LGR - Tandy 1000 Unboxing & Setup

You should try to locate one of those light pens and do a demonstration on how it works.

Really enjoy this video.

You mind doing a tutorial on how to do maintenance on 5.25" floppy drives? Mine just started to do what yours is doing. I know I need lithium grease. I have a good idea what I need to do I just want to make sure.

A future hardware review ? NICE !!

Maximilien Noal

"9 pin connector for the RGB..." AW YEAH "...monitor" oh. JK, thanks for the vid, looks awesome

neuroflare

Wow, that looks awesome!!! :D

floverSaeu09

cant wait for the full video looking at this. i have fond memories of playing on a tandy when i was being babyshit as a kid. thank you for always hitting my nostalgia bone :)

Brian Brown

I'd try cleaning the drive heads with alcohol first, but if that doesn't work, you may need to re-cap the drive, or just replace it with a known working drive. I have a few Tandys that had bad drives and required re-capping them.

This was my first computer too. My dad bought it from Radio Shack. I remember being in the store when he got it. I set up all of my friend's telephone numbers in the modem software and used the 300 baud modem to call them (then would just pick up the phone and talk). We also had a few games - Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and Rogue. Rogue was my favorite. There was no hard drive, of course, so I could never save my games. I also wrote a program in Basic for my mom to quiz herself when she was in school. We must have had that computer for over 10 years. We also had a TI-99 and then an Atari 2600. I used to type in the programs for the TI-99 from a magazine my dad got and try to save them off to a tape recorder, but it never worked. Ah, fun memories.

Jailyn Dyer

I taught Word Perfect (as well as Lotus 1,2,3 and Paradox) in college as an Intro to Computers lab course. I was a student teacher.

Jailyn Dyer

oh cool! I was amazed to see one of my floppies show up, sorry you couldn't get it running. I double-checked my disks before mailing them, so unless the post office destroyed it, it does look like your drive is bad. might just need a good cleaning.

Foone Turing

Watching this gave me a strange sense of the frustration you would get back in the early to mid 80s.

Gary Leigh

Do these use your normal 5.25 floppy disk drive? Could you swap the unit that is already in there with a known working one?

Dan Milner

I would be interested in a video on how you go about cleaning hardware. I know The 8-Bit Guy did something along those lines, but I would be interested in your take on it as I recently acquired an empty IBM 5150 case that I will be using for a future project.

Chris Marshall

Ha, I had one of these. Prince of Persia was a good time, but Civ 1 was slow as balls.

This was my first computer! My grandfather owned one of these. I played the heck outta Wheel of Fortune and ALF World of Words. Also was exposed to WordPerfect, my first word processor. Oh, the memories!

Wow, I love the aesthetic of that setup! Beautiful, I wish you luck in getting the floppy drive working. Lucky that you were recording on 1st boot!

Mac84

A bummer with the floppy drive - hoping it's not too much elbow grease to get it going. The main unit looks lovely indeed, and I hope that monitor holds out as well. Can't wait to see the other vids you've got planned for it :D

Rob Caporetto

RE mechanical keyboards - not sure about the 1000, or the 1000 EX (which was my first PC), but my 2nd pc, a 1000 RL did have a keyboard with springs in it. I remember pulling keycaps to clean it and loosing the spring for the letter G, and having to remember the ASCII codes for it so I could still type a g or G :P

Jason Wellband

My first computer I ever touched!! It was at my grandparents house and I was 3 years old. It got me hooked!

Jason Wellband

LOL, provably the 8th! Hehehe. Such white little lies . . .

Oooo that monitor <3

Soooo what's there now? Don't leave us hanging!

LGR

Yeah that's why I noted it aloud :) If it's anything like my Magnavox 80 that I used to have, it was the flyback slowly going out. I'm sure it has a limited time left, so hopefully I can get the disk drive working before it dies out!

LGR

My curiosity always gets the best of me, every time I see an address from one of these old companies I have the urge to Google search it and find out what building is in its place these days. Good old Fort Worth Texas.

Terry Lee

Just FYI: Those Tandy CRTs were never that loud when brand new. They get louder and louder with age. Also yeah, the disk drives aren't the highest build quality either, but hopefully it's a simple fix. :)

Kris Asick

Good video though. :)

Ben Sanders

When you said "I guess the 8th" I looked at my time where it's the 6th. lol

Ben Sanders

Wow, an impressive lifespan for that one

LGR

Argh, yeah I'd take you up on that trade but the shipping is indeed a pain. Wish I was local!

LGR

I have a Tandy 1000SX, HX, and EX. I'm actually planning to do a big Tandy 1000 episode this year, actually in the next few months. Of course, I'm going to be going into detail about the hardware, the video modes, the audio chip, etc. Anyway, the irony is, I wish I had the original Tandy 1000 like you have here. If the shipping wasn't so much, I'd trade you my 1000SX (since that's what you're looking for!) . By the way, I got one of those disks from Foone as well.

The 8-Bit Guy

My dad's Tandy 1000 SX might still work. Maybe I'll try it today when I'm over there. He used it pretty regularly until 2001 or so.

David E. Blankenship

Nice, I've always wanted an HX. Having that stuff in ROM is awesome.

LGR

I mean, I've heard people say LGR sends them back in time, so I figured it was appropriate to take it forward

LGR

"I don't know... Probably the 8th...". LGR, reviewing computer from the past. In the future.

My first computer was a Tandy 1000HX, with the keyboard attached to the case like an Apple II, and a 3.5" disk drive. It had MS-DOS 2.11 (and Deskmate) built into ROM, so it didn't need a boot disk at all.

Steve Lovelace

Growing up, my neighbor had this computer, the ex variant, upgraded with a 2nd floppy, a 3 1/2". Made my Apple IIc with monochrome monitor look like caveman tech. I was so jealous of him! :p

I cannot describe how envious I am of this acquisition! I'm bubbling with anxious excitement as I watch even the first couple of minutes.