Tandy 1000 Hardware Page

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Tandy 1000

Welcome to the Tandy 1000 Hardware page. This page describes my Original Tandy 1000 machine that I have owned for 13 years, and the various hardware modifications I have made to it.

I originally purchased (or my parents did anyway! :-)) the machine with it's original 128KB of RAM and a single 360K 5 1/4" floppy. I soon added a 256K memory expansion board and a second floppy. The first thing I purchased after I got the machine was the complete Technical Referene manual, no way I was going to let this baby just sit with the case closed!.

I also had an Apple II clone card which enabled me to emulate an Apple II, but that novelty soon wore off :-), yet another Tandy junk bin gem !. Living just around the corner from the main Australian Tandy distribution centre I got all the latest surplus stuff direct from the warehouse. I even did work experience in the Tandy repair centre was I was 14.

The T1000 isn't the only Tandy I have owned, I also had an 1100FD laptop for a few years before I sold it. The 1100FD was a little beauty, with it's DOS and DeskMate software built into ROM. Natually I customised it with multiple internal lead acid batteries !, it's amazing what you can fit into a laptop case if you try hard enough !

Custom Volume Control modification : VOL-MOD.TXT

Custom Monochrome Switch modification : MONO-MOD.TXT

Custom Turbo Board Modification : TURBO_BD.TXT

Check out TVDOG's Tandy 1000 page.

Another Tandy 1000 Page.

Visit the OldSkool Tandy 1000 Shrine!

My old super modified Tandy 1000 !. It still goes !. Note the cutaway front panel and custom turbo board just below the third expansion slot.

A close up shot of the curstom turbo board. Notice how it is designed to fit between the two expansion slots so it doesn't interfere with long expansion cards.

Here are the non-standard additions my machine has :

A V20 processor, the processor of choice in those days, 50% faster than the 8088.
My custom designed Turbo board (Published in EA April, 1991) which pushed the speed to around 7MHz. At one time this turbo board used an RC oscillator at 25MHz for the main system clock. The thing changed frequency when you walked in the room !!!. When it started to play up, I just hit it with a can of frezzer !. I claim this to be the first IBM compatible in history to run on an RC oscillator, anyone know of any others?.
Custom Mono/Color switch modification to fix those annoying color screens on a mono monitor.
Modified (read "butched") front panel to allow full length cards to fit !. This is why it didn't have a case !. Why oh why did Tandy ever design the thing for 3/4 length cards ?.
640K of RAM, using a modified Tecmar (remember them) XT memory/IO board (not shown). Who said you had to buy a Tandy memory card !. The thing only cost me $50 in a junk bin at Tandy's complete with 512K of RAM, that was CHEAP in those days. The goofball who sold it to me bet me I couldn't get it to work ! (now I never did collect that bet...hmm). The card was full length, so it had to hang out the front of the case.
A "silenced" power supply fan. That original one was LOUD.
Front panel volume control, perfect for those games at 2am in the morning.

Believe it or not, I actually got Windows 3.0 to run on this thing with only two 360K floppy drives (no hard drive), and 640K of RAM !!!. It actually ran faster than Windows 95 on my AMD 486DX4/120 desktop with 16MB, no kidding !!!

My Tandy1000 turbo board schematic

This Tandy 1000 Web Ring site owned by David L. Jones.

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