LGR - Tandy 1000 Exploration & Restoration

I remember a time when those games, at those frame-rates, were perfectly entertaining. Instead of complaining about it, you looked forward to new hardware to marvel at the difference.

Paul

I’m a huge Tandy fan. You might want to review an old PCM magazine issue. I wrote game reviews for them back in 1989 an 1990.

Ryan Yoder

The TL is a great machine as it can run the old and new stuff.

Ryan Yoder

This was a most excellent video. Really, really lovely to watch from a production standpoint (but that's always been something I've appreciated), along with learning a bit more about those machines - and restoration as well.

Rob Caporetto

This video reminds me how much I want a Tandy. Some of the later models with a proper 8086 or 286 are just about the best thing around for playing PC games made between roughly 1984 and 1990 or so and I want one badly.

Michael Kerpan

That video was very enjoyable! I remember being so jealous of one of my friends back in the days. He had a Tandy and I had a PC XT, but he could play Police Quest and Space Quest with better graphics and much, much better sound. I would have traded my XT for his Tandy any days, even if it had only 256k of RAM compared to my 620k

Frederic St-Georges

It's all down to the software, yeah :) Like, earlier in the video you can see me enter the complete 2018 date into MS-DOS. But every piece of software after that has to be compatible as well to make use of it

LGR

There are always more Tech Tales on the table! And yeah, Motorola CPUs are possible, as are the MOS CPUs that followed suit

LGR

I'd love to have a 286 card like that for a system like this. So many games I want to play in Tandy mode just run abysmally slow. But oh well, that's why I have a 1000 RL/HD too

LGR

Oh I've no doubt there will be more dandy Tandy coverage

LGR

I always wondered that as well! I mean, I knew they came from Radio Shack since I saw them in stores, but I never knew what made them special enough to have their own options in games until I was much older :)

LGR

I showed everything in the video! For dealing with dust it really was just the vacuum cleaner and water/vinegar mix

LGR

Thanks a lot! This one was super enjoyable to make, even if super time consuming. Makes me want to revisit the systems I've already covered years ago to give them a better look!

LGR

which dust removers did you use

This is the kind of video I love. Nice cleaning up, super crisp video quality, hardware details, computer history, everything is here. I would love more of this with any computer, even if I have Amiga in mind, of course. Now I know these kind of videos take a ton of time and are hard to schedule, so take your time. To reitirate : this is the kind of video I love the most and you made a very rewatchable and enjoyable video. Congratulations ! :)

Maximilien Noal

To me this is just another childhood mystery question answered (namely: 'WTF is a Tandy anyway?' any time it got mentioned in installation and setup menus) ;) It is truely a delight to look at though, awesome explorational video.

Marnix

Fantastic. I practically lived in Radio Shacks when I was growing up. This brings back many memories. It would be just dandy, if in the future, you covered even more Tandy.

13Cubed

Very curious... I have the SX system but pretty much that exact same keyboard, but underneath the left-most overlay slip on mine, four boot commands for the F1 through F4 keys are printed onto the keyboard itself! Basically, you would hold one of those keys during boot to adjust something. A useful one for me (as I long since had to get rid of the CRT monitor) is the TV Mode option which boots to 40x25 text mode instead of 80x25 to make it more legible with composite output to televisions, plus there's one to swap the A: and B: drives. My SX system also has a 286 Express Card installed which is essentially a replacement 8 MHz 80286 CPU and many games which run poorly on the Tandy 1000's default specs actually run WAY better with this card installed! To use it properly though requires special software which allows you to use keyboard shortcuts to swap between the 8086 and 80286 CPUs whenever necessary and said software is VERY picky about the DOS version. :P

Kris Asick

Oh man, we had a Tandy 1000 TX (WITH the video upgrade to make it 768k of RAM) as our first computer after our Collecovision ADAM. Dad even got the 360K 5.25" floppy drive since it only came with a 720K 3.5" drive. I remember playing Super Huey II and various crap-ware games on it for hours. He didn't get the hard card working (I did later, story for another time) so we had to run DeskMate 2 on multiple 720K floppy disks. Different labels had different parts of it. Man those were the days.

Carey Brown

This was fantastic, thank you so very much. I do find it interesting, the link between the PCjr and the Tandy machines and how the PCjr was such a flop, yet in the ways the Tandy cloned it, those modes became known as Tandy modes. I guess that speaks volumes about a number of factors, which probably aren't important enough to go into here now, but of which I find interesting to ponder. Quick question: Are there any tech tales episodes on the drawing-board? Specifically Motorola CPUs? I feel that would be a great one, particularly with it's ties to the 6502 CPU, and so many of the machines of the 80s and early 90s that used the 68K series ...

Troy Wilkins

LOL I noticed this computer is NOT Y2K compatible.... at 10:00, if the deskmate program follows the normal US date protocol, the 1 is replaced by a semicolon. (Top Right) Oh well.

Christopher Bassett

Yeah I was super happy with how nice this cleaned up, really is a great example of a 1000

LGR

The whole topic of IBM clones is a potential topic for sure. Here ya go in the meantime! <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_compatible</a>

LGR

Clint I have a question maybe you could address in a video? What is "IBM compatible"? I think IBM was simply a hardware manufacturer, but what does it mean that there must be compatibility? Or did IBM produce software? In any case there are no computers these days called "dell compatible" or even "Windows/Mac compatible", everything seems to run on anything, even Linux. I think this would make a good video!

Mmm.... sweet, sweet Tandy...

optigrabber

Cleaning up old PCs never has looked so satisfying - especially in 4k! Haha :D

Lindsay Michelle

Wow! Screw those annoying screws!

Nope, there is no battery, not even a real time clock!

LGR

My grandfather owned one of these and he would let my sister and I play with it when we visited. We played Wheel of Fortune and ALF World of Words. I also played around with WordPerfect (the main reason I prefer to write white text on a blue background to this day). Later he gave it to us and my parents bought a mess of edutainment games for it. Dunno when, but one day it crashed and that was the end of it.

I didn't see it mentioned, but did you swap out a CMOS battery for something more modern (and less prone to exploding)? Not even sure if the Tandy 1000 even had a battery, as it looks like on every boot you're setting the time.

Library of Context

Very nice! I was kinda hoping to see my xmas card disk make another appearance now that the floppy drive is working, but I guess it's way too late after christmas for such things. I picked up a Tandy 1000 myself inbetween this and your original video, a 1000 SX! Still looking for an EX, which was my introduction to Sierra games...

Foone Turing

man reminds me clint, we where so close in obtaining a monitor with a cga port. But it was broken. Did you know sony made professionell monitors with cga ports. We had a truckload of them at work and I was able to obtain one, well a not broken one. But it tickles me to know what they used that for. Does DV Tape Player use those? Or where there some computers on it to for cutting and for effects on the video? In what like a tv studio maybe? Didn't found that out, probably noone used it here. Still pretty cool to find such a thing even if it was broken.

Ezydenias

Great video. There is something really satisfying about seeing an old computer come back to life.

Gary Leigh

Hi Clint, i really enjoyed this video! It is exactly why i like to donate to your channel. Thank you for your awesome work!

Jamie Cruickshank

Love &lt;3

And if you do, you can use several of your existing peripherals with it! How handy.

LGR

Thanks a lot! :)

LGR

Depending on the game it can! I've added the 8087 to my IBM PCs with favorable results.

LGR

Thanks! I was using Lumix's 12-35mm f/2.8 lens throughout this one. And yeah, lemme know any inaccuracies please! This will be going through a couple of revisions before it goes public.

LGR

Awesome video as always :D One question, if you would install the co-processor, would it have any gaming advantages?

First off: The video is fantastic, it looks great, it has great info, and of course now this means I don't need to do a video on the Tandy 1000, ever. (What lens did you use for the cover removal @ 4:55?) There are some technical inaccuracies in the video. Would you like to know what they are? They're minor.

Jim Leonard

I don't have any Tandy memories other than seeing Tandy as an option in the setup on DOS games and wondering a Tandy was, nice to finally see one in action. I really like the look and sound of your videos, your channel and Techmoan are the only ones I almost always watch in fullscreen and this one in particular is just wonderful. Keep it up!

Aleksander

My first computer was a TRS80 and I still have it. I've always wanted a Tandy 1000, maybe one day I can add to the collection.

Vaggumon

Now I know what I'll be watching at home tonight

Joon Choi

Zeliard looks and sounds great, yeah! One of the best examples of a game that takes advantage of the system, I think

LGR

Yay! Quite excited to introduce Planet X86 to my various machines

LGR

And there's about to be another Tandy 1000 game soon. :-)

The 8-Bit Guy

Ahhh, so that's what Zeliard looks like on a Tandy! Video looked great, although I'm not looking at it on a 4k screen at the moment.

aetherspoon

Thanks a lot!

LGR

This is exactly why I watch and support your channel. Great video!

Jailyn Dyer

Would still like to track down a nice HX at some point, seems like a great example of the series

LGR

Glad to hear it! Really getting used to this camera now, I'm pretty psyched with the results myself :D

LGR

The Tandy 1000 HX with no hard drive and two floppy drives was my first computer. I didn't know squat about computers back then and every program complained about not finding the hard drive. So frustrating!

Jason Lancaster

OMG the quality of the video! It's almost better than having an actual Tandy 1000. :)

Thomas Fuchs

Hope you enjoy it! Curious if the Lo-Tech memory expansion board I showed in this video would fit in and work with the HX. I imagine it might!

LGR

Can't wait to watch this when I get home tonight. :D Now if I could just find a Tandy 1000HX memory expansion board for mine I'd be happy! Keep up the awesomeness LGR!