulting. I was around 14 when it came out and Sheldon is not that much younger than me on the show, so perfectly plausible.
That control key is where they’re supposed to be. ;-) Says this old reformed emacs user...
Lemmings. I loved that game.I forgot all about it. I worked for RS in the late 80's and left in 1991. My first PC was a 1000SL and my last from them was the 2500 XL. I bought a 1400 laptop for $500 due to a promotion where you get 50% 1 item if your TSP sales were 3% of sales or higher. The 1400 had just been disco'd and was $400-$600 less than normal and then I got it 50% off of that. I learned Basic and Assembler in college on that computer.( already knew some basic from the Commodore 64 ) I was the only one to bring my own laptop...uh, portable computer to class. I sat next to the wall where the outlet was. I didn't know about the buyout in 1993. I know after I left , RS started carrying crap Packard Bell machines and I knew it was going down hill. Deskmate was a great selling feature. I bet I sold 10 computers a month, and got 7% commission as a Manager trainee. ( a small store with 2 other stores in the town ) The 2500 was a 286 CPU but a 8 bit BUS. I played Duke Nukem 3d and Wold 3d on it and then shortly after I left RS got a AMD 386DX40 machine and VGA card. 256 shades of gray VGA monitors were $150 and .42 dot pitch VGA 640x480 monitors were close to $400, for a 14". Get a 15" Trinitron .26 or .28 pitch and the price was near $500. Those were the great days of computers. They were all built like tanks and tech. was moving so fast. Now my watch has more CPU power than those computers. I love my Quad Core i7 CPU, 27" 2560x 1440 display and 32Gb ram and 1TB -6G ssd computer ( iMac ) but those times were so pure in comparison. We are all just spoiled now.
This was the very first PC I purchased.
I love your videos man. It’s always awesome to see them in my feed
To be honest, I thought the computer in Young Sheldon was a PC clone, not a Tandy 100
MORE 8bit!!!! I'm sooooooo pumped!
I wasn't too thrilled by Tandys placement of the "ANY" on their new keyboard layout.
This channel is oddly calming...
woow. i really like the look of Tandy machines.
Great video. I kid you not my uncle, by marriage, was just talking about this PC two nights ago. I saw a couple in his garage in the back and brought them up. He worked on the Tandy 1000 and was talking about taking it to a trade show back in the 80's. He said it was tricked out with clear top and, don't quote me, Chromed name plate and other cool stuff in order to show it off. They wanted to really impress the market. Then yesterday I was thinking about 8-Bit Guy because he lives within 5-10 miles of my mom's house where I was at. I get home from metroplex back to west texas , sit down just now and what do you know. The circle completes itself with this video. I might be in the Twilight zone. It's a bit kreepy.
5:45 because IBM=[I]nternational [B]usiness [M]achines and no gaming was intended.
Yay! King's Quest! Subscribed.
I feel the need to play Leisure suit Larry. My Amiga needed the Amiga monitor to see all the colors.
I had a Sinclair. Think I paid $99. It was awesome.
I had one of the last models. It had a 386 processor & a 50 Meg HDD. I sorely miss it. I have a IBM Aptiva that was given to me I also use a Dell XPS 8700 now
you are just showing off your hardware
Ha ha ha! Chiclets style!
Man I hate how shit computers are now days, I wish I could have lived in the 70s and 80s. No windows 10, no Facebook, no Chinese made machines. Damn
My first true computer. Great memories.
I never heard of Tandy till I saw the LGR episode where he got excited to see a Tandy mouse and keyboard he reviewed.
My family's first PC was a Tandy 1000 RL, which was already obsolete in 1991, and we used it until I was a freshman in high school, when we got our first Windows 9x computer in 1999. I still have it, and it still works (although the floppy drive's gotten temperamental after 25+ years).
I had the HX and we had 640k installed in it, definitely remember playing a lot of Wolfenstein on it lol
The man behind the IBM PC Jr., Bill Sydnes, was hired later by Commodore who ran the company into the ground with the A600 (cost more & did less)
I worked at Radio Shack in Canada in the late 80s and sold my share of 1000s! (Best commissions to get next to selling a brick cellular phone) thanks for the memories!!
I have 2 of these systems. 1 of them is a 1000a the other is a 1000sx. Still some work to do on the (a) but the sx is fully usable. Love these machines. They are an embodiment of the era.
i had one of these as a kid, best memories ever.
I had a 1000 TL as my first computer then I got a 386 33mhz. Nobody had computers back then except for schools with their apple 2e.
I still have my original Tandy 1000.
I remember the TSR-80 as my first computer
Oh yes, Tandy is actually a leather producing company, not sure how they got into computers. There is a Tandy leather store here in Edmonton still.
LOL.. .I remember in school my friend had an MC-10 and told me the graphics were awesome... I remember looking at him with a dull stare... "what are graphics"? We started programming on it..typing pages..neigh ; BOOKS of pages into this little machine. I was hooked from then on. Later on I bought an AmstradCPC464, then a VZ200 .... yeah a VZ200... it's an Australian PC which was ok..but not as good as the Amstrad. The Amiga was the next move..so many memories.... as I sit here looking at my Raspberry Pi...loaded with more images than I will reasonably even get to play... The good times keep getting better with technology.... but the old stuff, the early where it all started... to me, will remain where the heart is. RETRO ROCKS!!!..
I remember lots of games back in the day having cga, ega, tandy options on setup. Good times.
I had the Tandy 2000 when I was a kid. My father was a massive nerd in the 80s and had to have one. He eventually gave it to me.
How about a leading edge 286
Thanks for the information. I still have my Tandy 1000 SX my dad purchased back in 1989, when nobody had a computer in my neighborhood. RAM was maxed to 640k, upgraded a 20 Megabyte MFM hard disk, Sound Blaster ISA, Joystick , installed a 8087 Math Co-processor and replaced the Intel 8088 CPU with a 10 MHz NEC V20. But the monitor is a Green Florescent Tandy VN-4. Everything purrs like it was back in the day when I power it up, and I feel like kid again!
wow there actually is someone out there that knows what an MFM drive was, they were a beast to get setup. Tandy 1000 EX was my first, maxed it out as much as possible also with MFM. Great memories.
I had a Tandy 1000 when I was a kid. I never had any good games though. Just card sharks and family feud. Edit : mine was a tx and had front ports and volume. Also had 3.5" floppy but the smaller capacity version.
omg i had a tandy 1000. I loved it as a kid in the 80s lol
I had the EX
But can it play cry- oh nevermind.
what do you mean still can be seen stop living in the past
Had to stop all my working, a new 8bit guy video rules!!
I was totally uninterested in these computers (and all MS-DOS machines, really) back in the '80s and '90s while I was still really into my Commodore 64 and Amiga 500. But I'm gradually getting won over by 8-Bit Guy and LGR's videos about them, especially Tandy machines.
Thanks David, my first IBM compatible was the Tandty 1000 EX, this really was fun to show my kids.
"Oh sorry, yeah, it can't quite fit a monitor on top. We can sell you a really nice shelf though!"
I remember going to Radio Shack all the time and looking at the Tandy machines. We had an IBM clone 286 with VGA graphics. Interesting that you were working for tech support back in the 90's. I was working for Stream in Carrollton in 1998 doing the same thing but for MSN :)
I had a Tandy as a child. Played a game called Dungeons of Daggorath. I regret never beating that game. It was ahead of its time.
Man, the part of my brain that stores 80s history is filling up my brain vessels with awesomeness. Like way those videos titled "visually satisfying" things, like a perfect cube of jello or lava lamp. Old computers have same effect.
I miss QBasic....
I had a1000hx because I couldn't afford the SL model model it was at least ibm compatible, in those days you would get the same computer as your friends so that you could share and copy games, I also remember going to BBS to download pics of Samantha Fox
Well done. I am 58 and was familiar with Tandy.
When I started with RS in 1995, they were selling desktops from Packard Bell and some no-name company called Acer. I was still using an Amiga and to a lesser extent, a C-128 at that time. I turned to the dark side and bought a black IBM Aptiva out of my store on new years eve 1996 which put the store over one million in sales for the year. My boss got some sort of bonus for that, and I got a $4000 credit card bill while making minimum wage.
I think I’m the youngest one watching the 8-BIT guy.. I’m 12...
The prices on these were insane ($4,999 in 1984 is equivalent to around $12,500 in today's dollars). In 1988 I was impressed painting on an RS computer at the mall Radio Shack sporting 640x200 at 16 colors. My C 64 back home was 320x200 in 16 colors and 1 color in 640x200 (with the color "squares" of the text 16 colors able to "color in the 640x200 mode on the C64). In 1989 I dove deep into a totally different full color dream and gaming experience with the Amiga 500 (256 colors in 320x240 and 320x480, with 4096 using hold and modify HAM) with 640x480 at 16 colors out of 256 pallate. But Amiga was 16 bit, later 32. These were amazing times.
I remember my dad buying me a Tandy 1000 SL. An issue with Tandy is that it wasn't a clone compatible and proprietary so just buying extra parts like a 3 1/2 disk drive was so much more expensive. I remember the hard drive was incredibly expensive upgrade, I had to work for it. The sound on it was great and the 16 color monitor it came with it, made a of dos color games look so much better. Desk Mate was builtin and you can start a basic version without inserting a floppy, until you started something heavy. It was very useful to get my home work done, I used everything to get the most out of it. It's important to have a printer at the time otherwise your PC was useless.
Just like 'Useless Duck' below, when I played my first games on my PC with CGA card (looong time ago), I remember I was always curious what this "Tandy 1000" option would look like. Now I know. Brilliant! Already have the PC Junior in my collection, but now will need to get myself one of those Tandy 1000 beauties :-)
15:52 *click*
The best part about the SX was that the matching monitor stand worked PERFECTLY with my Amiga 500.
It ran TRSDOS.. we called it Trash Dos.\TRSDOS (which stood for the Tandy Radio Shack Disk Operating System) was the operating system for the Tandy TRS-80 line of 8-bit Zilog Z80 microcomputers that were sold through Radio Shack through the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tandy's manuals recommended that it be pronounced triss-doss. TRSDOS should not be confused with Tandy DOS, a version of MS-DOS licensed from Microsoft for Tandy's x86 line of personal computers (PCs).
Where do you store all this crap lol
I remember Deskmate fondly. My gran's computer ran Deskmate 3.
14:32 - So still better than some modern "smart"phones.
Thanks for the marketing insights! It makes me wonder -- if Tandy hadn't had a hand in jumpstarting the PC clone market, could another architecture have replaced x86 as the defacto home computer and/or workstation?
The HX was my first computer :)
Crazy! It just doesn't seem that long ago. Great video!
Loved seeing the brief cameo of the MC-10. I rocked that thing so hard when I was 11. Great video as always 8-bit!!
Had a Tandy TL/2 in 1990, at the end of their run, and it was still a great computer -- granted it was basically an 80286 in an XT chassis, but lasted me 3 years until I built my first 486 machine. I even found an 8 bit VGA card to put into the TL/2 and it worked (!)
Think you could program your ai on a Tandy? Haha
So, it sounded they stopped making progress (or at least much progress). And this means that they fall behind when others DO make progress.
Man, my parents bought me one of these for Christmas in '84.. to replace the CoCo 1 I had since '80.. Talk about a nostalgia trip.
But will it run Crysis, and uhh, wat did you film this with a potato? Haha, I am so funny, so clever, so unique.
You covered graphics and sound and had some mention of clock speed, but you did not mention the processor used beyond the original 80186. Did they continue to be "XT" or "AT" architecture, or what?
I used a Tandy 1000A until the very late 1990s. ( We did computers and networking for a living so we had other systems as well.) I had bought it brand new from Radio Shack. Sometime early on, I had upgraded the 1000A with a NEC V20 CPU and a "turbo" switch. It ran an RLL controller and SeaGate HD almost from when they first came available. After being my hobby computer, it ran a full time dial up GT-Power BBS for many years under DeskView. I simply loved that computer. It was one of the best.
Been looking forward to this series for a while. I picked up two Tandys in the last few years -- a 1000SX with 286Xpress Accelerator option and a 1000 TL... I also have a rare Apple II-on-an-ISA that is made for them.
Restore the Hearoid Robot that someone gave it to you a couple months ago and please also do not forget the demonstration of the Hearoid Robot that you restored.
I became interested in computers due to the Tandy 1000EX. I was 6 or 5 years old and I saw my mother programming BASIC programs. I picked up the DOS manual and eventually got hooked due to curiosity.
We had a Tandy 1000 EX with a 5 1/4" floppy drive.. Good 'ol MS-DOS. I still remember playing the original Starflight and the first release of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Oh and those Sierra classics.. King's Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. lol Goodtimes..
My very first PC was a Tandy 1000, we had them in school, so I really wanted one for home use. I loved that old beast of mine, I used to program it using Turbo Pascal.
My first machine was a TL. I played a lot of King’s Quest and did a lot of audio editing and music composition. Just a 286, but the extras made it ahead of its time.
I remember going from a Tandy 1000 to a generic 386. Man, we loved the graphics, but the sound was only the PC Speaker! It wasn't long before we got a Sound Blaster
1:32 - Shit! David Banner wants to sell us a computer! Buy it, quick! We don't want to make him angry!
The Tandy 1000 HX was an equal value computer as the Amiga 500 during 1988 in North America... yet the Amiga with superior hardware did not whip its tushie in sales overseas.... :angry:
This makes me wonder just how radioshack screwed up so bad. Now you can’t even find em anywhere, a handful of places are considered official radioshack dealers, but they’re still mostly independent and don’t have anywhere near a good selection of items.
I had the Tandy 1000 HX and it worked great for a few years until being the curious kid I was I formatted my Deskmate disk rendering the entire thing useless. I got a new copy of Deskmate a few years later but by then it was pretty long in the tooth. By the time I finished high school I decided to pawn it and got $15 lol. I wish I kept it but these things are large and heavy and so it was taking up a lot of room and served no purpose any longer with far better PCs out.
Hmm, The 8-bit Guy worked for AST Computers!? My First Computer was one of supposedly "bad" 486(CPU)'s, never had any problem with it that my Dad or myself didn't push it to. It had Originally only 1mb of ram, when we sold it, it had 32! Ah, what times. Sad to say AST didn't survive that long, as we tried the support line and all my dad got was a seedy sex line in its place. My dad ended that call very quickly(as my little ten year old self was there with him and the phone call was on speakerphone). We really pushed that computer with a FMV heavy Spy game that would crash every 10 to 20 minutes so we had to save often.
Its January where's planet x3
My mom gave mine away at a yard sale :( wish I still had it.
Your videos are so good that in my heart you're a 9-bit guy.
memories of going in the shop and wanting one. all i had was an acorn electron. i leant bbc basic though. now i clean toilets .........it didnt help
Is it just me, or does anyone REALLY dig that intro music?
Nice
p.s. your cable managment
Does The 8-bit guy mean that you only've got 8 bits of memory in your brain?
you're a tech legend sir.
In the UK the propriety printer port is referred to as a "Centronics Port". I ran a Tandy dot matrix computer off of a Sinclair Spectrum 128K +3 (which ran CPM) through the Speccy's built in Centronics port. Back in those days the three printer interfaces were RS232, parallel and Centronics. Unusually for a Computer, the Spectrum 128 K +3 had a built in MIDI port and could both record and allow scripting of music in MIDI script if connected to a music synthesiser. I doubt if anybody ever used this facility and it never appeared on any other computers at the time or since. There was a chapter in the manual teaching basic MIDI scripting language.
This channel is awesome. I just love all these restorations and explanations
Had sn. 00001599. Bought a daughter board to add a coprocessor. Memory expansion was another board. My roommate and I outpaced classmates in our electrical engineering labs.
I still miss my F19 & Thexder... It was a grand system while it lasted.
The first computer I remember having was a Tandy TRS-80
Is it ironic that the expensive "business" machines actually needed much less powered harware than games did. The home machines were a quarter of the price but could still do "Business" tasks like spreadsheets and word processing.
Awesome video, thank you! Waiting on the Amiga series.
I had a Tandy 1000 RLX... I really liked it, but wished I had waited one more year to get the upgraded X386 with windows
Nice video! My progression of computers started with the TRS-80 at school (we called them trash 80's). Then home I got a Vic-20, bought with graduation money, then onto the Commodore 64. Then to the Tandy 1000-EX. This video sure brings back the memories. I remember going from CGA to EGA and so forth.
2019 Yay
I had a 1000RLX and later on I had a tandy that had a 1X CD ROM drive where the whole mechanism slid out and you loaded it like the typical top load CD player. Both worked well. I've never seen any other IBM compatable computers that could natively send the pc speaker audio to the sound card output. In fact when the PC speaker in my XP pc failed I had to find a program to send the pc speaker audio to the sound card. I think where tandy failed is they had one good product and played it out until the competition passed them and they couldn't do any better or felt it wasn't worth it to continue. Had tandy continued to innovate like they did with the chipset odds are they would have still been the leader and we may have had some of the computer technologies sooner than we got them.
Does radio shack still exist? Wait...... Don't answer that
Interesting. I had a friend, while growing up, with one of these. Never actually saw it in use but he said he played Kings Quest on it.
My first computer was a Tandy computer, but since I wasn't really sure what value to me a computer at that time would be I let the wife have it when we divorced, shortly there after I got very interested in computer programming and I didn't have a computer, it was another 8 years before I got my next IBM compatible.
This computer has an adorable sounding chip.
freaking 80's comercial tune..... i hate it. I also unsuscribed from this channel when someone sent a spiderman comicbook .. a very valuable comic book and the guy just said.." im not fan of these.. ok thanx"
I love your videos. Even my wife who is not into retro computing enjoys watching them with me. You have a new patron on Patreon ;)
Sadly back in the day I was given some random xt clone with cga. Later I bought an EGA, but kept the CGA monitor, and like the Tandy I could do 640x200@16, but the only game i remember using this mode was Thexder II. Some games would try 640x350 but the monitor couldn't handle it (and made an awful high pitch noise). Luckily most games just wanted 320x200@16 and worked fine until i upgraded to VGA which needed a new monitor (and along the way a 286, 386, Sound Blaster, etc...
Thank you for everything. Subscribed :D
My first computer was a Tandy 1000 SL. I would play Sierra Online games all day long; like the King's Quest series, the Space Quest series, the Police Quest series, and more. I would save up money each summer mowing lawns to buy more RAM. I was so happy the day I got it up to 640K! Oh the memories....thanks for making this gem of a video!
I was in a Radio Shack store in Florida as a kid, and I took pride in that I crashed the Deskmate software. The poor sales person just rolled his eyes. lol
My first PC was a Tandy — Tandy Sensation, first “multimedia” Tandy w/ 1x CD-ROM and windows 3.1 .. Would love to have that machine again.. The 25mhz SX was quickly trumped by the 66mhz DX2 that came out a few months after I got it, but it was way more than enough computer for me, ended up lasting me quite a few years until I got a “free” 380mhz computer via a 2 year peoplePC ISP contract.
Thanks for rocking with Mobygames! We can do it!
SCP-079 Contained Successfuly, containment unit: Kilo-12
I miss my 1000SX.
Can you do a video on the Track star board... I remember this card allowing me to boot my Tandy 1000 to and Apple II
It certainly was the best MS DOS computer when I got mine. Though I ran PC DOS 3.10 on mine (and it worked fine).
What software to you use to mix and master your music? It sounds great!
Thank you for this. I worked for Radio Shack in the 80's and early 90's and remember all these machines so well. I get very nostalgic and sad at what became of Radio Shack. I was the "computer guy" at my store in Charleston WV (and later Martinsburg WV) and probably sold a thousand Tandy 1000's and I owned several myself. It was a good time in my life. Thanks for bringing back some of those memories.
Such a smart device! Nice docu too. I got my first IBM compatible around 1987 and remember a lot of the things you show in your video: nice trip round memory lane! Happy New Year and hope to see more of you in 2019!
I worked for Radio Shack back in the late 80s and the Tandy 1000TL was the best thing around. We loved showing it to customers because they were the best. By the early 90s competition had caught up and we found ourselves making excuses for the later computers because they weren't up to the competition.
I loved my HX. Played lots of great games on it, especially Thexder and The Black Cauldron.
I remember Tandy from the TRS-80 Model I, the machine on which my career as a software developer began. And when I moved to my father's PC, I used to see Tandy 1000 pop up.in the configuration options. Ah, the memories... A Cray-1 was an incredibly powerful computer, with high-tech components such as vector processors, but my ageing mobile phone blows it out of the water in terms of performance. When you started in the early 1980s, sometimes it's incredible what technology these days can do, and how it enables us to connect with people from all over the world.
Most people in today's generation have no knowledge of all these early players. Thanks for bringing back some history!!!
Worked for Radio Shack during this time. The "clone wars" were beginning to heat up, and home buyers were very price conscious, so I lost a few sales. We purposely left a system open to show the build quality of the machine. The cables were neatly arranged, wiring was well anchored, and the daughter cards were well made. Help sell a lot.
Had one as a kid, it was awesome being able to hook this up to my buddy's 50" big screen TV to play California Games hours on end!
The Tandy 1000 was my original PC and it was awesome. Still booted last I saw it in the late 90s. I definitely remember that Hold key issue and it was annoying.
Is the Tandy 1000’s sound card the same one used on the Sega Master System?
Having worked for Radio Shack I can say with certainty that the words Tandy and Best, never belong in the same sentence. You might have gotten more bang for your buck but it certainly wasn't the best and you failed to address custom machines at that time. You get what you pay for and if you paid a little more you got a much better machine elsewhere.
I had a Tandy 1000 and loved it.
Man great on everything but the TL line! need more TL... (cowbell)
@13:40 dat Sythwave drop
The best MS-POS computer in the 1980s. I would feel awkward with that apple cone-thing on my wall.
It worth saying that after the tga option that's really a low memey high color options (because of at this point was about resolution, not color) in 1986 there was something called mga that was pretty much a ega card rigged to output on d-sub 15 and able to run 256 colors at 320x240 but not 16 colors at 640x480 (but it could 4). At the same way that tga become the basis for high color ega, mga become the high color basis for vga. Mga was ever just put into on PC series for some reason. But pretty much all game labeled vga is really mga games.... Same as most ega game is really tga games. (And a lot of cga games really used the hack 16 color mode)
My dad upgraded his 1000 with a math co-processor & 640K Just remember to park the hard drive
Our first computer, the TRS-80 with 32k expansion and floppy drives, 35$ at a pawn shop...
Hey, David, you should make an improved version of the Tandy 1000 video, i saw you are treating the EX model as HX model?
My brother brought home a Tandy 100 when I was about 10 and we played the heck out of it, lode runner, king's quest, space quest, Empire, and tons of other little games and sequels and such.
I much prefer your repair videos rather than your documentary type shtuff
excellent presentation, script, and research. Great job.
Reading it back, I now realize that my previous comment (which I just dashed off the top of my head) sounds a bit rude. I'm sorry! I really liked this video and as someone who owned and programmed a Tandy 1000, I feel you did a great job covering why it was such an amazing computer.
Great video documentary on the Tandy 1000. I spent many hours as a 10 year old playing games and hacking DOS programs on it. Got me into computer programming. Great memories.
Great video that brought back a lot of memories of my old 1000SX with the hard card. Nice machine. By the way, I too enjoy The Orville.
During the 80's a lot of chip computer has been manufactured in Malaysia
Love your shirt.
This channel is the best of all, in 2018, for me! Frickin love it! Thanks from Pete in the UK...
I still have the 3.5 inch disks for deskmate 3 and dos version 3 from my Tandy 1000 sl/2.
My sister received a Tandy 1000HX through a charity. It was the first time any of the family had seen a pc. It was good that some of the games at the time supported Tandy's CGA 16 colour 320x200.
YAY! My first computer!
I knew only one Tandy. She lived in Arroyo.
Oh, snap. Our boy with hair.
I receive legit transfer of $4165from this amazing website: Freepypmoney.online/?xULPsr
Bring back vector displays!
This was before my 'life with computers' began (I started with a 386), but still soooooo interesting!
But you don't buy a PC compatible in 1984, and the only computer you buy in 1984 was the Commodore 64
This was my first computer! I forget exactly which model, though; I thiiiiink it was probably the TL, based on pictures I'm finding online, but I was very young when I was using it, and my memory was certainly not fully developed by that point. It was sitting in a corner unhooked all the way into high school, though, so some elements of its appearance I remember more clearly. But I do have vivid memories of Deskmate (which I didn't know the name of until just now, thanks!), and of playing games like King's Quest, Three Stooges, Jordan vs Bird, and of course Tetris. Had that joystick, too, though I don't remember actually using it for anything.
Your complaint about the arrow keys not being separated so it's too easy to press other keys by accident and too hard to find them by feel while playing a game is exactly why I've never liked using WASD to play FPS games. I always remap the movement keys to the arrows.
Great video as always. Our Tandy 1000SX was my introduction to the world of computer literacy and PC DOS gaming. This machine was very important to my life arc, and introduced me to so much. I bought my own external modems so I could live in the world of BBS as a kid, which inspired me to run my own for a time. This video is very nostalgic for me... Strangely, I remember our SX keyboard as having the "alt" key in both locations, top and bottom. Maybe the years have confused my memory. It had the same inserts at the top for key function references.
Missed ya buddy!
Great informative video as always! Though I feel the need to point out the demon you swallowed saying "mate" at 11:12 XD
I have used a Tandy 1000, a friend had one when I was a kid. Me, I was KEEPING UP WITH THE COMMODORE CAUSE THE COMMODORE WAS KEEPING UP TO ME.
Hello 8-bit guy. Thanks for your contribution. Your channel has given me countless hours of informative awesomeness :)
I know Texas instruments had lots of " firsts"innovations in the market....but Damn if the name of their computers didn't turn people off. Made it sound cheap. As well as marketing it in their stores. When you walked in a radio shack back then..you saw tons of odd products that looked cheap. As well as everything else looking like school. (we only had trs 80 computers in school) If they would have done better marketing, renamed their computers from "Tandy" and taken the 1950' s tech further away from their computers. They may have won the market, since they seemed to be innovators at the time.
holy crap, my computer was refurbished by ast
Donations PLS
Nice look back at what was out there back then. At the time, I had very little knowledge of products like these even existing. Still smile when I think of all the suckers who paid thousands for antique junk in the thrift stores, garages, and recycle bins. Same suckers are buying grossly overpriced Apple products today!
My very first "real" computer was a Tandy 1000 back in 1984! Had 384K of RAM, 2 Floppies, and a 300 Baud Modem! I now manage the clinical information systems for one of the largest hospital systems in the nation, all because of my Tandy :)
I had a Tandy TX1000 as my first ever computer. Great machine...
3 grand for a 12 megabyte hard drive! :O
Great video, as always David. An interesting thing to note was toward the end of the video, where you started work for AST in 1996. I started my first tech job during that year, it was a 'gap' year during my university course, and although all of us students were out working that year, it counted toward part of our eventual degree. Anyway, I was thrown into the seemingly bewildering world of IBM OS/2 Warp, which I had to become an expert in, although having previously never used it, and also in Novell Netware, as our data centre's expert in those areas was due to depart on maternity leave in under a month of me starting there! However, it turned out to be great fun, and I really enjoyed my year there. I was given pretty much every piece of tech they had at the time, to just play with, and possible come up with some things they hadn't thought of previously. I did, and then some, including automating the installation of new systems using the servers, a thing that helped immensely when you had to consider Windows 95 came on 31 installation disks IIRC, and MS Office on a similar amount! I may have spent the years since in a totally unrelated field of work (tattooing), but I still love all things tech related, and still try to keep me hand in with modern things and try to stay relevent. :)
Just for let you know, I'm selling a Tandy 1000 Computer, has everything, includes Joystick and 3 old 5.25 Floppy Disk Games or eBooks (I don't remember tittle names) but If are you interested just reply, you can pay on Paypal and your money is protected, also I'm ebay seller with 100% Good Feedback, just let me know and shot an offer.. yup..
Do they still make computers :()
The Tandy sound is awesome, no wonder the machine was a bestseller!
Came out a little too late for me. In June of 1984, my family invested in a Columbia Data Products MPC IBM compatible, which was arguably the best MS-DOS machine for most of that year.
10:25 ... that paint program looks sweeeeet!
Dos? Dos is good
$4999... FFS!
This might not be the best example, but in the TV Show "Young Sheldon" they get a Tandy 1000 SL
1 Million Subs in 2019. You can do it.
Tandy 1000 and King's Quest 1 We've come so far-Yet not as far as I once had expected...
Radio Scrap, when I call into the bank or government agency, when I'm left waiting for my file to pull up, I ask them, what are you running, A Tandy system, lol.
Seeing that you featured "Young Sheldon" I had the question since seeing this episode, if the Tandy 1000 SL still was available 1989 and having the "eliza" program running with such a voice. But after hearing that there was a DAC, it could be made, non the less there were no compatible speaker and enough space to save such great files. What is your oppinion about the eliza program?
You. Are. Ama-wait for it-zing! What a blast through memory lane this was!
LOL, I also sold AST's as a floor rep at one of the military exchange stores back in the mid 90's. It was short-lived though (I was still in high school).
My main memories of the Tandy 1000 EX we had back in '87 was playing games - Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune and mostly Police Quest.
The intro tune is a delight to listen to with my studio headphones
What a nice example of a Tandy 1000
3000 dollars for a hard drive, jaysus christ
Holy Cow! Model 10... got that for my birthday in 84! My first computer.
I had one and it was hot garbage. Couldn't wait to upgrade to a 286.
Tandy 1000 EX was the first computer I ever used. My family bought it in 1987. Sierra games FTW!
The 1996 8-Bit Guy AST employee pics alone earn this video a like!
Yes, kids I started working for Tandy _just_ before the arrival of the 1000. I eventually left sales and got into hardware/programming big time, even operating VMS on DEC systems for gummint systems. Ahh, the old days. I'm not sure, but I seem to remember the CI$ account number... 77001,3301?
0:49 There's a watch pen? I think Techmoan should cover that!
Thumbnail change.
Hey, really glad I found your channel. My husband passed away a few months ago, and he was a huge computer geek. I've been going through his stuff lately, and I am finding a whole bunch of computer magazines from the 80s and 90s. I also have a lot of books on Basic, Pascal, and Assembler. I came upon your channel because I had found a 6" floppy drive among the stuff and wanted to show the boys how disk drives worked. I have been trying figure out what to do with all this stuff. The kids have protested my getting rid of his Apple II.
You meant the sega master system regarding the sound chip right? Not the Genesis. The genesis came out in 1989 and had a Yamaha YM2612
Wow, that brought back memories :)
Thanks David! You always mentioned "Tandy 1000 PC" and never really understood what it was, but now I know :) Great video
TI99-4A for life...
IIIRotor The 99-4A had been purged from TI history at one point, you couldn’t even find a single reference to it on their website. We had a few in our high school electronics shop computer lab, it was a good product that was just a little late to market, and way too expensive.
Great video!!! can you please give me the web page were you get the list of games compatible with Tandy?
I still have my TRS-80 Pocket Computer.
- "And sale price for under 999" - Price is actually 998,95 Back when they dared to do such marketing.
AMD!
he sees 8-bit colors(colorblind) that's why he is 8-bit guy, he is fully focused on 8-bit things, his processor(brain) has a lot of processing power left due to low graphics processing power consumption, so he consumes it on 8-bit things. And sorry for my English :)
Some models of Dell & ASRock servers have a NMI button (Non-maskable interrupt) ... this is basically appears to be the same as the hold button; it stops ALL processing and there are ways you can "inspect" and "change" the memory directly through various methods such as through IDRAC console commands or a COM port.
I owned one, 80386 with Windows 3.2.
Working in the industry at the time and using AT&T, IBM, NEC, Leading Edge, and others, I found the Televideo TS-1603 was the best PC compatible at the time. Mine would actually run the real IBM DOS and BASIC, which none of the other could do at the time. Leading Edge would be my second choice, as they were cheaper than the Tandy and were a solid piece of equipment (made of metal) vs the RS Tandy's. Just my two cents...
The interface is a standard parallel (or Centronics) port bu the connector is not standard. The standard port is a 25-Way D connector, the Tandy 1000 had an edge connector.
I remember the days when "Tandy Compatible" became the standard and Radio Shack was *the* place to buy computer stuff...
Reporters used the S100 in 1992. Big 300 baud modem.
Wait, but Control is at the right position, left of A. That's not unusual.
Now I want to upgrade to a Tandy 1000.
Does anyone else watch 8-Bit Guy videos for hours on end
My first computer was a AST!
Growing up we had a 1000SX up until the mid 90s. If it were in the mid 80s it would've been the ultimate Tandy set-up. I wish I could have grabbed it when my parents were clearing out "junk."
I owned the Tandy 1000 EX from 1987 until summer of 1992 when I went with my first IBM Clone. Mine had 256K of ram in it but my mom upped the RAM to 640k for one of my birthdays. Mostly programmed in BASIC but had a few games to go along with it.
My first computer was a 1000RL. I almost never used Deskmate. Always in the shell. All these console makers are re-issuing classic consoles as minis...I want a mini Tandy 1000RL.
Man, you must have a large warehouse to keep all this stuff! - Love your videos :)
Cool.
I'd love to see a video Of technology which had weird features like random Ports ect.. As well as technology which needed features that were forgotten.
my first pc was an ast with tandy monitor from radio shack had win. 3.1 student edition.
I'd like to get my hands on a Tandy 3000, I worked for a newspaper in the 80s and we replaced our terminal-based system with the 3000s. They are hard to find.
Good Stuff
Had many of the items you show here. I remember getting the Tandy, I saw the PC-Jr first, but it would boot 3 out of 4 times with scrambled display. Loose ram chips, i know, a common issues at the time. But then i saw the tandy, it was christmas, and they had the christmas display running. Get the Demo for the xmas to run if you can.
The Tandy 1000 TX (8086 processor) was my first computer back in 1989 and HX (286 processor) model after --- Edit: 512K RAM which I upgraded to 640K for $90 for the TX model.
Leisure Suit Larry and Kings Quest rocked my PC. $200 for a 20 megabit HDD card. Haha, I remember Space Quest too, I miss those games.
Nice Video, however you are saying the word however far too often.
lol i had a trs 80 lol and a dot printer
8 bit guy...you think Jodie Whitaker is ok ? good god man ! she's terrible ! and yes, the writing is utterly awful...Chibnal has even admitted that he has a PC agenda..they have hijacked our sci fi show to preach that crap to us...well the fans have spoken..we don't want it !!
i once had an annoying keyboard with arrow keys so close to other keys. i did the worst you could do probably and used a soldering iron to melt a tiny line in the left arrow key. it really helpt not pressing nearby keys.
I still have my 1000SX. I loved it until I could afford a 286, then a 386. I expanded the ram from 384k to 640k, added a Smart Watch and a 30 meg hard card. Got rid of the two 360k floppies and switched to two 720k 3.5 inch floppies. Even still have the manuals, disks and the box it came in. Never used anything but the green screen monitor, though. Those color monitors were insanely expensive and not all that impressive.
Did anybody have the issue where the monitor would turn blue unless you hit it?
Does this mean that you would turn into the Hulk if your Tandy stop working?
McWrite? You mean MacWrite?
I loved this video, my first computer was similar and I wondered why it has such low graphics. Also it remind me many things from that time.
I bought the Tandy 1000EX,I should have waited for the 1000TX, to which you could add internal, cards. Like a HD.
2:14 Looks like NEW, damn looks really like brand new (O_O) what a beautiful hardware .
Funny I think my first computer was an AST 286 ^^
My first computer was a model 1 level 1. I upgraded it to a new LNW motherboard (not RS) added 16k mem two floppy drives, I learned so much from it, best investment I ever made.
A Tandy 1000 TX was the first computer I ever owned. Paid 50 cents for it at Goodwill. Taught me a lot about DOS and stuff.
Great and accurate history of the Tandy 1000 series. I sold these as a high school and college student - it was a quality machine for the day. The MSDOS on ROM was a great advantage and it provided a very quick bootup.
Can you make a video about the evolution of Samsung Electronics?
@8-bit good vid you shed a lot of light on the T1000 er isn't that a robot.
Decent channel dude, I'll probably subscribe for a bit, then unsubscribe and forget about you for a year or so and then subscribe again.
Today having a hold key close to the move keys would be considered a "gaming feature" since you can quick pause the game in between shots.
Zak McKracken theme song
Me and my family owned a Tandy 1000 Tx which had the 286 CPU in it and 768K of RAM. Plus we had 40mb Hard drive on a card and 1200 baud modem which my dad used for College.
takes me back. My father was a Tandy connoisseur. My first computer was a hand me down COCO- he started buying other IBM PCs in the early nineties though since Tandy was going bye bye as far as a lot of their PCs though
Love how you have Planet X3 as thumbnail image.
2019
'Incompatible' is the word. I owned may RS items like this. no mouse yet . . . or MS DOS
Wow that PC junior looks mint! Nice article
it's really funny. you can compare this to cars. back then, it was all mechanics. you could open a car and literally repair it with a screw driver. today, it's all mechatronics. the same with computers: back then you could open a computer and literally repair it with a soldering iron.
My dad had the 1000EX and I was a complete Tandy nerd growing up. That was a great machine.
The new years day Doctor Who was very good.
Really not sure why I watch all these videos of archaic technology.
pause at 16:54 :)
New camera for Christmas?
Awesome video and brings back great memories. My first "IBM PC" was a T1K system that I bought at a bankruptcy sale for $300 with all of the original receipts. I did the memory upgrade and swapped the 8088 processor for an NEC V20 which executed 8088 instructions faster and I believe was used in the T1KEX. The other fun trick was creating a "virtual floppy" ram drive with some of the additional memory which really sped up DOS and any programs on that ram drive. I got an old 10MB full size HDD (the size of two 5.25" floppies stacked on each other) free from a friend and mounted that in a small cabinet with a separate power supply and wondered how I would ever fill it : ). I later sold that system to a local church and used the money to build an IBM AT clone.
Could we see more Apple related content?
That's the correct place for ctrl. Caps lock is simply stupid, especially where it's put on modern keyboards.
$3000 for a 12MB hard drive?! ha!
Gosh, I remember those pens with the digital clocks on them! Straight-up 80's!
Your channel is great, but dude... you seriously need to upgrade your shooting space. It just looks horrible. All that junk on the walls is not cool. Plus, how can you justify using an AirPort Extreme from 2003??? It was crap then.
Every time I saw the name "Tandy" I think of Strong Bad's first computer
Thanks so much for this video. I purchased a 1000SX back in October 1986 when they were first released. I still have the machine along with a CM11 monitor in their original boxes. I later expanded the machine up to 640K of RAM, a 20MB hard card, and added a "286 express" board. This board allowed you to remove the CPU from the motherboard and plug a ribbon cable into the processor socket and use the 286 processor instead. It breathed some further life into the machine and I used it into the early '90s. I also have the rather unusual combination mouse controller clock/calendar board and the original Tandy mouse that was designed for this board. Maybe someday I'll drag this stuff out again and see if they still work.
Kings quest sweet. I had this game and then IBM PC Junior. I could never get past the witch in the gingerbread house
I stuck with Commodore. A VIC-20, then the 128. Sadly I chose a 286 AT PC back in 1991 because it was obvious back then that Commodore was dying.
Outstanding job of explaining what was really happening at that time---too many choices with little or no compatibility is what made OS's like Windows so popular as it simplified the entire computing experience for the masses.
can we say, it is the 1st gamer PC ? :)
Great video! I really don't think these were a thing in the UK (or Europe). We were really dominated by Commodores, Amigas, Spectrums etc. Then PCs started taking off in the late 80s early 90s. But as always, someone else was ahead of the game and yet somehow the PC Prevailed!
PLANTRONICS CGA=16 Colors, to get 16 color mode do &H03D9:=&H0F Plantronics Mode; &H03DF:=Border Color; &H03DD:=Paper Color; when drawing or plotting points &H03DD:=Ink; &H03DE:=Plane;
That brings back so many memory's. My fist ever computer was a IBM 286 whit Windows 3.1.
Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was the mechanical engineering manager/ head mechanical design engineer for Tandy Computers in Fort Worth, TX for 10 years (1983-93), from the Tandy 2000 until the division was sold to AST. The Tandy 1000 was my first design there and I am especially proud of the plastic case design that was one piece and attached by 2 FRONT screws. The injection mold for it was a work of art. The sprue was in the middle of the top. As time went on, EMI/RFI became more of an issue and we had to switch to metal cases but to eliminate paint cost and the risk of damage we pioneered the use of vinyl-metal laminates for computer cases. All our sheet metal parts were made in custom progressive dies, raw material off a roll in one end and finished parts out the other end. No secondary operations. This was the most satisfying job I had in my working life, high tech, cutting edge, fast paced, popular consumer products that I could see in any Radio Shack in the country. Not only that but I worked with some of the best people I've ever worked with. Hard to imagine that was 36 years ago near the beginning of my career.
(Hand up) Had one, loved it!
Try to use foamazing for retro bright!
Better IBM than IBM.
Good presentation.
Back in the day, I had purchased a Model IV like one week before the Tandy 1000 dropped. I returned the Model IV and got Tandy 1000 serial number 936. Oh sure it was more like 00000000936 or something like that. I had a very early one!
Awww just missed out on a Tandy 1000hx for a whole £20 with monitor on Facebook :(
i worked at radio shack during there fall and its amazing u could buy a pc at radioshack
The 1000 hx did not have the ability for internal hard drive. As I had one and would have preferred the 1000 sx instead. As it had the ability for internal hard drive and math co processor, as it is a 80286 system, as opposed to a faster 8086.
... which is why there's one in my collection. Another great video, by the way. P.S. I used to sell AST machines back in the day. They were good systems.
Very interesting video about computers that we saw very little of in the UK. Over here the Amstrad PC1512 was the computer that really established the PC compatible market and started eroding commodore and Atari's market share.
0:56 - OMG, talk about a blast from the past! I had one like that in the late 80s, from my school district, except it was by NEC... a NEC PC-8201A (or maybe the 8233 model), to be exact. LOVED that thing. I was SO bummed when I left elementary for Jr. High and had to return it to the elementary school.
I'm not really sure why, but this one of my absolute favorite channels.
Tandy 1000 EX was my first computer. IT lasted forever!
The Orville is frakken awesome. The first episode was solid.
Man, I just love that opening theme.
this computer has a reference on Fallout game?
My dad owned one in 1986 and it was the first MS-DOS compatible machine I ever used. Often played old-school games, like King's Quest, Sopwith, Dam Busters and Bushido, on it. The Tandy 1000 seems like a simple, boring thing today, but in those days it seemed like it was filled with endless entertainment.
Had the 1000HX back in 1986. This video brings back a lot of memories. he he.
Enjoying the new season of The Orville? I am!
I was born in 2001 but I love your videos because I'm projected to another dimension
Great as always, but why so long between videos??? There is plenty of legacy silicone out there!
Tandy was the name of radio shack in the UK
An good Video, althrough you cannot play TrackMania. Here are your 5 Stars:
18:09! Ah! Last comment. Sorry. I've been wanting a 1000 RLX Hard Drive model for my collection for some time now, and dang, of course, you have one that looks to be in great shape LOL.
16:01 I think that printer is the DMP-133! POSSIBLY a DMP-134? Man, my first printer was a DMP-133. I used it on my Color Computer 2, my Amstrad PC-1512, and even on my first computer build 486DX-33! Even though it was somewhat proprietary, Radio Shack sold a cable letting it be used on standard PCs. In fact, I used that printer all the way up until Christmas 1995 when I got an HP DeskJet 660C se!
10:04 "Orville" RULES!!! And man, what blast of memories on this video.
So well done man. Thank you!
So what happened with Tandy? They should have gone from strength to strength.
16:01: Of all things I've seen on this channel, this picture is what really hits the nostalgia for me.
Hey, nice T-shirt!
My first computer was a Tandy 386sx. 25MHz, 6MB of ram, and an 80mb hard drive with Windows 3.11. Changed my life forever.
This was my pops first home computer with a screen
Tandy 2000 with 2 floppy : 2750$ want a 10Mb hard-drive, it's just 1500$ more. Now i understand why my friend from back then had a tandy without an hard drive.
Had the TRS 80! But too young, no computer users in my house, and just used it to play games until nintendo came out. :(
Great documentary about a machine I never knew of back in the day.
1:28 Bill Bixby! ( _My Favorite Martian_ , _The Courtship of Eddie's Father_ , _The Magician_ , _The Incredible Hulk_ )
Thank-you sir! Clearly the machine you helped design is well regarded by many.
I bought my first computer when in the 6th grade '82ish, a Franklin Ace 1000, 64k, dual external drives, green monochrome NEC monitor and a Panasonic dot matrix Printer. I still have it and fire it up now and again, mainly cause I can still program in BASIC. Good times! I acquired a complete Apple IIe and IIc off ebay a few years ago. Those two are in my closet somewhere, just cool stuff to have!
I still have my TRS-80 Model I and a Sharp MZ-700.
Back in 1992, i always wondered what this "Tandy" Stuff in some Games was, the mode worked on my VGA System (same for MCGA) and before 1996 (the year i got on the Internet) i never found out was Tandy was. Unfortunatly its impossible to get a Tandy 1000 in Germany. The other thing was my 386 always showed "EGA/PGA/VGA Kompatible" in the Bootscreen... took me forever to find out what PGA was..
*Back then 640k of memory was 5"X6" How big is that now? Must be in the um or micrometers*
can you do a video on how old modems worked
Awesome :)
the pcjr had a mechanical keyboard when you repaired it, so does it use a mechanical keyboard?
never mind. that was the enhanced keyboard. the original is a chiclet keyboard
Love the the nostalgia and memories of the 80s and 90s computers. That clip of young Sheldon playing with a computer in the store reminds me of the times I used to go into the large department stores in town after school just to look at and hopefully get to play around with a computer that I knew my parents would never be able to afford to buy me. That photo of you at the help desk. Lol. I bet you've got some funny stories. Perhaps you can share some?
Waiting patiently for the Amiga documentary :)
Hard disk drive in an expansion card... just like they do now with PCIe SSDs
Shows a Master System yet says Genesis. More likely the Master System contained the soundchip. Great video though. :)
I miss the old Radio Shack
My first PC that my sweet wife bought me in 1994 was an AST! An Advantage 486sx33 flat style desktop. I loved that thing SO much. That old pic of you is priceless. OMG as a kid I had one of those Radio Shack semi trucks!! It was battery run and inside the cab it has a slot to stick shaped plastic pieces that spun. As it moved and spun it turned the front wheels so you can have it do turns and such. I kept the spare parts in the trailer lol.
oh man you got me on a memory trip, my first computer was a tandy 1000EX that i paid for after mowing lots of lawns :)
Made in the USA?! Isn't that illegal?
I had three Tandy’s the trs80 color the 1000 and 1000A. Ahhh the memories.... the hideous money spent which I should of invested in Microsoft and Apple . Hmmm oh well
Mod your RGB tv to take VGA, I think it would be cool lol.
you are the pastiest white guy of all pasyt white guys
Can it run Doom 2?
I barely remember the broken tandy variant of the lemmings game in my childhood. Now I know, for which machine this was for :-)
Thanks for making this one, Awesome video!!!
Wow. In the UK, the Radio Shack stores were actually branded as Tandy, and were the go to place for all things tech, from computers to resistors, and everything in between. I never owned a Tandy machine, but since the local store had operational (and powered) display models, I could hone my programming skills in store on Tandy machines. Thanks for the memories.
1000sx in the late 80s, our first computer in the house, I should have been using it for all sorts of things but it ended up being a game system mostly, tho Print Shop and the dot matrix printer went a long way in producing birthday and party banners. Sierra games, the SSI gold box series, Carmen San Diego, that Tandy machine was very fun, and I still have it.
The Tandy 1000 HX (8086 processor) was my first computer back in 1989 and TX (286 processor) model after --- Edit: 512K RAM which I upgraded to 640K for $90 for the HX model.
There is something cool about old computers.
@2:04 the guy's are wearing the exact outfit from Tim and Eric's Crimbus special!!
Look how expensive these computers were WAY back then. Wow. And the one with 7 Mghz of pure unmitigated speed and power! Monster of the midway. I didn't get a computer until the late 90's so Tandy was just a vague brandname associated with Radio Shack. Interesting to see that it was king of the hill for a while in it's day. And yes I am one that misses Radio Shack. Cool video.
3:32
Do you make videos anymore?
Hello, from Algeria , I am a fan of your channel because it reminds me of memories of my childhood where I learned the basic on amstrad cpc or msx and atari ,and yes even in the deepest sahara we spent the day playing games video on computer, in any case I thank you for these videos nostalgic and educational .
You have the same voice as this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNBOO_ggypg
I had a Sanyo MBC 555, no 100% compatible but very fun, wish you to get one
I feel old. I've used almost all of those Tandy computers. I've got a running Model 100 and pocket computer nearby.
Youtube needs to give you a raise lol. Love your channel and expertise.
That Zak Mckraken music is sweet
These "Tandy pocket computers" are obviously just rebranded Sharp calculators. (Which were nice, btw.)
Anybody know what's the game at 17.38 ?
You should set up and run the Pangolin Laser Show Designer software with a cheap eBay laser on a Commedore Amiga. The Software is free now, and you can get a cheap pair of galvos for $60 and a cheap laser for $5. If you saw a concert with a laser light show in the 80s or early 90s, it was probably run on the Amiga with the LSD1000. When you bought it, they included instructions on modifying your sound card. I still have mine and the original disk. Last time I had an RGB monitor, it still worked.
youtube /Huge Abandoned Clothing Factory - Found Vintage Computers!
Play Doom on it pls
I owned a Tandy 1000 years ago. Was a fantastic computer I actually preferred it over my windows 95 machine
great video thx for all info
Having been born in 1984 I found this extremely relevant to my interests, thanks for the informative vid, mate!
0:12 E•x•p•a•n•d•a•b•l•e
For 25 years I was trying to find the name of the game Nebulus (no one of my friends knew it basing on my descriptions). Thanks for the accidental revelation. Greetings from Argentina
All of my high school essays were written on a Tandy 1000 sl/2, with an orange monochrome monitor. I'm in my 40's now...and you might be happy to learn that I still HAVE that Tandy 1000 sl/2. And on top of that, when I started dating, my now wife, I "inherited" their Tandy 1000 RL. Which I also still have.
Wow, I have a huge grin remembering these. I was the manager at a Radio Shack during the Tandy 1000 era & remember fondly selling these. You missed our biggest selling point, though: It was assembled in Texas. Woohoo made in the USA. Now I am going to try to find a Deskmate emulator to play with. Loved the vid.
Deskmate was a game changer when it came out!
2:00 Oh my have the mighty fallen. The Suliban now reduced to travelling back in time to hawk computers.
I never had a Tandy, and I feel I've missed an important chapter in computer history that way. Especially that GUI based OS did look a bit ahead of its time in some ways, although that keyboard looks awkward, but then again, most keyboards back then were. It's nice to see the Tandy for a change and not only seeing it in the list of graphic cards at the startup of a game ;)
A guy called Jim Mcneil equipped the staff of three weekly Community newspapers he owned in Atlantic Canada with the 100 series portable in the late 1980s and totally changed how my generation of Journalism school graduates worked in the field. Time was money and it paid off in quality and increased advertising.
Yikes! I haven't thought of AST research in 20+ years...
"Multiple different" fronts?
ME!! when I was a kid! @18:59
Hi!! I am from Puerto Rico, but was raised in La Porte, Texas I remember my dad had a TRS-Color Computer II, next I got a Tandy 1000SL, and my last computer when I was a kid was a PAckard Bell Legend 2051 I think it was!
Nice job
I remember we bought a Tandy 1000X and it was a great machine! Because my wife was a teacher we got $200 off and we used that to get the whopping 40mb hard drive and a printer. I used the Deskmate software to keep track of my membership lists, and my son (and me) loved the games. My son and I also learned to do "Quick DOS" on it, which started him onto his career in computing. My first modem was in the machine, a 300baud unit that I accessed the local college's database, which was just full of interesting info!
I came here looking for Strong Bad email references. I am disappointed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mQrrlkAXSg You're going to love this, 8BitGuy! :D
Somebody else wants an episode about Commodore disk drives? Like if u agree!!! I think he needs just the 1540.
$1000 in 1984 adjusted for inflation is $2400 in 2018 .
Everybody loves 8bit guy
My elementary school gave me a old tandy in 1998. I learned how to program in quickbasic, moved to vb.net and made it my career.
Great vid. Tons of info. Thank you
Tandy, i always think of that name in a heavily british accent.
6:11 Not only that the Tandy has better sound and color than the IBM XT, but I think that game you showed us, when I looked closely, was running smoother on the Tandy.
The Tandy 1000 was my first computer, I saved my coins for a year. It was 1000$. I lived on that computer. I learned so much about games then too. Great system
congrats to tandy corporation/tandy leather factory for being founded 100 years ago in 2019 :)
nice work. its nice to see all that legacy and effort and history being comprised into a neat segment. no longer forgotten in the depths of history's ocean. good stuff.
LOL - Must be so weird.
I remember the old man at radio shack would get angry when I looked at the computers as a small child. Oh well, they went bankrupt and I have a MacBook pro.
It's intresting to hear about Tandy because we had 4 big computer company at Hungary: Videoton, Proper 16 and Proper 8,Controll, Albacomp.
Hey, Hispanohablantes! Espero que aprovechen mi subtítulo para disfrutar del contenido de este video, saludos!
I wish I could take my modern computer to the child me back in the days. I wonder how the young me would react. LOL. The young would probably won't go out the house and just play games forever.
I could have wished my Dad got me a Tandy 1000 at those times. But I was a kid. I don't know anything at the beginning. Instead what I have was an Orange Monochrome Monitor (CGA 4 colors but you know the actual monitor only has shades of orange) and that PC speaker. The only advantage I have is that it has 640k of RAM. But as a kid you know what I really like is the 16 colors and a better Sound.
We had a Tandy 2000 that, while a good machine, was not compatible with the majority of software available. I found out years later that you could easily modify MS-DOS software to work with it, and that modifying software to fit platforms was common, but before the internet, this was not commonly known. That pissed me right off...
that radio shack commercial is quaint given how they went
Nice! The Tandy 1000 was my first computer. I don't remember having 16 color video or sound at all, strangely. I think all I did was write BASIC and try to live with dosshell instead of Windows which was too cool for me to have at the time.
Might not get a response, but: I'm trying to get into old pc gaming, and I have a game (mario teaches typing, but it's a start), but no computer to play it on. It says that it works with system 6.0.7 or later, and I'm not sure what computer to look for when it comes to old mac gaming. do you (or anyone else) have an idea on where to start?
I have the radio shack highway game
I had an HX, it was great. The 3.5 was a big deal back then.
That satisfying *clunk* when you locked a 5 1/4 disk in its drive.
Game dev: Hey, let's lie about our 2015 game being HDR because HDR PC monitors didn't exist until 2017.
That's an actual line from a cable TV commercial. 10 ADP.
The competition has 1080p? We'll give them a thousand ADP.
JFK Jr.: Where's the ALT button?!
Eu tive um TRS color II em 1987
Wow! Blast from the past...popped my computer cherry on this bad boy!
I agree with you about season 11... But yeah, the Orville rocks!
OMG total flashback Radio Shack. I do remember my parents get my older brother and me the TANDY 1000 HX in 1989 because the price had lowered from the previous year. In 1989 I was 5 years old at the time and I remember playing and Duck Tales Game and some Snow Skiing game at that time. My family stopped using the computer around 1994. At that time my friends had told me that I was the only kid that they knew who had a computer in their own house.
But can it play fortnite?
7:10 how about that brightness......hello!
Drinking game: swig whenever David says "of course" or "however".
By the time I was born this thing was already a thing of the past, but it's interesting to hear about all the features on this thing.
Sheldon's first computer!
What about Strong Bad's Tandy?
I absolutely love the days of incompabilty with computers. Everything is homogenized now. Shame.
This was my first PC!
You could buy a decent brand new car for $4999 back then.
Wow, in 1984 I was still using my Apple 2 (hey I paid 2,000 for it in 1980 as a Freshman in college, I was not made of money) Never realized how great the Tandy 1000 was. It is amazing that the company did not become a leader in the industry. Also, in 1983, I was an Intern for a fortune 500 company and had to program the standard IBM PC machines of the time. Your channel is so amazing. I teach computer science today at the AP/IB High School level. The few people that thumbs down are complete imbeciles.
I mean to survive to this day.
Perfect episode. Great return to those times. I like the way you put everything (for exampe prints, videos, advertisments from the era). So good.
They'll bring back incompatibility. Why wouldn't they?
It's nice to know about these older computers that were around before Microsoft took over as the main stream operating system! Thank you for these documentaries, I'm really enjoying the incredible information about the older home and business based computers before the year 1995!
And I subscribed to your channel! I don't do that with too many people! Your in depth knowledge and presentation is well worth it!
I like going down memory lane with technology. I just got finished with the AMC show Halt and Catch Fire and this was in my recommend list. Go figure. Now I'm watching Valley of the Boom on Nat Geo. Good stuff.
Poor feller. Do you have a cold?
I bought a Tandy 2000 in 1983. The 1000 was a clone of the original IBM PC.
I still have mine Tandy 1000and I was young and now I’m 42 my Parents brought it for me
I recall having a Tandy 1000 with a 10 Mb hd. I recall my father selling it $500 years later.
I think this was my first experience with a PC. My brother and I playing wheel of fortune and giving our character funny names.
I had a Tandy 286 (the 1000TL model) in the early 90s; its sound beat the Soundblaster cards of the time. Its Deskmate had a _great_ label printer that was exactly what I needed (and easy enough to learn to use, oh, so simple) at the time.
at 5:15, that's LHX!
the 3000 NL was sold around 1986, had the same graphics and soundcard. ran a VGA monitor with the standard card. Also ran a 386 processor.
I used my deskmate system all the way to university, in 1992. The writing program had everything I needed. I never bought an art program or a word processor. Didn't need them. the computer came with one.
$1,100 in the 80's is highway fucking robbery. My 4 core computer, which runs at 2.8 Ghz was $300. It is running Windows 7.
As a child, I LOVED reading the specs on those old computers, and reading them as I watch the video, I still feel that immense pleasure even though the specs are so low compared to modern stuff. God bless!
Still my favo retro channel, (since day 1)
I have to respectfully disagree. The best DOS computer at that time was the Leading Edge PC, original version. Look into it. :)
I grew up with DOS software and still enjoy the games to this day. Sadly I no longer own a floppy drive for old software. Windows 10 emulates most old DOS games.
Computers like this were upwards of 2500 bucks back then. And I was a poor kid, so there was no hope of me having a computer. Wow times have changed. Now our pocket phones are as powerful as super computing workstations of the 90s!
more please
My first computer was the Radio Shack TRS-80 with 4K of memory. When I got it upgraded to 48K of memory I was so happy. I did not think I would ever need more than 48K of memory. I also got a Tandy 2000 computer. In fact, I got a second one. My first "pc" was a Tandy 1000A. I owned a Model 100 computer. I think about that time I went with Commodore computers; Vic-20, C-64, SX-64, and others. I spent a lot of money on computers. Do not get me started on printers. Modems I wish I had that money nowadays. In 1982 I started a bulletin board system using my TRS-80. I could not afford a floppy drive so I had to use the tape recorder. I had to write my own BBS program in BASIC. Over the years I ran the BBS (Howard's Notebook) on many different computers. Then when the world wide web was created, 1995, I moved the BBS to the web. Now the "BBS" is on YouTube.
My second computer. While other kids had ataris and then nintendos I had pc's. played a lot of games on that Tandy :)
Tandy TRS 80 was my first computer and eventually wound up with a Tandy 1000....great times.
16:06 Hx?
runs fortnite?
The tandy 1000 could have been great if it were more PC compatible...
Arrow Keys > WASD
I liked the music used at 2:10. According to the "Featured Music" list at the end, there were three pieces of music used in this video: "Alpha Polaris", "Smooth Bed 2" and "The Last Goddess - Carmen's Theme", all by Anders Enger Jensen. I found Alpha Polaris and The Last Goddess - Carmen's Theme, and it wasn't either of those, so I assume it must be "Smooth Bed 2". However, I can't find this. I did a Google search, but none of the listings even mentioned it. So, where can I get it?
Okay thanks for all the usefull information but will it play Farcry 5?
That is not sega genesis, it’s sega master system
You forgot to mention that the Tandy 1000 SX was a singular DOS-based computer that could ALSO run as an Apple IIe when using an expansion board.
My dad had a Tandy 1000 back in the day. I was probably 14-15 at the time. I loved it when I'd visited on weekends, I remember the blue/yellow theme fondly and the amazement of Prodigy lol. I messed with the paint and music programs for hours. Space and Police Quest was fun, but Larry 1 on the T1000 is where I learned to jack off woot. Elite the space game was AMAZING, but far superior on my later PS/1 PC.. wish I could play that one again! :( Great vid!
I had a 1000SL, 1000TL, 1000TL/2, 2500xl/2 and then....4850 50mhz with a math co-processor! Best keyboard ever! Woo Hoo!
@ 2:55 SN76496 was shown as 489 :P
Wait a minute. Are you implying that games were played using the arrow keys back then? As in not on WASD? Those were weird times.
The SN76489 sound chip is still popular with microcontroller hobbiests....when you can find one
i had a Tandy 1000ex and a Tandy 102
My dad had a Tandy in the 80's when he worked for what was GTE back then. I remember playing Montezuma's Revenge game on it
Lástima que no está doblada al español.
Funny how a cause for one man's gripe is another man's blessings. I found the hold key's position near the cursor keys to be very convenient for text editing (pausing runaway scrolling!)
Ever review the Tandy 80? I remember it being called the "Trashcan 80"
The ctrl key is right where it shold be
It is only 35 years ago. Its unbelievable now, with raspberry pi's around, iphones (love 'em)
Hey, just wondering where you find these machines in such pristine condition? Or do you clean them up yourself? Very impressive!
love the nostalgia! Great video thanks 8bit guy!
Have you ever heard of the Exelvision Exeltel? Me nether. I was "messing" around in an emulator called Multi Emulator Super System (aka MESS (aka MAME without the arcade emulation)) until I founded this computer emulated An according to my research the only site that I found about this computer is this one from OLD-COMPUTERS.COM (not clickbait, scam or virus): http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=521
Tandy 1000, I had so many experiences playing on this thing. The first time I played Space Quest beginning to end and beating it was a true gaming achievement for me.
Love that Doctor Who t-shirt!
The Tandy 1000HD (8088 with 10MB HD and DSDD 5.25" drive) was my first DOS computer. The 486 was already out so I was pretty behind... but it was a big change from my CoCo3 and Ti-994A I had an earlier version of Deskmate than the one shown here - I tried this version once but it wouldn't run on my 1000HD :-( but still I LLLLOOOVVVVEEEDDDD DeskMate.
Yeah, WASD isn't a thing until Half-Life 1 introduced them. Even Quake a year before is using arrows.
Yes.
I remember seeing one in Radio Shack when we had a ATT PC6300 and when I saw the Tandy I was blown away by the graphics and how fast it felt.. I mean by today's standards a cell phone blows it out of the water.. but man 1984-2003 were incredible computer advancing years..
I just read the text in the Deskmate word processor... Sad to hear the new Doctor Who series writing isn’t good. Frankly, that’s been a problem for several series now. I loved the actors, but the scripts kept getting sillier, more melodramatic, and more ANTI-SCIENCE, which pisses me off most. The change of showrunner was something I was looking forward to. I was also eagerly anticipating Jodie Whittaker, and wanted to see her have a good run on the show.
Yay for the Tandy 1000 series! My family’s first computer was a Tandy 1000 TL/2. I missed out on the C64 and Amiga world almost entirely (until the Amiga’s soundtracked format was ported to DOS and GUS/SoundBlaster). We upgraded to a Tandy 2500 XL/2, which had VGA and the Tandy 3-voice+DAC. Sadly, the 2500 XL/2 had some kind of hardware bug that rendered the DAC a crash-causer for older games (some game developers worked around it). So, while I missed out on the cooler computers that kicked the ass of DOS/PC machines, at least we had the best IBM-DOS clone... for a short time. Sierra games for the win!
"Tandy quality" meant the lowest quality piece of shit that could ever be manufactured. That is why Dell tromped them in the markets.
Terrible voice. Trying to sound “deep” ending sounding unbearable.
This was the era when I started using computers - In 1984 I regarded these thing as jokes. I had a mac and have never used an ms dos system in the decades since then. I have hated Bill Gates longer than most people :). btw current Windows os is actually junk that only does one thing well, spy on you. ps It's truly bizarre how this dude blanks out *totally* anything to do with Mac.
We had a Tandy 1000TX that my dad got in 1987. This brings back a ton of great memories.
Tandy 1000, Sharp X68000 and Amiga were the best computers
tandy made great stuff back n the day
I wanted one of these so bad when i was growing up
Wait, the 2000 had an 186 processor? That alone made it only somewhat MS-DOS compatible, only very few PCs had the 186 (another example is the Siemens PC-D in Germany, which even had a propietary disk format for 80 tracks or 720 kb on a 5.25" floppy).
Takes me back. I was 5 when we got our SX. 2 5 1/4" disk drives, 384K (I think) of ram. I was 8 or 9 when we got our TL/2, 640K of ram, 20MB hard drive and a 5 1/4 and 3 1/2" floppy. Later got a 2400 baud modem. Good times.
Thanks. Cute name too- Tandy. God bless, Proverbs 31
Ahhh the golden age of pc
Nice subtle Planet X2 product placement
Wait what?! There was no ROM and you had to boot from a disk? :O I started on Win 3.1 and just kind of assumed all computers would boot up from ROM... that is really interesting :)
I say the ti99/4a was better all around. That's 16 and 8 bit.
I remember that Lotus 1-2-3 was a few hundred dollars back in the day, so having something built-in for free is pretty amazing. While in college, I did a lot of data entry work to help income, and it was almost entirely in 1-2-3 for DOS.
Hey, if I'm going to buy just one Tandy 1000, which one to choose?
This Tandy 1000HX looks similar like the Olivetti Prodest PC1
haha malaysia chip haha
Ok this is old
Boy, I'm 40, I'm a developer and I love your channel. You bring us content on a journalistic level, hope you do it for a lifetime! May our God bless you always!
Back in the day I worked for Inglis Canada. They offered employees the chance to purchase a computer through payroll deduction. This was set up with Tandy and my first computer was a Tandy 1000. 2 optical drives, and a DOT Matrix printer. Back in the day it was 3 grand. So worth it. Me and Police Quest had some serious fun.
That processor has the AMD logo and says copyright Intel. Fanboys, go at it.
Nice walk through memory (ha!) lane ! Great stuff. Like looking at a Ford model T when we all drive electric cars! Yes at 10:05 do agree with the Orville; and new Doctor Who episodes have a lot to be desired. Too PC(Ha!) for my tastes.
Very cool machines. Here in Europe Amstrad, occupied the same market space of affordable MS-DOS compatable computers. Restoring an Amstrad PC3086 myself. It's one of the longest running projects I've undertaken. Getting 720K system disks alone has been a challenge. Had to restore a Pentium One machine just to do it. Later in the mid 90's we had AST computers at school (Win95). Cool computers, I used to get time out of class to go fix them when any one messed up.
I love your videos... takes me back to my first Trs-80.... keep it up and thanks !!
I miss my Tandy 1000... had the original as well as the SX, EX, and TX models when I was 11-16 years old. I ended up with my first virus from the 300 baud modem downloading games like Ski among others from BBS boards. The virus was called the Stoned virus and spread quickly on floppy disks and would totally mess up the TGA 16-color graphics by taking up that memory space. Spent hours cleaning that mess up! Loved my 10MB Hard Card... what were we ever going to do with all that storage space! Breaking the threshold of 640K RAM meant messing with the CONFIG.SYS file to manage it with HIMEM.SYS. How about that 286 12MHz daughter card add-on option. What we did back then was amazing! I even worked for Radio Shack from 16-18yo (1990-1992) and was the top computer salesman for the Southeast Region selling the Tandy series. One client of mine was a lawyer and bought 10 from me... as a side job I went to his office and wired up his BNC Token Ring network in the office and setup all the systems. After that, I went in the Air Force and starting building my 386 pc through mail order with the over sized Computer Shopper magazine, complete with published BBS numbers to get all that hacked software! It's fun to talk to old school nerds who actually can relate to all this stuff that paved the way for what we have today... Thanks for the trip down memory lane 8BCG!
I had an Ibm PcJr. It had pretty decent graphics, I believe similar to the tandy 1000 if i remember correctly. It had cga graphics but a special mode that could do 16 color(if i remember correctly). I used to make fractals with gw basic/BasicA. Oops I posted this before watching the video, you cover the PC Jr. LOL
Still have a Tandy 1000, played "Barbarian" as a kid on a friend's computer and loved it. Such great nostalgia on this one, awesome video :)
The control key should be above the shift key to the left of the A key - that is where terminals put that key at the time. It was IBM that erroneously and carelessly moved the control key and replaced it with a shift-lock key. Who uses a shift lock key? Nobody. Who uses a control key? Games, emacs, wordstar, simulators, lots of things.
1:28 dont make that guy angry, you would not like him to be angry!
I don't know if it was mentioned in any replies, there were too many to read, but the Tandy 2000 offered 640X400 Hi resolution graphics and able to display 8 colors out of 16 total on the screen at the same time.
welcome back in 1983-84 whiz kids souvenir :)
So THAT is why my older DOS games always had a graphics option for Tandy 1000!
Great channel and videos, i would like you to cover 90s stuff too, great job.
Agora entendi o porquê das opções "Tandy" nos setups dos games ms-dos da minha adolescência!
WOW! If Tandy had of carried on upgrading their OS then PC wars would be a hell of a lot more confusing! Brill vid! Never heard of T-1000 before.
I was also tech support back then (1995-1997). I feel for ya, man. It was a horrible time to be in tech support. Windows 95 was out, and there were all kinds of driver issues with it since a lot of hardware just used Windows 3.x or DOS drivers (like printer drivers causing video issues - way to engineer and OS architecture there, Microsoft). ISA Plug and Play was horrible and caused hard to resolve conflicts fairly often. Windows 3.x software would have strange incompatibilities with 95 and cause completely unrelated things to misbehave. The good ol' blue screen of death was a constant companion, and daily reboots were the norm. I loved it when someone with our older machines would call, because fixing DOS and Windows 3.x was a whole lot easier. I'll never do tech support again.
I love that you have pointed out the 8086 reference guide. Do you have any other DOS / 8086 / cga-vga etc books for us n00bs that missed the DOS era? I'd love to learn to develop an application for these classic machines.
Nice tutorial 8-Bit Guy! :)
In response to =tAz= claims, the Tandy 1000sx came with DOS and Deskmate, and it just worked with Tandy supported games. Thexder, Kings Quest, Shogun, it worked with no configuration. It worked out of the box. While not equal to an Amiga, these DOS games were readily available and Tandy offered the most Amiga like experience while DOS PC compatible, at least in software. I doubt you can build a PC to match its capabilities (EGA graphics, Adlib) for less than $799 I paid, though I also bought the CM-11 $469 and 640k memory upgrade for $99, and Tandy worked with no configuration and 5 slots free.
In response to -=tAz=- claims, Amiga was better for games but not DOS compatible. in order to build a PC comparable to a Tandy 1000, say in 1985 you would have to buy both an EGA card and EGA monitor, which carried a huge price premium, the EGA card itself being more expensive than the Tandy 1000ex alone, and in a sound card, adlib which wasn't introduced until 1987. You have to sacrifice at least 2 slots -3 to 4 for gameport and serial and parallel and floppy -and work with IRQ conflicts and DIP switches or jumpers, and autoexec.bat and config.sys and drivers, and would not work with Tandy games, and run very slowly on an 8088. Tandy 1000 worked out of the box with all of this and was high quality, it worked, and if it failed Radio Shack was around the corner. Tandy offered an experience similar to an Amiga but software compatible with DOS.
Most interesting thing was the hard disk card, never heard about it.
Those of us who had Apple II's made fun of the guy with the Tandy he bought from Radio Shack.
I had to use a Tandy 1000 back in 1987 and its compatibility was suspect at best. Lotus 1-2-3 did run, but DOS updates would quite often break it. I had access to the Deskmate SDK too. The versions with embedded DOS was a good idea until hard drives became cheaper and more prevalent.
trs 80 lol
My dad paid around $2k for a T-1000 back then. But man, that turbo button! :D
T-1000. 1984. Gee, I wonder if Jim had one?
I haven't had the heart to chuck my old Tandy 1000 TX which I upgraded with a smart card / hdd way back when. I also have a Tandy 386 SX and 486 SX (model numbers I elude me at the moment). I wonder if there is a converter available so my 1000 can display video on a modern LCD screen? Oh the nostalgia!
Sorry, but Tandy never made their 1400LT. It was mfg by GRiD Systems, and re-branded, as was Sharp 2" pocket TVs, along with many other items sold at Radio Shack.
Oh yes my times
Wow... I remember my first Tandy 1000. I had a few of them until the i486 multimedia. I remember the RL (last one I owned), EX, SX and TL models. Also working with the DeskMate.
My tandy 1000 ex back in the day was amazing. Black cauldron!
Thanks for the post
Deskmate 2 wasn't sold with the SX, and Deskmate 1 did not include a composer tool
Either the first or second King's Quest game (and most Sierra games after) supported the hi-res 16 color graphics mode of the Tandy 1000 and Radio Shack made a point of featuring the games in their stores for this reason.
"Wow, a sales price of under 999" the martian says, of the $998.95 computer -_-
CP/M was actually the first attempt to write an OS that could used across platforms that were otherwise incompatible. MS-DOS was based on CP/M.
This was the first computer my parents bought. Seeing that OS again brought back some cool memories.
The Tandy 2000's problem was they had floating video memory locations. Please STFU on the comparison of the 1000 to the PCjr. The two machines were miles apart. For one, the Tandy 1000 actually ran PC DOS which the Jr did not. The Tandy also had real CGA graphics which the Jr didn't. The PC games sounded that way without an Ad-lib or similar cards. The PCjr did not USE the same CGA connection. The Tandy was actually a 4 voice machine. Clearly you've never owned or programmed one. The one thing you left out, is the fact that, at the time, the mark of a good computer was wether or not it could run software for the IBM PC natively or not. The Tandy 1000 could. Unlike Compaq, Zenith, and other mainstream manufacturers. Windows didn't even exist until 1984 and was running on top of DOS so, your argument is moot at best. It's sad, that you spout out so much with no real knowledge of the topic at hand. I owned a Tandy 1000. I bought it, it early 1984 because it was both compatible and a better value than any clone and the IBM PC of the time. It also had color and sound which no machine had outside of game consoles, Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, etc. For those of us that were there, though interesting is at best, crap. I still have an Osbourne luggable in my closet and yes, it still operates perfectly. I grew up and found my career in this industry. I know more than you could ever imagine. Not a brag, a fact. I don't use wikipedia to learn. I was there.
Why didnt Radio Shack become a "best buy"? A large computer store.?
Yes thank you 8-bit guy for the trip down memory lane! I was born in 1984, but my dad brought me up on the late 80's early 90's computers, because he would take me to his office on the weekends while he worked (as a mechanical draftsman for different oil companies down here in southeast texas) and let me play pc games in the neighboring cubical or cubical right across from him. I played games (and never beat any of them. lol!)like Kings Quest 3, Space Quest 2, a random kids game called "Treehouse" just to name a few. Ah! Goodtimes, good memories! and by the way you have a great channel on youtube! It's like totally radical dude!! :)
Fascinating! I remember as a kid playing games on our first IBM compatible PC and they would have installation options specifically for Tandy 1000 (Lemmings comes to mind) which always made me wonder as my very first computer was a Tandy TRS80 Colour Computer (the white one you showed) so always wondered if it was a descendent of that. Guess it kind of was but wasn't lol Thanks for this great documentary 8-bit guy, it filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge!
Need to write a bot that will watch all your videos, count the number of times you say commodore, then output the stats.
You should give more credit to You composer. Your background music is beautiful. Your channel would have a completely different vibe with other tracks. Your awesome content and briliant music = recipe for awesome channel :) ...You nailed this one :)
Great job !
I have this weird AST board which looks like a composite video out but it's ports white instead of yellow. I think it was always shot, or I was using it wrong when I hooked it up to my trinitron.
Being 18 years old and having played with a Windows XP computer back then... I'm refusing to get rid off it, it holds too many memories. Most kids nowadays don't really appreciate the great evolution of technology they're watching this beautiful video on
You Should Make A Video About PC-98/88
Interesting, cant say Tandy really had much impact in the UK in a hardware sense, they had shops but wernt known for their products. In fact they were known as being so technologically backward that into the 90's Tandy stores still used hand written receipts and didn't use electronic tills.
lol, This video was posted on the Tandy Facebook page.
The comparison with Amiga 500 is off, if you look closely at the Tandy ad (16:58) you will notice it shipped with 256KB (Amiga -- 512KB), Tandy had 8088-2 CPU which (I can be mistaken here) was a hybrid 16/8-bit CPU, while Amiga M68k was 16/32-bit CPU. Available OS-es are not even remotely comparable, as well as graphics and sound. So Tandy didn't look good at all.
+LoTR Builders Tandy 2000 had arbitrary video memory mapping. The 1000 did not. I was there and wrote code that ran on both the IBM PC and the Tandy 1000. not a single line of code changed.
Robert King he probably knows about as much as you do , though I doubt you’ve watched anything else. He was there too and has one too( it’s in the whole fucking video)
Robert King 4. Floating memory wasn’t the only Tandy 2000 problem, they where incompatible in general 5. Tandy 1000 had video memory at arbitrary locations, which is great.
Robert King 1.Pcjr did have real CGA, at least the 128K+ models 2. He has actual programmed the thing( as have I) 3. You can use the fifth voice via a special Tandy interrupt. This was supported on all but the first models
Robert King well how will I say this. You’re throwing random insults at someone for supposedly being wrong all the while not saying anything factual yourself
John Cook he is talking about an IBM compatible what did you think he was going to say. His channels name was the iBook guy
Robert King Page 198 Tandy 1000 programmers manual int 10,5
Robert King well then you didn’t browse all the pages. You can change the location the Tandy 1000 video memory is stored, but you can always acces it through the standard B8000H. You are probably right about the 2000 though IDK
16 bits doesn't automatically make it better. The graphics were still better on the Tandy. Plus the t199/4a had a shit chicket keyboard Chicklet keys are complete shit
My first pc a Tandy 1000ex....man those were the days.
I remember my tandy 1000 sx with 384k ram and dual drives. Good times and man did I play a lot of Sierra games. Space Quest series was my favorite!
Time to upgrade to 16bit
Somewhere, Karl Buiter is smiling.
Too bad we couldn't have Tandys in Hungary at the time thanks to the ban of western tech. However I loved to play and learn on our XT, AT and so.
What's the name of the song that plays at 6:15 in the video?
We're like twins....
The ACORN BBC ACTUALLY has a great basic.
They actually are pretty compatible. They are all Turing-Complete, that doesn't mean you can read all disk formats however.
That was enjoyable, thank you.
My first windows PC was an AST Pentium 75 system with 8 Meg of ram running win 3.1.
Love the channel
My first PC Compatible was a Tandy 1000SX. I got it in early 87 after my father decided that my two older computers, a VIC20 and C=64, had "too many games". I had wanted an Amiga, but he was more concerned about "education" and productivity. Since he was directly paying for this machine (unlike my previous machines, which I had bought used and paid for by mowing lawns for neighbors and saving my allowance), I didn't argue with him. That said, he was right: while I loved my Commodore machines, entrance into the MS-DOS world, via that Tandy 1000SX, opened up a huge library of applications and tools. I might have learned Basic and 6502 assembler on my C=64, but I learned about low-level FAT file system manipulation, x86 programming and how to use tools like dBase and Lotus 123 on my 1000. I did, ultimately get an Amiga 500, about a year later, by working far more lucrative summer jobs that utilized the PC skills I'd acquired with my Tandy. I loved my Amiga, but that Tandy was the most influential machine I ever owned, precisely because of why my father wanted me to have it: it wasn't about fun and games, it was about getting work done. That it played PC games better than any other off-the-shelf PC of that era was just a bonus. Interesting side note: both the Tandy 1000SX and the Amiga (OCS/ECS 1000, 500 and 2000) ran with a default system clock (in NTSC markets) of 7.16Mhz, double the video color carrier frequency for NTSC. They arrived at these speeds for the same reason, a single system wide clock that was easily synced with NTSC output by using a clock oscillator crystal that generated a 14.32 Mhz signal divided by two. This is also why the original PC ran at 4.77Mhz, as it also used a 14.32 Mhz crystal with signalling divided by 3, which resulted in a 4.77Mhz system clock, just slightly below the max rated clock of 5Mhz for the 8088. Of course, the 8088-2 running in the Tandy 1000SX was no match for the MC68000, nor did anything in the PC world compare to the Amiga OCS/ECS chipset.
MOM! BUY ME A TANDY 1000! BILL BIXBY'S ON THE AD!
- Like SEARS, Radio Shack go so many good things right, but still went horribly wrong...
I remember back then, i would be scared to use a computer cuz i didnt know wheter to turn the computer or CPU first
Holy crap, the last time I heard the music to Zak McKracken, it was as a bonus musical track on a three-level demo of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire made for the 3dfx Voodoo Rush. Did anyone else have that CD? Mine was bundled with a Hercules Stingray 128/3D
Ahhhh, the days of MS-DOS! Fun times!
Love this! I bought a 1000sx in 1988 or 1989. Perfect first machine. Learned everything about DOS and updated it to 640k within a few months. Found a affordable 20meg SCSI drive for it a few months later. My first AOL machine where I had to dial up El Paso from Minnesota for the cheapest connection. It was actually my first Internet machine. Yes, I'm a geek. Old school!
I’m pretty sure we had this when we we kids. It had an 8088 processor. We had the high resolution monitor and we installed windows 3.1 on it. It was not compatible with windows 3.11.
Wait 8-bit can i ask whice computer that you first own as a child or teenager and what did it do plus whice one is today that you like and think its the best??? Im just asking because i want to know more old computers
Tandy 16-color 320x200 graphics was actually the native mode for PC-compatible games developed at Epyx in the late 80's. We were faced with the challenge of supporting Tandy, PS2, EGA, and VGA adapters (in a single-SKU multi-mode game), and 16-color lo-res graphics was the highest common denominator. To make this work seamlessly, we composed each scene in a full-size off-screen buffer, and used hand-crafted "blitters" to dynamically render the 16-color graphics onto the selected graphics adapter. In Tandy's case, we simply copied the 16-color graphics directly to the screen, producing a fast frame rate with no visible tearing of graphics animations.
are you a whovian? I AM!
Am I seeing the Date Correctly on Deskmate? Dec 19th 2018? So does that mean Deskmate was Y2K compliant? I'm curious now
My first PC was a Tandy 2000 or something like that in the early 90's. I remember the Desk Mate software and all the documents came for it. But, at that time it was at end of it's life, because we moved to WordPerfect quickly. But it was the computer I used for a long time, including gaming on a green screen.
It's the late 1990's... I'll put this obsolete computer in it's place... and it's place.. is in the dumpster! Right behind those PS/1's and PS/2's.... over the top you go! Thunk!
Still have the TRS-80 and Dungeons of Daggorath!
I wish the cables under my desk were so tidy as the ones at the wall
How is this related to this channel ? https://youtu.be/Q1JPpi9Wz9E
I loved the Tandy my foster parents had! It still drives me nuts that I was moved from there before I could beat Space Quest lol
I started my journey with computers from XT clone manufactured by Hyundai. It had EGA for video and PC speaker for sound. Then I got used to the CGA modes, since many game developers jumped directly from CGA to VGA.
Hmmm.... I had an Amstrad PC 1512 from 1986 with CGA, but it came with Digital Research's GEM desktop which was awesome and somehow triggered a 640x200 16 colour mode, but I never found out how as it didn't support EGA modes... even a quick look at its Wiki page now just says "CGA display with extra 640×200 16 colour mode."... reckon this was probably the PC jr mode mentioned here?
Takes me back to the first XT I bought in 1988. It was an IBM clone made by Hyundai - the car manufacturer.
I always said that Tandy Desk Mate GUI was grossly underrated. At least IT worked when the earlier versions of Windows would freeze or give you a BSOD everytime you really needed it to work the most! You would have thought that Gates would have had plenty of time to get the whole mouse driven GUI/menu thing all ironed out way ahead of everyone else since he and Jobs STOLE it from Xerox YEARS before anybody else had even heard of a GUI or a computer mouse!! Probably because somewhere along the way he would of had to pay someone for the further development of something and he was trying to figure a way to steal it instead!
The comment that labeling the IBM machines as gaming machines might hurt their business market is hilarious to hear today given that most gaming machines are far more powerful than your standard office computer
I graduated from a Commodore 64 to a Tandy 1000 TL/2. I loved my Tandy and deskmate for years. I bought tons of games. Then the next round of upgrading to the world of Ms dos 4.01, Windows 3.0 and my adlib card all inside my shiny new 25 MHz 386 clone (with a 120 MB Hard drive) computer. Those were the days. I miss my TL/2.
At 16:08 you said HX but were referring to the EX model. Not trying to be picky, but I was paying attention to the models, because I was trying to figure out which one I had back in the day. Then you showed the HX next, and I went back and saw that you just made an honest mistake. I had the SX as my first IBM compatible PC. I loved that thing, and it was the first computer I used to log on to bulletin board systems. I later created and ran a successful BBS for 2 or 3 years between 1996 and 1998 I believe. That was a great computer!
Still a vergin
1984 the terminator
It's absolutely fascinating to see just how different the console/computer path in the US was versus Europe and specifically the UK. I don't think MS DOS really got a foot hold here until Windows 95. As prior to that, it was all about the Atari ST and the Amiga for home computers. Yet we also never adopted the NES as our defacto gaming platform which is a big part of why the Atari and Commodore were so big in the late 80s and early 90s when the 8 bit Micros were well and truly defunct.
Such fond memories of my friend's Tandy 1000; 4-color CGA graphics and PC speaker sound. I believe it had two floppies, a curly keyboard cable, and those white square joysticks... we used to play Alleycat, Tapper, Spy Hunter, King's Quest, and World Karate Championship... good times!
When I was a kid my parents bought a Commodore64 back in 1984 from Sears. Then in 1986 my dad bought an 80086 pc with 540K of RAM and he wouldn't let us kids touch it because "this was not a toy. This was a SERIOUS machine." He later installed a hard drive, which was 20 MBs. It had some menu system on it, and one of the menus was for Sierra games. I remember dreaming about a hard drive so big that we'd be able to fit all of the King's Quest games, Space Quest, Police Quest, etc., games onto a hard drive using this menu system, but by the time hard drives were big enough this computer was obsolete.
Looks like it was Y2K compatible as well, lol
I had a Tandy 1000TL that had the 80286sx which was an 8-bit data buss version of the 80286. It ran at 8MHz and had 640K of RAM. I later purchased the 2MB (count them, 2MB) of LIM RAM that was only good as a print buffer or RAM Disk. I also expanded the video to EGA which was actually slower than the on-board TGA adapter. I also had a 40MB HardCard and the 80287 math processor (for $500). When I purchased my first "true" IBM compatible machine in the late 90's (a Gateway I think -- the box that looked like it should have a cow in it) I put my Tandy away. I dug it out one day to show my kids what an old DOS machine looked like. It had been put away for about five years. What surprised me the most is that the date was correct, even the year was correct but the time was slow by three hours. So over a period of about five years with no power the clock lost three hours and the date rolled over into the 2000s. I have since taken it apart and still have the MOBO which is in a frame on the wall.
The senior computer lab had these when I was in high school. The regular computer lab had c64s
Wow great vid- *hits hold key*
Had the 1000 TX back in the 80s. I loved that machine! I played all the Sierra stuff and remember how blown away I was when I installed the Game Blaster sound card. Recently, I picked up a 1000 SL/2 for $40. Basically the machine is still like new and even had a surprise inside...A 16 MB hard drive! I'm having trouble finding CGA monitors for it though. I bought a 1983 Princeton Graphics System monitor and it lasted about 2 days, so now I'm on the hunt again. There's a VGA card on the way to get me by, but I'd still like to find a decent CRT monitor. I'm ready to get this thing up and running.
the sn76489 is the sega master system sound chip
Very nice video. I love the way you not showing only pictures of the tandy 1000, you show your own. Keep up the good work!
We had one of these when I was a kid. My dad got it to replace our TI-994a. Had a lot of fun with it. I even remember writing a program to make the "titles" for a movie for one of my friends English class projects when I was a senior in high school.
The Tandy 1000 was without a shadow of a doubt one of the worst MS-DOS computers of 1984 or any other year. Its compatibility issues were legendary and its reliability was exactly what you'd expect from something sold exclusively at Radio Shack. Anyone who actually was active in the industry at the time would just shake their heads in disgust at the title of your video. You really have no clue about the era or its machines. There's a reason the Fortune 500 never purchased Tandy computers. We all knew better. The only thing this was better than was an IBM PCjr. That's not a complement.
14:50 15:47 U lagging bruh
So this must be the personal computer game platform which reduced Amiga's popularity in the USA. Actually I am quite surprised by the enhancements this system offered over early PC compatibles. Similarly to a poster below, I simply ignored the Tandy compatible modes of games, having no clue that they provided better graphics and sound on Tandy computers...
Kings Quest for the win! On my Tandy 1000 SX I think I played through about 5 times. Love it.
Atari 64 blew my mind, ESP the game 'gremlins' because is was in colour, where as in 1986 I was used to a spectrum 48k in monochrome. I got a 128k spek with cassette player, that took a lot of paper rounds folks ;)
I ran a modding shop for the Tandy 1000’s, and I found this 1000EX that had 1,280k.
The Tandy 1000 played a big part in my knowledge of MS-DOS business software, and subsequently to me building PC Systems and rolling out Windows NT 3.1 to my mom-and-pop customers. This venture attracted the attention of Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), who hired me in 1990, as a "Senior Solutions Architect within their Network & Systems Integration Service", when, during a chance meeting at the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE), they over heard me discussing the future of Microsoft and their Windows Server Solutions. The term, "never look a gift horse in the mouth"; must be said of the Tandy Corporation and Microsoft.
You've Nailed It!! The Tandy 1000 Series was both Hated and Revered as What IBM Should have been. What you failed to recognize was that the Model-4 was already DOS Compatible with 8" and 5 1/2" Disc's. 120K and 180K were hardly compatible to anything else on the market -- which is where The 1000 became Hated.!!! ( sorta like an MP3 file being un-able to play M4A Files! ) One thing should be noted, of which -- you Sir, were to young to understand: Computers were NOT used for "what we use them Today." The 4-Pen Plotter Printer and a CoCo-32 were used for Inventory -- and a quick X-Y 2D Drawing of what the product looked like. My Model-1 4K w/ Phone Modem had the job of being one of the first FAX Machines of that day!!! It even ran a small BBS for Ordering Parts. ?? 4K with a Modem?? yup!; the CoCo could not connect to the 8-MEG Hard Drive Unit. The FAX Machine? -- we didn't call it that yet, you could place an order, print a receipt, verify if the part was in stock. This simple idea "did catch on". - JW
If the 6502 is "Six Five Oh Two" then shouldn't that be "Tandy One Oh Oh Oh" running an "Eight Oh Eight Eight?"
I loved my Tandy. Below the Root and King’s Quest were my jam.
nice lesson.
popular only in USA.
"I Started working of AST..." oddly satisfying twist... nice video . with lots of love from India.
Cool to see the real life stuff that served as inspiration for Halt and Catch Fire
Pretty sure the Apple //c was the first machine to start using VLSI.
OMG, these old heroes are sympathic till today and maybe they will be it for a long more time :)
Thanks for this nice video. I bought a TRS Model 3 in 1982, but the Tandy 1000 became my dream machine in 1986 when I became a Quality Analyst at a software publisher (Mindscape). I tested many games on the Tandy 1000. Others in the department were more Apple and Mac oriented and didn't "get" PCs and DOS, but they were my life back then. I used to take the Tandy 1000 home just about every weekend. By the way, I want to defend the keyboard. I loved it, although I understand it felt slightly cramped to some. I loved the springy soft touch as you typed on it. The keyboard was white and reminded me of vanilla ice cream, and to me it felt like I was typing on soft vanilla. I haven't touched one in over thirty years, but I can still conjure what it felt like. Alas, I never was able to buy one - I couldn't justify such an expensive purchase after having spent about $1,200 on my Model 3 just a few years earlier. I eventually bought a Tandy 3000 NL, my first MS-DOS computer, in 1988 or 1989.
"Somewhat proprietary" WTF
12-megabyte hard disk system for 3000 dollars?
+Mikey McMikeFace Yeah even back in the day this seemed like a pretty shitty deal lol
Doesn't sound like a good deal, eh?
Ja'Loga!
Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was there both as a support technician and a salesman.
I had one Tandy 1000!!!!
hate atari
i like comodore
Thanks for the accurate history of the T1K, as we called it! While most packaged "Storeware" games of the era supported Tandy 16 color graphics, by 1990 the shareware model of PC software started booming. There were thousands of shareware games, but almost none of them supported Tandy graphics and sound. Except for a simple game I released in 1991, just as Tandy was losing its advantage to VGA graphics. For just a few years my game got passed around for free, then went extinct as VGA took over everywhere. It could only be played on vintage Tandy hardware until DOSBOX started supporting Tandy graphics in 2006. Some more info in on my channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPRyxhgriXo
It is really interesting to think about all the old computer architectures, which basically came and went. (Kudos to all these developers. - Sir Clive comes to mind :-) I am just an old programmer from way back when. However, I find it ironic that, in a way, 39 years later, we are still living under the long shadow of IBM and Microsoft. For instance, I am watching this video on my old Dell laptop, which is probably considered to be "IBM compatible", running Windows XP. If only Steve Jobs was still with us, but he is always there in our Hearts. Cheers from Ottawa, Canada. :-)
You kind of look like Frohike from X-Files.
can it run windows 1.0
This computer is awesome. My family was still using one for accounting up to the late 2000's. Definitely has the best version of Hangman. (Dunno which model we have. Much bigger keyboard)The music example at about 10:30 I played that piece in first year for my B.musicI think it's the Tandy 1000 RL 1991.
6:26 Sounds like Kraftwerk
I had the 1st model 1000 and loved it!
No, the best MS-DOS computer back in 1984 was the Eagle-1, with a full 16-bit bus and a superfast 186 processor.
Thank you
The debate Apple vs. IBM is over: https://youtu.be/E-4JGbTrGEg
SHELDON
I got a Tandy PC for Christmas in 1994. I don’t remember which model it was but it had a CD ROM drive, 486SX processor, 130MB hard drive and SVGA graphics
Huh, a fan pointed out that the Windows 3.1 clip (17:42) is from one of my Software Showcase videos. Looks like The 8-Bit Guy sniffed out my channel ; )
Back in the days, we don't even able to afford a color monitor. A EGA monitor at that time cost over usd1000. That's about 2 months salary of an entry level police officer here. When i first get my Adlib clone, I was still using a hercules compatible monochrome monitor. At very last stage, we got a special card that can run CGA graphics in proper grey scale and proper aspect ratio. Such kind of color graphics is definitely a luxury at that time although it looks terrible nowadays.
Hey 8 bit, Can you copy and mail me a disk of the deskmate software? Also I have an sl/2. Doesn't it boot from a rom chip? If that chip is bad, how would I fix it? Is it fixable at all?
Man, I want one these so bad lol that is the best classic looking computer I've seen!!
I got one! Best 80 dollars I ever spent!
@Mikey McMikeFace Yeah even back in the day this seemed like a pretty shitty deal lol
Funny that a "chipset" would be a single chip.
OMG what was that helicopter game called? I played that on my 386, Ive been trying to remember or find the title for years!
That takes me back... I was a Shacker from the time that the 1000A replace the 1000, til the days when the only computers in my store said either AST or IBM. In addition to the depths of the 1000 series, don't forget the variations of 2000's, 3000's, 4000's, and the notable 5000 with it's MicroChannel claim to fame.
Very cool. I remember seen the Tandy computers in the local radio shacks.
Hi 8-Bit Guy, thanks for sharing Anders Enger Jensen's music, the entire Retro Grooves, Vol.3 album is very good and now playing in a loop in my living room (and have not heard the other ones yet), thanks!!
8bit guy can you review and discuss the trs color computer 3?
I remember having a Tandy 1000 EX. I don't really remember what happened to it, though (I'm going to check my cabinets in the garage... maybe I still have it?!). I don't remember whether it worked, or not... whether it was given to me (for parts), or if I bought it at a thrift store (all this was about 20 - 25 years ago, mind you). I remember doing something with it, but I think it didn't work (and was VERY obsolete, even 25 years ago). My recollection is that I stripped it for parts, and threw away anything that wasn't useful/didn't work. Before anyone bites their tongue on whether I simply throw old computers away... this was WAY before eBay, and the retro/vintage craze... and electronics recycling wasn't really a thing back then. These days, I recycle EVERYTHING that can't be used (by me, or anyone else)!
7:59 The early Sierra games were targetted at the PC Jr with thatmeagre 64k or 128k of RAM, which is probably why they went with the chunktacular 160*200 mode.
ty!!! i was stuck on mainframes at university during this era. i learned assembly, pascal, cobol and yes even basic. playing and then compiling my own MUDs was my thing.
6:30 uhhhhh what were those games, can I get some names? Can you or LGR do a review of some of these games from this era so us youngins can see what they were like? They look awesome!
So which Tandy is the best
8-Bit Guy what do you recommend the c64 or coco3 w/512k ram? as a kid, i thought coco3 w/512k must be better bc it had 8 times as much ram but cost is almost same. i spent a lot of time comparing the 2 before buying tandy 1000sx
In US you had Tandy 1000, and in Europe we had Amstrad PC1512/1640. How is the case and keyboard quality in Tandy? Amstrads had very brittle and cheap plastic used in the case and keyboard.