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Last update Oct 09, 2006

By Glen VanDenBiggelaar

During the 1980's and the start of the 1990's, Radio Shack was the world's biggest computer manufacture and seller. This means that Tandy sold (a lot) of other computers, including IBM compatibles. These would be considered the "Grand Daddy" of today computers. This page is dedicated to the few that I have. I have a few projects that I have always wanted to do in DOS, but I never had the computer resources to do it, and I love the Tandy's, so I thought "why not", but finding the right DOS boxes are never easy.

Tandy 1000 Line
Before Intel and AMD brought out a "low cost" processor (Intel Celeron and AMD's Duron or Sempron), Tandy introduced the 1000 line of computers. Originally, this line was suppose to compete with the IBM PC JR computer, but weeks before the launch of the 1000, IBM discontinued the line, creating a low cost line of computers that literally had no competition in the market place. Tandy had sold hundreds of thousands of units, and created a few different models- most were built around the 8086 processor, but a few were sold with 286's and 386 chips in. The "Down side as that these never had a 16 bit ISA slot, only and 8 bit, so the upgrade path is quite limited.

I have 2 models of the Tandy 1000 currently, as of August, sold my TL/2:

Tandy 1000 HX

This is such a neat looking unit, and had so much potential. it looked like what the next generation of CoCo could be. But looks are deceiving. This is one USSLESS unit. I am glad I never got this when I was younger, but hey, it does carry the spirit of the CoCo forward into a PC unit. I see four main problems with it.
The first problem is that this unit only came with 250K of ram. By this time, even most PC games needed about 640K. Dos could run in 250K , but not much else.
Second, it has no Hard Drive. No problem, I am use to no HD with the CoCo, but most PC games at the time wanted to install to the drive or have 2 floppy drives so it could write to one (where have I seen this before?)
Third, it did not use regular 8 bit ISA slots to upgrade. The case has room for 3 upgrade cards, but they are special cards built for this or the Tandy 1000 EX(which was almost the same unit, just with a 5 1/5 inch drive on the side instead and the Dos and Deskmate were not in rom). These units are very cheap on Ebay, but to get any expiation cards is the hard thing (and expensive)
Fourth, and last, these units were very hard to take apart and put back together, and there is no "Upgrade able parts" on the motherboard. In fact the ROM chip was accessible, but the rest of the board was pretty much sealed away. You can't even add ram to the motherboard, the only way to expand rem was through an upgrade card.
also the floppy drive has no separate power cord (its part of the cable), therefore, to add a second drive to this unit, it must be a specific drive for it. Tandy used this in all their 3 1/ 2 inch drives in the 1000 computers, not just the HX.
I had 2 units in my collection with 2 CM 5 monitors, but recently sold them to make more room.

The 2 HX units I originally had, but recently sold on E-bay. The Monitors are the only difference, but both are CM-5

Tandy 1000 TL/2- Hard Drive

So far, this is the fun little machine of my collection! I am not sure of the history of the TL/2, Wikkipidia states that it was meant to be the "high end" of the 1000's. I picked up mine for a relatively cheap price-$45 with monitor, printer,mouse, keyboard and original disks. It was just a "basic" unit with 640K of ram, a 286 processor, and a 20 meg hard drive. It was just as Tandy had shipped them. I also got a CM-5 monitor. My first impression was "Lets see what we got". I cracked open the case and found 4 8bit expiation slots, a socket for a math co-processor and room for 128K more of ram. I dug through all my old "stuff" found a few vga cards, and old copy of windows and a network card. The floppy drive is just a Double Density,so I am on the hunt for an HD controller card. The first thing I did was load up Windows 3.0. For those of you who are not familiar with Windows 3.0, it senses the amount of ram and only loads what it can use. In my case, it loaded up just basic windows and turned the Color off. On a CM-5 monitor, and no extra video ram, it looks Terrible! So the first chore was to find a VGA card. I ended up lucking out and got a Super VGA card (16 bit) that runs just fine on an 8 bit slot in VGA mode. Along with a VGA monitor, I change the options in Windows, and now it is in Color and looks 10000 times better.
I also loaded up the video ram and installed a NIC, but I have yet to hook it up to the network. I have added a 5 1/4" floppy drive and ordered four Ram expansion cards, 2 were full size card that were 2 inches too big for the case, 1 did not work, but I used the Ram elsewhere, and 1 did not come with drivers, and proved to be a big hassle, so I left it at 1 Meg. I also updated it to DOS 5.0, but had to lose the deskmate, In the end, I decided to sell the machine, because of the 1 meg limitation, I could not get the Networking to work or upgrade to Windows 3.11 for workgroups, so this machine was useless for my e-mail project.

This is my Tandy Tl/2 running in original Dos 3.2, with the VGA monitor .

I had originally wanted to put a CD rom drive in, but hunting for the right one proved to be a bit difficult, so I spotted an E-bay Auction for a floppy drive from a Tandy 1000 EX, it was a DD drive and from a Tandy, so I knew it was going to work- Paid $5.00

Here is a shot of it running Windows 3.0, I had Windows 3.0 kicking around from another machine, but with the 1 meg Ram limitation, I can not upgrade it to Windows 3.1, or install MS Works, In fact, not much more can be done with it, but its was fun playing with it- when was the last time you could say you installed Windows on a 20 Meg hard drive with only 1 meg of RAM?

Tandy 1000 RLX -Hard Drive

My next purchase was a Tandy RLX hard drive unit. I paid $15.50 on e-bay for this, and included everything but original software disks, including the manual.
The RLX was also a Slim line 286 machine, but the processor is surface mounted, not upgradeable and there is no math co-processor socket. What the RLX had though was VGA on board, and a HD 1.44 meg floppy drive. It came factory with 1 Meg of Ram, some people have had Windows 3.1 running on it, but so far I have not been able to get it running. I just use Windows 3.0. This unit only had 1 expansion slot, so again, not much can be done with this unit, but I did install DOS 6.22 on it. Below are the e-bay pictures, unfortunately the printer was smashed when I got it. Again, do to the Ram limitation, not much can be done with it, It was now clear that The Tandy 1000 line (except the RSX -which can go to to 8 megs) was not going to work for what I want to do (although neat machines).

Tandy 2500 Line

I know now that the Tandy 1000 line is not what I need, so while looking around and trying to piece real 386 systems out, I ran across an auction for the Tandy 2500 RSX,. I was familiar with the 1000RSX , and here was a system that looked like a TL but with everything I wanted, 16 bit expansion slots, 386 computer with 8 Megs of Ram, Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.22. I tell you, I paid a very steep price - $103, it looks like there are others who wanted this system just as bad, but I was foolish enough to get it.

The unit came in on August 28 2006. I immediately took it apart to see the insides. I was expecting this unit to be Identical to the TL/2, but I could not have been more wrong. What you can see here is the evolution to the MMPC. It had the side that dropped down and the whole right hand side including P/S has been attached to a top mounted chassis, so the whole thing opens like a book, or clam shell. other than the floppy and IDE cable, you get a wide open view of the Motherboard.
the Motherboard is small, only 6 inches by 11 inches and not much too see, although Tandy, again chose to use the weirdest 387 socket, instead of the normal pin out ZIF socket, that is widely used and the chips are easily obtained on E-bay. Tandy also used an AMD386 sx-25 that is soldered right to the motherboard, in fact, only 3 upgrades are possible to the unit, the weird math co-processor, the video ram (you can add 2 more chips), and the "normal" ram has 2 slots, that can hold a maximum of 8 megs of Ram
The 2500, also has a a riser card for expansion, capable of holding 3 16 bit ISA cards. I have plans for 2, a NIC and a SVGA graphics card, as this will be a DOS Game box amounts other things, and hook up to the MMPC NT server- Unless, that Sensation arrives- as of this date the seller still insists that I will see it. I also plan to ad a working 5 1/4" inch floppy and I have a "backpack" cd-rom for it that hooks up through the printer port.

UPDATE OCT 9

So I have been working on the 2500 here and there when parts come in, and I am not quite done. I first got a new desk, to replace the old kitchen table I was using. I then got a KVM switch, so I would not have to put up with different monitors and cables, In fact, I did have to live with 3 different mice though, small compromise.So far I have added the Math Co-processor, Added a Soundblaster 16, and a back-pack CD burnner to it. What is nice is that I am using an MMS-10 speaker system from Tandy. They have 2 inputs and with the units stacked, I can put both computers through one set of speakers. Everything works great, except when I installed the sound card, It kill my NIC, so I need to get another one. One thing I have noticed is that in the bios, ther is no setting for the math Co-processor, So I am not sure if the system even sees it

Latest photos of my systems, the server is on the floor and the Tandy 1000 is on another desk. The Canon D 70 sure hates regular lighting.

Photo 1: the Tandy MMS-10 sound system, with the backpack CDRW and the Zip drive, the Zip is hooked to the MMPC 20.
Photo 2: KVM switch

Photo 1 : DOS 6.22 Photo 2: Calmira 2 running on Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

Tandy 486's

When I started out with these projects, I knew I would need a server box, but I wanted to keep them under the Pentium line, and I also knew that Tandy never had a Pentium based system- AST may have made 1 or 2 under the Tandy name , but not RS.

Tandy Sensation

When I had started looking for a "Big" box about 3 months ago, I found an auction for a computer called "Sensation". This was a mile stone in history , for it was the first machine to pass the MPC standards (Short for Multimedia PC, MPC was developed in 1990 and is any computer that is capable of running programs that combine video, animation, audio, and graphics. There are three MPC standards MPC, MPC2, and MPC3.Today, all new computers are MPC compliant computers)
I paid allot for this beast -$150, and so far it has not shown up- I am in the middle of trying to get my money back. This machine was upgradeable- it originally came with a 486 SX 16, but you could upgrade it to a DX-50. Below or the auction pictures. Interesting aside, this was the last machine to have Deskmate on it. Because it came with Windows, Tandy redesigned Deskmate and called it Winmate.

Tandy MMPC 20

Pictures of my setup

Learning a lesson from my Sensation Auction, I then looked again for another Sensation, but so far, have not been successful. I did come across a similar machine called the MMPC 20. A google search showed nothing but jumper settings for these machines. Through Deduction, I believe that this unit was made after the Sensation, as it can hold more RAM (up to 64 megs) and the processor can be upgraded to a 486 DX 4-100 or an Overdrive processor. I lucked out this time and won the auction for only $9.99, according to the auction, it looks like it even comes in the original box, but again, no software disks. Below are auction pictures.

I received my MMCP 20 in the original box, and shipping material, but again, no software disks, manual or mouse. I open it up and the thing was filthy, so I broke out the screwdriver and vacuum and let out all the small, trapped animals. one thing about this machine is the modular design, borrowed from early Tandy's. Once I slid off the protective steel plates, I found everything packaged tightly and in a "Modular design" once I slid the sound card out (Creative Labs- no cheap sound card here) I could easy vacuum the dust of the Motherboard, I had the case open, so I swapped out the 486 DX 16. Tandy (Or AST -depending on who you talk to) at this time chose to put an "OverDrive" socket in (see pick below)

this big blue sockets, meant gold back in the day, so I put my 486 DX 4- 100 overdrive processor in, I found out that these units used 72 pin simms, I had tons of 30 pin sims, but only 2- 16 meg sticks of 72. Luckily these units did not need the ram in Pairs, so with the original 4, I bumped it up to 36 megs, stuck my Nic and and put everything back together. I ended up breaking the power switch when putting the case back together, so its always "ON" and for now I have to shut the power bar off. Tandy used the same case and chasis design as the Sensation for these units, but the front control access has a small cover over it. I turn it on and windows 3.11 came right up but only in 16 colors 480x 600 resolution, I tried to bump up the resolution, but that just put my monitor out of sinc. I ended up whipping Windows and re- installing. I only have Windows 3.0 and the upgrade floppies, so 2 hours later, I was back to Windows 3.11 for Workgroups.
I had always wanted to try a Windows "Shell" called Calmira II. Calmira II is a free Windows 95/NT 4 explorer clone for Windows 3.1. It attempts to recreate much of the same functionality and appearance as Windows 95/NT 4. It even copies the Windows 95 icons. There is also a separate version that is themed with the Windows XP icons. Over all, Calmira does a surprisingly complete job job of mimicking Windows 95. Most of the differences are a result of the limitations of Windows 3.1. Unlike many of the other alternate Windows desktops, Calmira was created after the release of Windows 95. Although almost nobody uses Windows 3.1 today, for a long time there were a great many people who were stuck with it after Windows 95 came out. Calmira attempted to bring Windows 3.1's desktop up to date for these people. Calmira II is open source software and is written in Borland Delphi.
It's quick, boots into useable Desktop in under 8 seconds, faster (WAY FASTER) than my XP box ! This is what is going on my other Tandy's when they come in. I also loaded up MS BOB, but only played with it for a short bit, -fun, I think with all the stuff on peoples computer now a days, Microsoft should re-think BOB. I know with my desktop being so full, this might be a good organizer.
DAY 2 -Windows NT server installation
Today's chore was suppose to be simple- install NT4 server. First, This unit came with 107 Meg Hard drive- defiantly not enough for a server, So, I tried to hunt down in my scrap pile, at least a 1 gig HD. No good, I found 2, but they were dead, so, I ended up putting a 650 Meg drive on for now, until I can find a bigger one. The second problem was the CD rom drive, this unit has a old cd rom drive that is connected to the Sound card, but not in a usual IDE or other cable, so, I put a new IDE cable and added a 48X cd rom drive. I also found that the bios, would not let me boot to CD, so I had to make a DOS boot disk, and download the NT Serv. Boot disks. The only ones I could find were compressed, with some weird DOS program. I also found the floppy could read disks, but could not write, with out corruption, so since the unit was all apart, I put in a brand new floppy drive .I also threw in a VGA card and disabled the on board video, and threw in a D-link NIC. put it all back together and finally got my Boot disks done, and loaded NT server.

NOTES: Tandy loved to use weird parts, the floppy drive, was almost proprietary AGAIN, the cable was flipped (Notched) so I had to put a new floppy drive AND floppy cable.
Sound card is a Sound Blaster Pro built for TANDY, so it doesn't have a creative Part number, but the generic SB Pro drivers in NT worked after the PNPISA.dll file was installed.

The video card I had was an Oak, so I could not find drivers for NT, I had to use the Microsoft VGA drivers in 16 colors, and the NIC drivers would not load, so I tore it all down again, re-enabled the onboard Video, swapped the NIC, and at that time decide to put a real Soundblaster 16 card in so I could use the CD rom drive later (possible on the 2500 RSX). Now, NT had drivers for the Cirrus Logic chipset video, and I could get 256 colors, but no higher resolution. The Nic still wouldn't work (generic) so I swapped it out with a third NIC, in all we tried 4 NICS and finally got the 5 th one to work (another D-link). I had to get a switch, and cables ant now everything is up and running, I can do file transfers to my XP box, and surprisingly it run pretty fast for a 486 box. I used Fat 16 for my file system, so my DOS needs to be setup next.
Day 3 (few days later) Windows 95 Installation
Ok, day three did not go as planned. I decided to give up on my Sensation- I will never see that or the money again. I also decided that I needed something bigger and more powerful for my server, so I built a P3-500 box with parts I had kicking around and put 384 megs of ram in it, and an 8 gig hard drive (for now). That was a whole other day. Through some trades, I got a 1 Gig hard drive, an SVGA video card and a 15" LCD monitor. I had planed to run Windows 95 on this machine, so I tore it all apart and built it all up again. One of the first issues was finding a Windows 95 cd. I know I have one kicking around, but for the life of me , could not find it. The only time in 10 years of holding on to it, I found 2 "how and why" CD's instead. So, a quick call around and a friend dropped of an "Upgrade" CD. The computer was having problems with the 1 gig HD (would only read 300 Megs) and with no "bootable" cd, I had to get creative to install it. I ended up starting a Windows NT setup, formatted the drive into Fat16, and then using the Windows 95 boot floppy, and got it started. The BIG problem is that my 48X CD rom drive, is a generic brand, so no DOS drivers could be found, the generic CD Rom drivers worked for starting to install '95, but once the computer restarted, '95 could no longer see the drive, so I couldn't load any device drivers up.
I pondered this for a while and loaded up a generic DOS disk (from Boot disk.com) and I tired doing a copy of the CD to the hard drive, then re-boot into '95 and then load up the rest. About half way through the Disk transfer. The hard drive died, and the next smallest drive I had was 10 Gigs, and no mater what I did, Nothing would make the computer even remotely recognize the drive. This was about 10 hours of fighting, so I gave up and left it for another day.
DAY 4 ( 2 days later)
I had left the machine apart, for I knew more parts were coming in and I still had no hard drive, other than a 365 Meg or the original 106 Meg drive. The mail brought another 34 megs of ram, and a buddy dropped of another IBM P2 system for parts and upgrade. I tore apart the P2 system and found it had a 32X CD Rom. I knew that IBM used standard, off the shelf parts, that are re-branded IBM, so a quick google search showed this to be an LG drive and it is still supported. It also came with a 6 gig Maxtor Drive. A buddy suggested using Maxtor's Max Blast software to partition the drive. At first I tried the latest version -4, but it only supported FAT 32, so I hunted for Version 3, and it also included an EZ-Bios program that overrides the original bios and recognizes large drives. I can now put on a 500 gig drive on that 486, but I thought I wouldn't push my luck, and stick with the six.
The great thing is it recognized the LG CD Rom, I tried the 42X just to make sure, and it wouldn't even see a drive. The LG came right up. After a bit of playing (I really wanted to install DOS first, but I couldn't get it to work), I got 95 to load right up with out a hitch. With 65 megs of RAM (maximum for that Machine), 95 screams, and is very stable. The only gripe is the Trident Video card will only do 800 X 600 in 256 colors in 95. A real pain on the net. I swapped out the NIC for a Netgear, and 95 saw it right away. The only problem is the Soundblaster card won't work, but I have at least 5 more kicking around, so that card might be a dud. I downloaded IE 5.5 (because 6 won't work) and now its on the Net. I can see all the machines on the network, so file transfers were easy. I did partition the drive into 4 paritions, so it would be easier for 95, and transfer all the files from my XP box. I was at this until 3 am so I shut it down here. I do need a KVM switch now for all 4 machines. And I am not done yet, I have a new Creative Labs CD Rom drive with a remote coming and a lot more "Toys".

Update October 9

I still have not seen a new SVGA card, but one is ordered. Like I mentioned above, the whole wire mess, monitor shuffle and keyboard swap is now gone with my new desk, Flat pannel monitor, and KVM switch. I also added an external Zip drive. The internet does run a bit slow on a 486, but it is talerable, and a great back-up machine for e-mail and such.It is my opinion, that when this machine came out, with all the upgrades, it was a powerhouse and highly sought after. The only complaint I would have had at the time was the Very small hard drive Tandy bundled with it. 100 megs was small even back then, this machine came out when 750 meg drives we common.

original Ebay Picture

I will update this as more Tandy's hit my door.

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