Tandy 1000 PC + CM-11 Monitor! Unboxing & Setup
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Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 10
Rob
Here in 2020! I knew something was amiss from the start when I saw the black floppy drives. The SX has the beige/white panel. I still have my 1000A. It was all given to me free from a family friend, along with a small amber monitor, Epson impact printer, 640kb expansion, manuals & floppies, back in the mid 1990's. I had added an external Iomega Zip100 drive to it back then. I am going to change out the fan though, because while you said it ran quiet, it really isn't, because of the fan. Mine sounds just as noisy as yours when you turned it on. It is a 120V fan. Most computer fans, all you have to do is carefully peel aside the center label to get to the axle & put a dab of light machine oil, but with this T-1000 fan, there is no such thing & I can't figure out how to dismantle it for lubrication. Either I figure that out, or somehow lower the speed (lower A/C voltage) or just replace with a quieter A/C fan. I do have some slightly big A/C fans, so I may have to do some taping or screwhole-drilling if I opt to use the fans I already have instead of buying a new fan. Enjoy that 1000, it's a nice treasure. I was lucky to acquire one at all in the mid 1990's, even if only a decade after its debut (1984-85. I may also replace the 8088 with a V20, which I have one but currently being used in another 8088 or else buy another.
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Here in 2020! I knew something was amiss from the start when I saw the black floppy drives. The SX has the beige/white panel. I still have my 1000A. It was all given to me free from a family friend, along with a small amber monitor, Epson impact printer, 640kb expansion, manuals & floppies, back in the mid 1990's. I had added an external Iomega Zip100 drive to it back then. I am going to change out the fan though, because while you said it ran quiet, it really isn't, because of the fan. Mine sounds just as noisy as yours when you turned it on. It is a 120V fan. Most computer fans, all you have to do is carefully peel aside the center label to get to the axle & put a dab of light machine oil, but with this T-1000 fan, there is no such thing & I can't figure out how to dismantle it for lubrication. Either I figure that out, or somehow lower the speed (lower A/C voltage) or just replace with a quieter A/C fan. I do have some slightly big A/C fans, so I may have to do some taping or screwhole-drilling if I opt to use the fans I already have instead of buying a new fan. Enjoy that 1000, it's a nice treasure. I was lucky to acquire one at all in the mid 1990's, even if only a decade after its debut (1984-85. I may also replace the 8088 with a V20, which I have one but currently being used in another 8088 or else buy another.
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InfiniteClouds
The 1000SX is arguably the best system for 8088-era gaming.
- It can run at (MODE SLOW) 4. 77mhz and (MODE FAST) 7. 16mhz and if you're lucky enough to have a 286xpress accelerator board it can also switch to a 80286 - 7. 16mhz with 8KB cache that runs just a bit slower than the TX -- which at its slowest speed still runs faster than the SXs 8088 in FAST mode. So while a TX is too fast for many 8088 games an upgraded SX can play all those games as well as 286 games.
- The SX is the first model that allows you to toggle the onboard TGA with a dip-switch if you have an EGA/VGA card installed and want to play a game that supports EGA but not TGA.
- Better sound support than later models. You can add Adlib/Sound Blaster and a MPU401/MT32 to it - after the TX all the 1000s had a PSSJ chip for sound which had IRQ/DMA conflict with SB 1. 0/2. 0. Also, the PSSJ chips will disable the joystick if digital sounds are being played and drop some notes like the beginning of Greensleeves in KQ1/2.
I recently picked up a 1000SX and CM-11 on Ebay. Unfortunately the CM-11 has a scratch in the coating but it is only really noticeable when the screen is turned off or if you were viewing it from top-down angle. It's too bad though that there's really no way to fix scratched CRTs.
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The 1000SX is arguably the best system for 8088-era gaming.
- It can run at (MODE SLOW) 4. 77mhz and (MODE FAST) 7. 16mhz and if you're lucky enough to have a 286xpress accelerator board it can also switch to a 80286 - 7. 16mhz with 8KB cache that runs just a bit slower than the TX -- which at its slowest speed still runs faster than the SXs 8088 in FAST mode. So while a TX is too fast for many 8088 games an upgraded SX can play all those games as well as 286 games.
- The SX is the first model that allows you to toggle the onboard TGA with a dip-switch if you have an EGA/VGA card installed and want to play a game that supports EGA but not TGA.
- Better sound support than later models. You can add Adlib/Sound Blaster and a MPU401/MT32 to it - after the TX all the 1000s had a PSSJ chip for sound which had IRQ/DMA conflict with SB 1. 0/2. 0. Also, the PSSJ chips will disable the joystick if digital sounds are being played and drop some notes like the beginning of Greensleeves in KQ1/2.
I recently picked up a 1000SX and CM-11 on Ebay. Unfortunately the CM-11 has a scratch in the coating but it is only really noticeable when the screen is turned off or if you were viewing it from top-down angle. It's too bad though that there's really no way to fix scratched CRTs.
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evolved
Damn man you have a gold mine hidden somewhere, these machines are really hard to get, i'm trying on my country to check out old garbage from banks, the only institutions that had the money to invest on these machines brand new, still I can only get my hands on dismembered systems and completely worn out, the only good one i got was the 30th IBM 8086 that was bought in early 80's by a Bank and when i say 30th it is because these machines had serial codes on the date of purchase and the order they were purchased, so i bet this was one of the earliest personal computers in my country -Portugal-, as you know well this hardware was so expensive -you could buy like 3 cars for the price of an IBM pc- that only a few were able to get one for specific tasks in the company, like programming in languages like pascal or basic, using lotus 123, wordstar. but for text documents they used the typewriter; ) furthermore very few had the skills to work with specific software.
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Damn man you have a gold mine hidden somewhere, these machines are really hard to get, i'm trying on my country to check out old garbage from banks, the only institutions that had the money to invest on these machines brand new, still I can only get my hands on dismembered systems and completely worn out, the only good one i got was the 30th IBM 8086 that was bought in early 80's by a Bank and when i say 30th it is because these machines had serial codes on the date of purchase and the order they were purchased, so i bet this was one of the earliest personal computers in my country -Portugal-, as you know well this hardware was so expensive -you could buy like 3 cars for the price of an IBM pc- that only a few were able to get one for specific tasks in the company, like programming in languages like pascal or basic, using lotus 123, wordstar. but for text documents they used the typewriter; ) furthermore very few had the skills to work with specific software.
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jan80trs
Like you found out, it's not an SX. But it's not an original 1000 either. It's a 1000A. The A means that the machine has a BIOS update, allowing it to be fitted with an internal HD. The 'A', equipped with a HD, was sold as the. 1000HD.
As a collector, the machine you have there, is far more collectable and rare than the 1000SX. And the CM-11 is the best CGA-monitor around for the 1000 series. And the keyboard IS mechanical.
While you could run a standard MS-DOS on this, the GW-BASIC that came with the Tandy MS-DOS was doctored to add extra features to be able to address the extra features from the T1000, like graphics, and reading the joystick ports.
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Like you found out, it's not an SX. But it's not an original 1000 either. It's a 1000A. The A means that the machine has a BIOS update, allowing it to be fitted with an internal HD. The 'A', equipped with a HD, was sold as the. 1000HD.
As a collector, the machine you have there, is far more collectable and rare than the 1000SX. And the CM-11 is the best CGA-monitor around for the 1000 series. And the keyboard IS mechanical.
While you could run a standard MS-DOS on this, the GW-BASIC that came with the Tandy MS-DOS was doctored to add extra features to be able to address the extra features from the T1000, like graphics, and reading the joystick ports.
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Laughing
I worked in the QA department at a software company from 1986-1990. We were allowed to check out computers to bring home over the weekend, and whenever I could I'd bring home our Tandy 1000 to play games and write programs in BASIC. I wanted one so bad. I _loved_ the keyboard; it was so smooth. I had a TRS-80 Model III I'd bought in 1982 that was starting to look pretty antiquated by 1986. I could never quite pull the trigger on buying the 1000, but I eventually bought a Tandy 3000 NL (which was a 286) in 1989.
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I worked in the QA department at a software company from 1986-1990. We were allowed to check out computers to bring home over the weekend, and whenever I could I'd bring home our Tandy 1000 to play games and write programs in BASIC. I wanted one so bad. I _loved_ the keyboard; it was so smooth. I had a TRS-80 Model III I'd bought in 1982 that was starting to look pretty antiquated by 1986. I could never quite pull the trigger on buying the 1000, but I eventually bought a Tandy 3000 NL (which was a 286) in 1989.
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KyoshoLP
The Tandy 1000 was my family's first computer. My earliest gaming memory is sitting in my mother's lap while she played Starflight on it. Man, the sound of you typing on that keyboard is like ASMR to me. I haven't heard that model's sound in decades. Digs right down into the nostalgia centers of my brain. I spent hours on that thing using the paint program that (I think) was part of Deskmate. The ability to zoom way in always blew my mind.
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The Tandy 1000 was my family's first computer. My earliest gaming memory is sitting in my mother's lap while she played Starflight on it. Man, the sound of you typing on that keyboard is like ASMR to me. I haven't heard that model's sound in decades. Digs right down into the nostalgia centers of my brain. I spent hours on that thing using the paint program that (I think) was part of Deskmate. The ability to zoom way in always blew my mind.
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Jakub
I have a question for all of you guys. of course thanks for the great video in the first place. In the second place I have my hands on a commodore 128D right now and after the first day the thing just shows a chequered screen for a moment and then it goes blank. Can anybody tell me how to debug that issue? Other thing, I am guessing it could be the memory, so maybe if anybody knows how to get these pesky chips? Thank you! :)
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I have a question for all of you guys. of course thanks for the great video in the first place. In the second place I have my hands on a commodore 128D right now and after the first day the thing just shows a chequered screen for a moment and then it goes blank. Can anybody tell me how to debug that issue? Other thing, I am guessing it could be the memory, so maybe if anybody knows how to get these pesky chips? Thank you! :)
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You're
I had the Tandy 1000HD, very similar! It was a VERY unreliable computer even for the time. Sometimes the floppy drives or 10MB HD wouldn't work for weeks on end then would just start working again for no reason. I only had the Tandy green monochrome monitor though.
Even in its first couple years things like refusing to boot disks was common, even with like the 4th replacement drive. Such is life with a Tandy 1000.
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I had the Tandy 1000HD, very similar! It was a VERY unreliable computer even for the time. Sometimes the floppy drives or 10MB HD wouldn't work for weeks on end then would just start working again for no reason. I only had the Tandy green monochrome monitor though.
Even in its first couple years things like refusing to boot disks was common, even with like the 4th replacement drive. Such is life with a Tandy 1000.
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Travis
My mom worked at RadioShack when they were new. My dad needed a computer for business use so he got the tandy 1000-A model. He proceeded to add a second floppy drive, expanded the ram to 640k, added a 30mb tandy hard card, and installed dos 5. 0. I still have it and had no idea it could display color till I saw this video, all I have for it is the tandy green monitor. It looks great hooked to a TV playing planet x3.
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My mom worked at RadioShack when they were new. My dad needed a computer for business use so he got the tandy 1000-A model. He proceeded to add a second floppy drive, expanded the ram to 640k, added a 30mb tandy hard card, and installed dos 5. 0. I still have it and had no idea it could display color till I saw this video, all I have for it is the tandy green monitor. It looks great hooked to a TV playing planet x3.
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The
shiptrak. com is a dos utility that would park the heads on the hard drive in prep for transport of the PC. Modern HDDs automatically park their heads on power loss, but this was not so for many of the HDDs of the mid to late 80s. I had to use it on my Tandy 1000 TL/2 to park the heads on its 40MB Western Digital Smart Drive before moving it, or I'd be risking a head crash and platter damage.
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shiptrak. com is a dos utility that would park the heads on the hard drive in prep for transport of the PC. Modern HDDs automatically park their heads on power loss, but this was not so for many of the HDDs of the mid to late 80s. I had to use it on my Tandy 1000 TL/2 to park the heads on its 40MB Western Digital Smart Drive before moving it, or I'd be risking a head crash and platter damage.
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