Welcome back to part 16 of my fourth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post ended our look at the MC-10 with it's miscellaneous peripherals. In this entry we move on to the Tandy 1000, with its early peripherals and add ons.
Again this is kind of different from the previous Tandy machines we've looked at since the Tandy 1000 is an IBM Compatible (Or MS-DOS Computer) so pretty much any card, peripheral, or add on designed for the IBM PC will run on the Tandy 1000 and vice versa. But there were some unique options that Tandy offered for the 1000 throughout its 9 year life span and their worth covering nonetheless. However, before we can get to those, we need to start back at the beginning at look at the earliest op-tions
The first of these was the monitors, with two options being available: The monochrome VM-2 (Catalog number 26-3211), and the color CM-2 (Catalog number 26-3211) both introduced alongside the Tandy 1000 in 1984, for $159.95 and $549.95 respectively.
A listing for the VM-2 and the CM-2 in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
First off we have the VM-2, as I mentioned before this was the monochrome option and as such displays everything on a green phosphor display
.png)
The Tandy VM-2 Monitor
The VM-2 was effectivly the Tandy 1000's equivalent of the IBM 5151 Monochrome monitor which launched alongside the IBM PC in 1981.
The IBM 5151 Monitor (1981)
Like the 5151, The VM-2 was mainly meant for meant for business users working with text based applications like Spreadsheets and Word Processors, However it had a few advantages over the 5151. For one thing, it was less prone to phosphor persistence (Or Ghosting) that the 5151 was notorious for, so not only could the screen clear much quicker but it was also less prone to screen burn in than the 5151. But the biggest advantage the VM-2 had over the 5151 was how it connected to the Tandy 1000. You see on the back of the 5151 is 2 cords: the power cord and the actual video cable that plugs into the computer
The back of the IBM 5151 Monitor
The graphics card used to connect the IBM PC to the 5151 was known as MDA (Or the Monochrome Display Adapter) and with the card and the monitor the IBM PC could display monochrome text at a resolution of 80 columns by 25 rows with each character is rendered in a box of 9 × 14 pixels, of which 7 × 11 depicts the character itself and the other pixels provide space between character columns and lines and also having some text display formatting options as well like blinking and underlined text. The card even came with a built in printer port making it perfect for text based business applications
The IBM MDA card (1981)
The only problem was, the MDA card and 5151 could only display text and each pixel is not addressable, making graphics impossible other than the graphics charactrs built into ROM. Now again if you were only working with text based applications like WordPerfect or DBase, this wouldn't be a problem, But what if say you were working in Lotus 123 and wanted to graph out the data in your spreadsheet? Well if you only had an MDA monitor, you couldn't! Now while later there was the Hercules graphics card which allowed each pixel to be addressable, software had to be writted for it in order to work.
The VM-2 is different in that instead of using MDA, it uses a standard composite video connection
The back of the VM-2
Because the Tandy 1000 outputs CGA from the Composite ports, it means you could have both text and graphics on the screen without any adapter card and it can run any CGA application without any modification. A smart design!
Speaking of CGA, the other monitor option was the CM-2, which could display both text at 80x25 or 40x25 and graphics in 16 colors.
The Tandy CM-2 Monitor
Again much like the VM-2, The CM-2 was effectively the Tandy 1000's equivalent of the IBM 5153 Color CGA monitor which launched in 1983.
The IBM 5153 Monitor (1983)
Unlike the VM-2, there's no composite port its strictly an RGBI monitor, but on the plus side, It could display very sharp text and was equally as good as the 5153.
But if you wanted to keep you monitor above you rather than putting it on top of the computer, there was the Monitor Pedistal (Catalog number 26-5115), also released in 1984, for $89.95.
A listing for the Monitor Pedestal in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
The Monitor Pedestal did exactly what you would expect, be a place to set your monitor ontop of. while it could only hold the VM-2, it was faily fexible in movement, as it could tilt and swivle to whatever position you want.
The last graphics related peripheral at launch was RF Moduloator (Catalog number 26-1273), released in 1984, for $24.95.
A listing for the RF Moduloator in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
While the Tandy 1000 does have outputs for composite, most TV's at the time still lacked composite video so by hooking this into your Tandy 1000 you could tune your TV to channel 3 or 4 and have a working color monitor, much like previous machines. The only downside is it can only
display in 40 columns, so if you wanted 80 columns you had to use Composite or RGB.
Next up we have the 300 Baud Modem Card (Catalog number 25-1003), also released in 1984, for $89.95.
A listing for the 300 Baud Modem Card in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
As you would expect, this plugs into one of the expansion slots and could connect to a phone line to access online services with Deskmate provide you with access to telecom configuations
The 300 Baud Modem Card
In terms of RAM, the original 1000 only had 128K of RAM but there were options to install ether 256K, 512K, or 640K of RAM.
A listing for the RAM upgrades in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
If you baught the base model and wanted to upgrade to a dual drive system, there was the Tandy 1000 Disk Drive Kit (Catalog number 25-1005), also released in 1984, for $299.95.
A listing for the Tandy 1000 Disk Drive Kit in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
This gave you 1 360K 5.25 inch floppy drive with the apropriate cables to double the systems storage capacity to 720K.
RS232C was also an option with the RS232C Option Board (Catalog number 25-1006), released in 1984, for $99.95 dollars.
A listing for the RS232C Option Board in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
This allowed you to RS232C based periferals like Plotters, Printers, and other modems with faster speed than parralel
The RS232C Option Board
If you wanted to get even more data storage there was the was also an option with the Hard Disk Controller Board (Catalog number 25-1007), released in 1984, for $329.95 dollars.
A listing for the Hard Disk Controller Board in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
With this you could install either a 15 or 35 megabyte harddrive into the drive bay to allow you to boot the computer without a disk, or just have access to more data storage.
The Hard Disk Controller Board
Finally theres the Digi-Mouse Controller/Clock-Calendar Board (Catalog number 25-1007), released in 1985, for $99.95 dollars.
A listing for the Digi-Mouse Controller/Clock-Calendar Board in the 1985 Radio Shack Computer Catalog
This was both a real time clock and a mouse interface, so in addition to having a batery back up to the date in RAM to avoide typing it each time on boot up it also provided support for a special mouse,
The Digi-Mouse Controller/Clock-Calendar Board
While the Tandy 1000 could use the CoCo mice the Digi-Mouse used the more standard 2 buttons rathe than the Machintorsh style 1 of the original CoCo,
The Digi-Mouse
There were far more peripherals than these though, and there is far more to talk about, with it only getting more interesting from here. This concludes Part 16 of the fourth Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we take a closer look at the Disk Drives Modem's and Printers.
No comments:
Post a Comment