Welcome to part 7 of my SepTandy Spectacular. In this final post for my SepTandy Spectacular, we're taking a look at probably Tandy's most well known computer line, the Tandy 1000.
Released in 1984, the Model 1000 was Tandy's first successful entry into the world of IBM compatibles, and became not only the the best IBM compatible that one could buy at the time, but also one of the the most influential PC compatibles of the 1980s, especially in terms of gaming, with its graphics and sound capabilities.
The origins of the 1000 trace back to 1983, When IBM anounced their entry to the home computer makert, The IBM PCjr.
Originally announced on November 3, 1983, under the code and nickname "Peanut", It was meant to be a home version of the IBM PC. While the IBM PC was extremely popular with businesses, they were far too expensive for the average home consumer.
When designing the PCjr, IBM took cues from the other home microcomputers, including things like enhanced graphics and sound for games, cartridge slots, a rubber-keyed chiclet keyboard, built-in BASIC, TV and monitor output options, and joystick and light pen ports. It even came with a built-in floppy drive, giving it an edge over the competition.
However, when it was released in 1984, the PCjr ended up being a market failure. Although it was significantly cheaper than the IBM PC, and ran much of it's software, Not only was it way more expensive than the competition, but it just simply wasn't powerful enough to run many business programs, and many programs for the PC just simply didn't work on it. Resulting in IBM discontinuing the computer in 1985.
However, the hype, initially got Tandy's attention, as they were already trying to break into the IBM compatible market themselves as a way to help their customers upgrade from the aging TRS-80 line of computers.
While Tandy had already made a PC XT clone with enhanced graphics and sound, known as the Tandy 2000, due to their choice of the infamous 80186 CPU (which didn't make it compatible enough with the IBM PC, only working with text-based MS-DOS software), and its price of $2,750, it didn't have as much success as they hoped.
With the never ending hype during the PCjr's development, Tandy got to work making a PCjr clone. But as Tandy was about to release this computer, the Tandy 1000, IBM announced that they were going to be discontinuing the PCjr. So Tandy quickly changed their marketing campaign to promote it as an MS-DOS-compatible computer rather than a PCjr compatible computer.
The Tandy 1000 launched in November of 1984, for a retail price of $1,199 for a base machine with a 128K of RAM and an 8088 CPU.
The Tandy 1000 itself has a pretty standard design for an IBM compatible of the era, albeit more rounded and modern. On the front machine, lies one or two 360K 5.25 floppy drives, a reset button, the keyboard port, and two joystick ports.
On the right side is the all important power switch.
On the back, there is the power plug, the printer interface, a lightpen port, a monitor port, AV outputs, an exhaust fan, and three expansion slots.
You'll notice a lot of the ports are actually integrated on the board, this was somewhat uncommon at the time as the IBM PC and most clones usually had to use separate expansion cards to get these. The Tandy 1000 was one of the first IBM PC clones to incorporate these ports on the motherboard using proprietary ASICs, the precursor to the chipset.
The 1000 was also one of the first IBM compatibles to have an exhaust fan, most PC's didn't at the time. It certainly helped to keep the components cool and run more reliably. It's very quiet too, which is nice.
You'll also notice that a lot of these ports are not standard for PC's, but rather with the older TRS-80 and CoCo. That's because the 1000 was intended as an upgrade path for existing TRS-80 and CoCo users, allowing them to use the same joysticks, displays, and printers as the TRS-80 and the CoCo.
This was a big change from the PCjr, which used proprietary ports for peripherals and made existing equipment incompatible.
The keyboard was somewhat unusual as they tried to make it smaller, but still retain a lot of keys, resulting in a crammed layout. Some keys are in unusual places such as the locations of control and alt. There are also little spots for overlays above the function keys that can let let you know what the function keys did in a specific program.
At least it is a mechanical keyboard, which is another big improvement over the PCjr's chiclet and rubber dome keyboards.
The switches used in the keyboard are Third Generation Fujitsu Leaf Springs, a liner switch design that gave a smooth, light typing feel. It doesn't provide the same kind of experience as IBM's Buckling Springs, but it's still a very nice switch design. The Fujitsu Leaf Springs were also used in keyboards for other MS-DOS computers like the Sanyo MBC 550.
For Displays, you can use the AV out to hook it up to either a TRS-80 monitor or a composite monitor or tv. There's also the RGBI port, which will allow you to connect the 1000 to a CGA monitor. One interesting thing to note is the way in which The Tandy 1000 displayed composite video. On an IBM PC, the CGA card would output a different set of colors depending on whether you were viewing it on a composite monitor or an RGB monitor. This was a trick used to get more color in games, but very few games used it. But, with the Tandy, it actually outputs, more or less, exactly the same colors on composite, So Tandy users had another choice for video.
There were two monitors available for the Tandy 1000 at launch, The monochrome VM-2, and the color CM-2. The VM-2, like most monochrome monitors back then, was meant for business users working with text based applications like Spreadsheets and Word Processors. Though unlike the IBM 5151 monitor, it connected using the composite port, rather than a proprietary connector with an MDA card. So essentially it could display graphics in monochrome, no Hercules Card required! (The Hercules Card was a card for the IBM PC that could allow it to display graphics on a monochrome MDA monitor.)
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Booting up the computer is the same as booting any IBM PC or compatible of the day, insert your DOS disk into Drive A, insert your program disk into Drive B, and turn the computer on. The computer will then preform a memory size check (counting how much RAM is available), let out a beep, and drop you to a BIOS screen booting the DOS disk in Drive A. Speaking of the BIOS, the 1000 was also one of the first IBM compatibles to use the then new PC ROM BIOS from Phoenix technologies, allowing for Tandy to have an essentially 100% IBM compatible BIOS without having to reverse-engineer one themselves.
Now being that this is an IBM compatible (or MS-DOS computer), there isn't any BASIC in ROM like previous Tandy machines. However there is a version of GW-BASIC on the DOS disk that came with the 1000, so ill preform the HELLO WORLD program as usual.
The 1000 also came with an optional operating environment, called Deskmate. The early versions of Deskmate were quite simple, being black and white and completely texted based, but it did provide you with some basic business-oriented, home management applications built in like a spreadsheet program, a filler, a text editor, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm, and a telecom menu.
It was a nice bonus, and provided the user with some type of software to start with. Keep in mind that while Windows was introduced in 1985, it wouldn't become popular til 5 years later in 1990, when Windows 3.0 came out. Later versions of Deskmate would move to a GUI interface, more similar to MacOS, GEM, or Windows.
For storage, you have the previously mentioned one or two 5.25 floppy drives, but you could also install a hard drive or buy a version with a built in hard drive, called the 1000HD, though these were expensive and uncommon.
The joystick ports are compatible with the Tandy CoCo. So the joysticks were easily available and Tandy could share the joysticks between the computers, It's even compatible with it's mice!
Other add-ons and peripherals included the standard variety for PC's at the time such as hard cards (which were hard drives and controllers on a single card), memory expansions, modems, and CPU accelerators, but also some unique options such as the Trackstar 128, which was an expansion card that allowed the Tandy 1000 to run Apple IIe software. The Trackstar 128 was made by Diamond Computer Systems, Later known as Diamond Multimedia, who would go on to be well-known for their graphics and sound cards, as well as the Diamond Rio, the first widely-available portable consumer MP3 player.
The hardware of the machine itself is pretty standard for an IBM compatible of the time, along with using the various components and having the same specs as the PCjr. It uses an Intel 8088 clocked at 4.77 MHz (same as the PC and PCjr) with the later A revision model having a spot for an 8087 math co processor (just like the IBM PC), 128K of RAM (expandable to 640K, same as the PCjr), and has 3 expansion slots (instead of the sidecard slot on the PCjr).
Video wise, the 1000 features the same graphics modes of the PCjr, in addition to the standard CGA modes such as 80x25 and 40x25 text mode with 16 colors, 320x200 graphics mode with 4 colors, and high-res 640x200 mode with 2 colors, you also had an had a low-res 160×200 mode with 16 colors, a 320x200 mode with 16 colors, and a high-res 640x200 mode with 4 colors.
The sound is handled by a Texas Instruments SN76496 sound generator, The same sound chip used in several arcade machines, home computers, and video game consoles such as the TI-994a, the BBC Micro, the Sega Master System, the Sega Genesis, and the ColecoVision. Typically, the sound is referred to as the Tandy 3-Voice system, because the chip has 3 programmable square wave voices, but that's not entirely true. The computer technically has 5 to 6 voices, but it depends on the model. The original 1000 actually had 5 voices, the 3 programmable square wave voices, a noise channel, and the PC-Speaker is mixed in with the sound output essentially making it a 5th voice.
As for software, thats where the Tandy 1000 shined. While the PCjr was a failure for IBM, for Tandy it was the opposite, as the Tandy 1000 was an incredible success for RadioShack. Because though the 1000 was highly compatible with PCjr software, they made a bigger emphasis on compatibility of the PC. For example it could run unmodified retail copies of business applications such as Dbase, WordPerfect and Lotus 1-2-3, the latter of which being one of the goto programs for PC compatibility.
And the games were also pretty impressive, Keeping in mind that IBM were still selling with standard CGA graphics and PC speaker sound. To give you an idea of what these graphics and sounds were like, Im going to play both the PC and Tandy versions of Arkanoid with the PC version on the left and the Tandy version on the right (Well, actually the Tandy footage is from YouTube as I couldn’t get the sound to work properly in the emulator I was using).
For 1984, that's pretty incredible! considering that the similar EGA video standard was only recently introduced and a EGA card could run a typical PC over $1000, and sound cards like the Adlib and SoundBlaster did not yet exist. As a result, thousand of companies produced games that took advantage of the Tandy 1000's graphics and sound, and became so popular, that the PCjr's standard for graphics and sounds soon became known as "Tandy compatible" graphics and sound, instead. In fact, Ed Judge, Tandy's director of market planing, described the Tandy 1000 as "what the PCjr should have been".
And it wasn't just Tandy benefiting from the 1000 either, as the 1000 saved one particular game company from bankruptcy, that company was Sierra On-Line. They were founded in 1979, by husband-and-wife Ken and Roberta Williams, and got their start making various interactive fiction games for the Apple II, such as Mystery House.
But by 1983, they were approached by IBM to design a game for the PCjr. IBM wanted something along the lines of Sierra's previous game for the PC, Adventure in Serenia, but requested it be more complex as they wanted something to compete with Ultima and Wizardry, the result was a game called King's Quest. In it, you took the role of a knight named Sir Grahame (Later Graham) who is sent on a quest by King Edward of Daventry to retrieve three hidden treasures to save the kingdom.
The problem was that while gamers were impressed, due to it being on the PCjr, nobody was buying it. With very little sales and already financially struggling, Sierra was almost about to go out of business. But with the Tandy 1000's PCjr compatibility and price, Sierra was able to make a major profit off their game. Soon after Kings Quest would spawn a franchise and various other games based on its engine such as Police Quest, Space Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry. Sierra themselves would go on to become the original publishers of Valve's Half-Life series and would remain in operation until 2008, when they were purchased by Activision. So needles to say that had the Tandy 1000 not been introduced, Sierra may have never existed beyond 1984.
The Tandy 1000 was a sales success from day one. In fact, sales were higher the first month after launch than any other computer in Radio Shack’s history. While some Tandy users were disappointed that Tandy was following a standard rather than making them, Tandy did make the right move with this computer and over time they would discontinue their other computer lines in favor of the Tandy 1000 line.
This was really the start an industry wide standardization phenomenon. Before this, every computer was incompatible with each other, so software had to be designed separately for every computer. But with the rise of IBM compatibles or “MS-DOS” computers, suddenly there was a standard everybody could follow and have their software work on the every computer, and that standard is what we still use today.
The Tandy 1000 was so successful that in 1986 alone it enjoyed a 9.5% market share of all computers sold in the US. With that success, Tandy continued to make new models. The next two models they introduced was the 1000SX and 1000TX in 1986, which look pretty much the same as the 1000 except the floppy drives are beige instead of black. Hardware wise, it included a faster 8088-2 processor (clocked at 7.16 MHz) and 5 card slots instead of 3.
The TX is similar to the SX, but includes an 80286 CPU (clocked at 8 MHz), 640K of RAM (expandable to 768K) and a 3.5 floppy drive (with an optional 20 MB hard disk or 5.25 floppy drive also available).
The next model introduced was the Tandy 1000 EX in 1987. It was an all in one unit, similar to previous Tandy lines like the TRS80 and the CoCo. It had a single 5.25 floppy drive on the side (similar to the Apple IIc, the Commodore Amiga or the Atari ST), 3 proprietary expansion slots, and a proprietary port for an external floppy drive.
The next model was the Tandy 1000 HX in 1988, that included a 3.5 floppy drive, moved the floppy drive to the front, along with a second drive bay where you could mount either an additional floppy drive or a hard drive, and could boot MS-DOS 2.11 from ROM.
Then in 1989 came the updates to the SX and TX machines, the SL and TL. Both machines were pretty much the same, only the SL had a 8086 CPU (clocked at 8 MHz which could also be upgraded with an NEC V30 CPU to boost performance) with 384K of RAM, and the TL had a 80286 CPU with 640K of RAM. However did boast some notable improvements such as more integrated components, a PC/XT keyboard connector, and a new 640x200 graphics mode with 16 colors as well as a DAC for recording and producing digitized sounds (which became known as TL graphics and sound). There was also a SL/2 and TL/2 with 512K and 640K respectively.
Then in 1991 came the 1000 RL and RL/HD which were similar to the TL machines, with 8086 AT-class processors (clocked at 9.54 MHz), 512K of RAM (expandable to 768K), a DB-25 parallel port instead of the edge-connector ports, the TL's graphics and sound, and PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse to go along with the case which also mimics the IBM PS/2. The RL/HD has a battery-backed real-time clock chip, MS-DOS and a portion of DeskMate in ROM, and can therefore boot much faster than many other computers on the market (In fact, to this day is considered the fasted booting computer ever), and a 20MB hard drive.
However, by this point, the Tandy 1000 was starting to lose its edge. For one thing, Computers with 256 color VGA cards had become somewhat common and seemed to be the new emerging standard, and sound cards like the Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster were starting to become standardized as well. Not only that, but Microsoft had continued to improve Windows and Deskmate drastically behind. In fact, by 1991 even Radio Shack themselves said in their catalog that they recommended that customers run Microsoft Windows on most of their high end computers, relegating DeskMate to their less expensive ones.
The final two models introduced in 1991, the RLX and RSX, replaced the Tandy graphics modes with standard SVGA graphics. They did still retain the 3-Voice system though, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, since most PCs of the era still didn’t ship with a sound card, as it was typically something the user would buy and install themselves.
By 1993, Tandy was no longer competitive in the PC market, so they sold all of their facilities in Fort Worth, Texas to a company called AST Computer. They were founded in 1980 (as AST Research) by Albert Wong, Safi Qureshey and Thomas Yuen (Which is also where the name comes from), and they got their start making expansion cards, such as the AST Six-Pack for the IBM PC, the Apple II, and the IBM PS/2.
The purpose of the Six-Pack card was to combine the features of multiple expansion cards into one. Since the original IBM PCs and compatibles had around 5 expansion slots, but were always filled with things like serial cards, parallel cards,and floppy controllers. So when you wanted to add new cards, sometimes there just wasn't any room. So the idea was to combine all of these things into a single card. So the card had a floppy controller, extra RAM, a real-time clock, serial ports and parallel ports.
However when motherboard manufacturers started integrating more of these onto the motherboards, the cards had lost their desirability. So in order to shift from the declining market, AST decided to diversify their market and make their own PC's. By 1988, AST was the third-largest PC maker in terms of market share, but struggled to hold its place, mainly due to distrubution problems to meet demand. So, in 1993, they took the Radio Shack purchase offer and expanded manufaturing from Irvine, CA to Tandy's home city of Fort Worth, TX.
Originally the deal with Tandy RadioShack was to allow AST to take over Tandy's manufacturing facilities and support facilities. This meant that that they would not only manufacture and give support to their own computers, but also had to support Tandy computers and GRID computers (As Tandy bought GRID back in 1988), and sell AST computers in Radio Shack stores. However the AST computer sale part of the deal ended up falling through and Radio Shack ended up selling Compaq computers instead.
AST continued to support these machines into the mid 90s, but they were starting to lose money. Due to poor quality, domestic computer manufacturing, and sales channel problems, they ended up selling the company to Samsung in 1997.
Samsung's plan was that they wanted to sell their computers in the USA, but felt that AST had a stronger brand recognition in the USA than they had. So Samsung would manufacture the computers, AST would put the label on them and would give support at their Fort Worth facility.
While Samsung is known for selling products under their brand now, back then, Samsung's products never tended to sell well under the Samsung name in the USA. So they often OEM'ed their products to other companies that sold them under their brand names.
For example, Samsung sold the SPC3000V in the US, Europe, and Samsung's home country of Korea, but also happily modified the case and sold the innards to companies worldwide like Packard Bell, Epson, and Vendex, causing the Turbo XT explosion back in the late 80's.
There was also the Samsung Pen Master 386SL/20, their first publicly released tablet computer sold back in 1992 which was also licensed to GRID Systems who sold their own variant called the GridPad SL, which was better known in the US (Which is possibly also how they got ahold of AST in the first place).
While it did end up helping AST a little bit, Unfortunately the Asian stock market crash of 1997 affected the currency exchange rates dramatically. So even though Samsung had committed to supporting AST for two or three years, the amount of money they had planned to spend on that was now suddenly significantly more than what they had planned, and they ultimately decided to pull the plug on AST and AST shut down in 1999, taking Tandy and GRID assets along with them. The AST name was sold to Packard Bell, who continued to provide support for Tandy and AST computers until 2001.
The Tandy 1000 line has had a few features in various movies and tv shows. Notable examples include an episode of Fame where the character Gordon uses a Tandy 1000SX, to run a copy of Operation Frog, In Ready Player One, you can see a Tandy 1000 in young Halliday's room, and the 1000, HX, and SL have been featured in a few episodes of Young Sheldon.
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In conclusion, I hope you enjoyed my look at the Tandy 1000, an IBM compatible that became an incredible success and took the PC game industry by storm with support for many years. And this concludes my SepTandy Spectacular, I also hope you've enjoyed my walk through history and I've proved that Radio Shack wasn't always the weird failure its been recognized as being in recent years. But if you though I was done talking about Radio Shack, think again, because I'm sure Ill be mentioning more things about them in the future. In fact there was some stuff I didn't even cover like the various clones and licensed Tandy computers sold throughout the world, as well as some of the more interesting, non computer products, like their lines of video game consoles. Maybe that will be for another SepTandy Spectacular, I cant say for certain. But until then, that wraps it up, thanks for reading. See you next time!
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