Welcome back to part 17 of my fourth SepTandy Spectacular. In the last post we took a closer look at the Tandy 1000's early peripherals, In this post, were having a closer look at its Disk Drives, Printers and Modems, starting with Disk Drives.
Now early on there weren't any external disk drives sold for the 1000 since it had disk drives built in. But in 1986, the Tandy 1000EX was introduced, which was a low cost all in one version of the Tandy 1000 with a built in 5.25 floppy drive. However due to the design of the 1000EX, it was not possible to add another 5.25 drive.
Luckily Tandy did have the idea of adding another drive in mind, which is why they provided a special proprietary port for adding a second external drive as well as a drive to use the port. The drive was simply called the 5.25 External Disk Drive (Catalog number 25-1060), released in 1986, for $249.95.
A listing for the 5.25 External Disk Drive in the 1987 Radio Shack Catalog
For that you get 1 360K 5.25 inch drive to read Double-Sided, Double-Density disks, the same as the drive built into the 1000EX.
The front of the 5.25 External Disk Drive
And on the back is just the one plug for the connector cable to plug into the computer.
The back of the 5.25 External Disk Drive
As for operating the drive, the 1000EX is designed to recognize the external drive port as Drive B:, so as soon as you plug in the drive and power on the computer, Drive B: is immediately accessible and any disk inserted into the external drive can be read or written to. Its's also possible to boot into any disk inserted in the external drive on start up by holding the F3 key. This activates a drive swap feature and swaps the drive arrangement so the External Drive will become Drive A: and the internal drive will become Drive B:.
While having a second drive was convenient, you were still stuck accessing 5.25 inch disks and those were starting to go out of style by the late 80s, so it would make sense that there was also a 3.5 inch version The drive was simply called the 3.5 External Disk Drive (Catalog number 25-1061), also released in 1986, for $279.95.
A listing for the 3.5 External Disk Drive in the 1987 Radio Shack Catalog
For that you get 1 720K 3.5 inch drive to read Double-Sided, Double-Density disks, which is the same as the drive built into the later 1000HX.
The front of the 5.25 External Disk Drive
And on the back is the same single plug for the connector cable to plug into the computer.
The back of the 5.25 External Disk Drive
The drive operates exactly the same as the 5.25 drive, only with 3.5 inch disks instead of 5.25. Both of these drives also work with the Tandy 1000HX which features the same port.
There was one more external drive released: The 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive (Catalog number 25-1087), released in 1991, for $249.95.
A listing for the 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive in the 1992 Radio Shack Catalog
The Drive itself was a liscened version of the MicroSolutions Backpack 5.25 drive. It's basically the same drive but with some differences in hardware.
The MicroSolutions Backpack 5.25 drive
For that you get 1 1.2MB 5.25 inch drive to read Double-Sided, High-Density disks, Using a standard Epson drive mech enclosed in a sheet metal case
The front of the 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive
On the back is a parallel connector cable, a passthrough to connect a printer, the power jack, and the power switch. Yes you read that correctly, this connects though the parallel port on the Tandy 1000. Not only can the parallel port connection allow you to use the drive on the 1000SL, 1000TL, 1000RL, 1000RLHD, 1000RLX, and 1000RSX, but with the drivers you could use it on any XT, AT, or PS/2 PC you want.
The back of the 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive
After installing the drive, the required drivers, and restarting the computer, the 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive will be recognized as Drive B:, just like the previous drives, and now with the drive connected you can read and write to either 360K disks or 1.2 MB disks in Drive B:. One thing to note for using the drive with the 1000RL, is that requires a special modification to the parallel port by creating a solder bridge jumper between the E3 and E2 pins on the motherboard to enable the parallel port to be bi-directional, otherwise the drive wont work. The only issue is that it doesn't support FAT32 file formatting so it wont work on Windows 95 and 98. The original Backpack drive could work with FAT32, but the 5.25 1.2MB External Disk Drive can not. Unfortunately the drive was also released late in the 1000's life so these drives are pretty rare to find today.
So that's the Disk Drives, what about Printers? Well being that the 1000 was designed to use the TRS-80's printer port and any printer designed for the TRS-80 Model I, III, and IV will work fine on the 1000. But by 1985, Dot Matrix Printers had evolved beyond the 7 and 9 pin head based printers we've seen previously, as 18 pin printers started to appear on the scene. An example of one of these was The DMP-430 (Catalog number 26-1277), released in 1985, for $899.00 dollars.
A listing for the DMP-430 in the 1986 Radio Shack Catalog
For that you get a print density of 10, 12, 16.7, or proportional spacing, a draft print speed of 93 lines per minute at 10 characters per inch (cpi) or 60 lpm at 132 columns, and can print both text and graphics at 240 dots per inch.
But if that wasn't enough, later on there was the DMP-2120 (Catalog number 26-2811), released in 1987, for $1599.00 dollars.
A listing for the DMP-2120 in the 1988 Radio Shack Catalog
Not only does this printer move to a more office friendlier design, but it also can print at the highest print quality possible with a 24 pin print head! To give you an idea of what that would look like, here's a picture of text printed on 9 pin printer compared to a 24 pin.
A comparison of the print quality of a 9 pin printer compared to a 24 pin
Still Dot matrix printers have there issue with more moving parts and the print quality wasn't near as good as what you could get from a typesetter and thats were the last new print technology for personal computer printer that appeared during the mid 80s came into play: Laser printers.
Laser printers had the advantage of fewer moving parts to be more reliable, and the print quality was almost typeset quality, perfect for printing both regular doccuments in the office and the rising Desktop Publising boom.
With the rise of Desktop Publishing, It's no supprise Tandy offered their own Laser Printers, stating with the LP 1000 (Catalog number 26-2804), also released in 1987, for $2199.95.
A listing for the LP 1000 in the 1988 Radio Shack Catalog
This printer moved away from the fanfold paper and sprocket hole mechanism to the more standard A4 sheet and tray instead, producing 6 pages per minute at 300 DPI, while being compatible with other laser printers like the HP LaserJet Plus, to ensure compatibility with popular Desktop Publishing applications like PageMaker and Ventura Publisher.
And finally we have modeems, which have also evolved quite a bit. as modem speed reached 1200 by the time the 1000 was relased thanks to the introduction of the Hayes smart modem
The First 1200 baud modem was the DCM 212 (Catalog number 26-1385), released in 1986, for $199.95.
A listing for the DCM 212 in the 1987 Radio Shack Catalog
This modem was compatible with the Hayes comand set and could opperate at either 300 or 1200 buad while using Bell 212A protocol hence the name.
The other option was the DCM-7 (Catalog number 26-1394), also released in 1986, for $99.95.
A listing for the DCM-7 in the 1987 Radio Shack Catalog
This was also compatible with the Hayes command set, but could only opperate at 300 buad while using Bell 103 protocol sacrificing the speed for price.
Finally there was the ModemFone 100 (Catalog number 26-1386), also released in 1986, for $99.95.
A listing for the ModomFone 100 in the 1987 Radio Shack Catalog
This was both a landline phone and a modem all in one, and can switch between functions with a switch at the top. It also featured answer and receive functionality, touch tone dialing and redial making both a useful phone and a modem.
The ModomFone 100
There were of course many options for printers and modems as well, but I wont get into them as that would take forever. However with this, these are the last of the standard peripherals and add ons available for the Tandy 1000. But were not done yet as there's still more to cover. This concludes Part 17of the fourth Septandy Spectacular, join me next time as we conclude this years Septandy Spectacular take a closer look at the many miscellaneous add ons and peripherals for the Tandy 1000.
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