Radio Shack was a big player in the computer business starting in the 1970s with the TRS-80
line of computers.
In fact, by the mid 80's Radio Shack was selling at least a half dozen different computers.
And I don't just mean different variations, but rather completely different and incompatible
computer architectures.
For example, they were still selling the TRS-80 line of computers, mostly as business machines
at this point.
These were extremely expensive, often selling for thousands of dollars.
For the home market, they also had the Color Computer, which was much cheaper, starting
at $239.
In fact, at even lower cost, they had the short-lived Color Computer MC-10, which was
a separate architecture from the regular one.
You could get one of these for just over a hundred dollars.
They also had the popular Model-100 portable computer.
And if that was too large, then there was their line of pocket computers.
In the early 1980s it was not uncommon for computers completely incompatible with one
another.
And that would include big players from companies like Commodore, or Atari, or pretty much anybody
else.
In fact, there were probably a hundred different computer architectures at the time that were
completely incompatible with each other.
However, in 1984, that started to change with the introduction of MS-DOS compatible computers.
And Radio Shack also saw an opportunity here.
Now, they had already been selling their Tandy 2000 line of computers, which claimed to be
MS-DOS compatible.
However, it wasn't nearly compatible enough, and more or less only worked with text-based
MS-DOS software.
It also started around $2,750, which wasn't exactly cheap at the time, but it did have
a 80186 running twice the speed of IBMs product, however it was never a huge market success
due to lack of compatible software.
But Tandy's success with IBM compatibles would change in November of 1984 with the
introduction of the Tandy 1000.
To understand the Tandy 1000, we really need to look at IBM's own PCjr product, which
had come to market 8 months earlier.
The PCJr was supposed to be IBM's way to better enter the home market.
However, it had several problems keeping it from succeeding.
Notably, it had a terrible chiclet style keyboard, very little RAM compared to the regular IBM
PC, and it wasn't 100% compatible either.
What's worse, it sold at a price much too high for the home market.
However, the PCJr did have two things going for it.
For one thing, they had upgraded the CGA graphics so that it could finally display a full 16
colors even on an RGBI monitor, which was the standard monitor type most people were
using.
IBM also included a 3-voice sound chip, based on the Texas Instruments SN76496 sound generator.
This same sound chip was already used in dozens of arcade machines and in several home computers
such as the TI-994a, and the BBC Micro, and also in several notable game consoles such
as the Sega Genesis, and the ColecoVision.
When Tandy set out to make a new IBM compatible system, they were actually shooting to make
an IBM PCjr compatible system.
And thus, they incorporated the graphics and sound from the PCjr into their new Tandy 1000
system.
However, by the time the Tandy 1000 came to maket, it became clear the PCjr wasn't doing
as well as they thought.
So, they kind of dropped the PCjr aspect from all of the marketing material and instead
just said the Tandy 1000 was an MS-DOS computer.
But, what Tandy ended up making was actually a better IBM than IBM was making themselves.
The Tandy had a more modern appearance than the IBM and most of the other clones.
There are a few things that really set the Tandy 1000 apart from IBM.
For one thing, a lot of things were actually integrated onto the motherboard, such as the
video, the audio, a serial port, a somewhat proprietary printer port, and even two joystick
ports.
All of these things were actually separate cards on an IBM system and even on most clones
of the time.
This helped to reduce costs.
In fact, the concept of having a chipset on a motherboard started right here with the
Tandy 1000, as it was the first computer to integrate most of the glue logic, disk controllers,
and other things into a single chip.
So, while some criticized the original Tandy 1000 for only having 3 expansion slots, the
reality is didn't need very many because it came with everything already on the board,
where an IBM would come with 5 slots and 4 of them would be filled up right from the
start.
The keyboard was a bit unusual as well.
They tried to make the keyboard smaller, but still retain a lot of keys, and so everything
is really crammed together.
There are some keys that are in unusual places such as the locations of control and alt.
In fact, doing the reset of control-alt-delete is very unusual on this keyboard.
But I think the thing that annoys me the most is this placement of the hold key directly
above the arrow keys.
Since the arrow keys are not split off from the rest of the keyboard, it is quite possible
to wind up pressing other nearby keys in the heat of playing a game because you can't
feel the arrow keys as being separate.
But this hold key, is the most annoying thing to press because it actually pauses the entire
computer.
So, if you aren't accustomed to this, you will at first think the computer has locked
up for whatever reason, but pressing the hold key again will resume it.
The joystick ports were non-standard for PCs, but instead used the same joystick as was
used on the Tandy Color Computer already, meaning the joysticks were easily available
and Tandy could share at least that one peripheral between the computers.
Joysticks were actually not that common at the time anyway since IBM never intended their
PCs to really be used for games.
After all, IBM felt that marketing their computers as game machines would probably hurt their
reputation in the business market.
And one place this was particularly apparent was in their choice of video cards.
Even after IBM had given up on the PCJr, they continued to sell their PCs with standard
CGA graphics.
So, while games on an IBM XT would look more or less like this.
The same game on a Tandy would look like this.
And while games on the XT sounded like this, games on the Tandy machine sounded like this.
And thus, the graphics and sound eventually became known as Tandy Graphics and Tandy sound,
even though it actually originated on the PCjr.
The interesting thing is, the Tandy machines used the same monitor type as any IBM computer
with a CGA card would use.
That's because the 4-color limitation of IBM's CGA card was actually not a limitation
of the monitor itself, rather it was a limitation of the video card.
And thus, you can use any CGA monitor on your Tandy 1000 and enjoy full 16 color graphics.
Just to clarify the graphical capabilities.
Regular CGA had essentially 3 modes.
You had text mode with all 16 colors.
Then you had the 320x200 graphics mode with 4 colors.
This was the most common mode used in games.
Then you had a high resolution mode with only 2 colors.
Some business applications and a few games made use of this.
But, this is essentially what you got with a regular IBM PC or a compatible clone.
Yes, there were some other modes like composite mode and some undocumented tricks that could
get you some extra color with various tradeoffs, but the reality is, this was what most PC
users had to deal with at the time.
With the Tandy machines, you also had a low-resolution mode with 16 colors.
Some games made use of this mode.
I believe some of the early Sierra games like Kings Quest used this.
You also got the 320x200 mode with a full 16 colors.
This was the mode most games made use of.
Then there was a high resolution mode with 4 colors, which was seldom used.
And later model Tandy machines even added a 16 color high resolution mode, which is
even more rare because software developers would be hesitant to use this and advertise
their software works with Tandy 1000 machines because most customers wouldn't know if
their Tandy 1000 supported this mode or not.
One other interesting tidbit is the way in which Tandy graphics worked on composite video.
You see, on an IBM PC, the CGA card would output a different set of colors depending
on whether you were viewing it on a composite or RGB monitor.
And thus, software companies would have to write special support to handle both, or just
do like most did and and just support the RGB mode and forget about the composite mode
since not that many users had composite monitors.
But, with the Tandy, it actually outputs exactly the same colors, more or less, on composite
and RGB.
Thus giving Tandy users another choice for video.
Now let's talk about the sound chip.
Typically you'll hear it referred to as the Tandy 3-Voice system, and that's because
the chip has 3 programmable square wave voices.
They can't really produce any other sort of waveform, and they don't even have an
ADSR system like the SID chip has in the Commodore 64.
However, each channel does have an independent volume control.
So, it's certainly possible to use the CPU to artificially create an ADSR envelop so
that sounds like bells or flutes can be created.
However, the system is actually more powerful than it would seem.
In fact, it has a 4th voice for a noise channel.
So, really, they should have called it a 4 voice system.
But wait, there's more.
You see, they needed the PC-Speaker to be backwards compatible with other IBM software,
so that sound is also mixed in with the sound output giving you essentially a 5th voice
if you want.
And, to top it off later Tandy models even included an 8-bit digital to analog converter
as a 6th voice which is meant for playback of digitized sounds.
However, because not all Tandy machines had this, few games actually made use of it.
Beyond just the hardware, Tandy 1000s shipped with a product called DeskMate.
It was a graphical operating system but it could be controlled with a keyboard or mouse.
It included a variety of productivity applications, such as a very minimal word processor.
While not as advanced as MacWrite or other graphical word processors, it could get the
job done.
It also had a pretty functional spreadsheet.
You know, a lot of this stuff has to be compared with what was available at the time, and how
much all of these things would have cost had the user bought them separately.
This came with the computer.
It had a very nice calendar program that would allow you to schedule appointments and stuff.
And it had a little drawing program, sort of like windows Paint of the era.
Speaking of that, I should point out this whole suite of software runs on the high resolution
16 color mode of Tandy's graphics chip, which no other IBM compatible would have had
the ability to do, at least not until EGA graphics became widespread.
Speaking of that, it also included a musical composition application which took advantage
of the Tandy's 3 voice sound hardware, again something not available on other computers.
And last but not least, it had a terminal application for using your modem.
So, for the home user of the time, DeskMate gave functionality almost equivalent to a
Microsoft Windows, keeping in mind that during this time Windows wasn't all that much more
advanced than DeskMate.
The Tandy 1000 started off selling for $1,199.
Which, was actually quite a steal.
In fact, Radio Shack said it best themselves right here in their catalog.
"Indeed, an IBM PC equipped with 256K of RAM and a color monitor will run you over
$3,100.
The equivalent Tandy 1000 is only $2,048 and gives you superior graphics in up to four
times as many colors."
The Tandy 1000 was a great sales success from day one.
In fact, sales were higher the first month after launch than any other computer in Radio
Shack's history.
Of course, not all Tandy enthusiasts were on board with this.
This article in info world talks about how Tandy users are disappointed that the firm
is no longer setting standards, but following them.
However, history shows that Tandy did in fact make the right move with this computer and
over time they would slowly phase out all of their other computer architectures.
This was really the start an industry wide phenomenon.
Up to this point nearly every computer was incompatible with the next, which meant that
software had to be designed separately for every computer.
But 1984 to 85 is when a lot of IBM clones or "MS-DOS" computers would start to show
up on the market.
But none of them would have the 16 color graphics and 3-voice sound of the Tandy, or the visibility
of seeing them on the shelf of every Radio Shack store.
Thus, providing the Tandy 1000 an edge for years to come.
Of course, in order to use the Tandy graphics and sound, games had to be specially designed
to support it.
If it didn't include support, then Tandy users could still run their games in regular
4 color CGA.
However, this wasn't a huge problem since many software companies saw the success of
the Tandy 1000 and thus more and more started to integrate support for the graphics and
sound into their games.
In fact, if you look on Mobygames, you'll see there are 861 games claiming to have Tandy
graphics support.
That's no small number.
The Tandy 1000 was selling so well that in 1986 it enjoyed a 9.5% market share of all
computers sold in the United States
Of course, Tandy continued to make new versions of the Tandy 1000.
But, it's important to understand that not all Tandy computers are Tandy 1000s.
Even their MS-DOS compatible computers.
Take this Tandy 1400 laptop for example.
You know, it's made by Tandy.
It does run MS-DOS compatible software.
And it even has a name that sounds a lot like 1000 because it's one thousand, four hundred.
But, it doesn't have the special 16 color CGA or the 3 channel sound system that the
Tandy 1000 does.
Only models that are called Tandy 1000 have those modes.
So, in order for them to keep the Tandy 1000 name, they just added different letters to
the end like 1000sx, or tx, or tl.
One of the next models they produced was the 1000sx, which looks almost identical to the
original except the floppy drives are beige instead of black.
However, it did include a faster processor and internally it had 5 card slots instead
of 3 like the original.
A popular upgrade for this computer was to have a hard-card, which was a hard drive integrated
onto a single expansion card.
One really popular version was an all-in-one cost-reduced version called the 1000EX, which
came out in 1987.
It almost looked like a big brother to RadioShack's color computer 2.
It had a single floppy drive in the side similar to an Apple Iic, Amiga or Atari ST of the
day.
Also on the side, you get a volume control for the internal Tandy sound, a head phone
jack, and two joystick ports.
Again, still using the same joystick ports as the color computer series.
And placing this stuff on the side where it is easy to reach makes far more sense than
most PCs of the era where this stuff was on the rear.
Speaking of the rear, they were still sticking with their proprietary printer port.
This next port is a proprietary port for an external floppy drive like this one.
This way you could have two floppy drives like most desktop style PCs.
Also you get composite video, RGB video, and 3 expansion slots you could put whatever you
wanted in.
The EX model came with a faster processor, clocking in at 7.16 Mhz.
One interesting thing, probably done in the name of compactness, was that it has non standard
expansion slots.
So, the top cover comes off like this.
And then inside you will see 3 expansion slots.
This model already has a modem here on top, along with 1 free slot.
If we remove the modem, you'll see a memory upgrade card in here that brings the memory
up to 640K, and then as you can see, it has a pass-through for two more cards to sit on
top.
These slots are proprietary, however, it is possible to use an adapter such as this one,
and it will give you a standard ISA slot.
So, assuming the card is small enough, such as this XT-IDE card, you can use standard
ISA cards in here.
Also, an external drive was available if you wanted to have two floppy drives, which was
a common setup for most PCs of the era.
On awkward issue with this computer, however was always monitor placement.
It looks like maybe you could set a monitor on top, but you can't.
Ideally you'd want a computer desk with a monitor shelf, or you could use the shelf
that they advertised along with the computer.
The HX model sold for $799, which was actually a really good deal at the time for an IBM
compatible computer of any sort, much less one with superior graphics and sound, plus
a faster CPU.
And this computer was very popular.
However, 5 and a quarter inch floppy disks were starting to go out of style in the late
1980s, so the very next year in 1988 they replaced the EX with the HX model.
The HX moved the floppy drive to the front, along with a second drive bay where you could
mount either an additional floppy drive or even a hard drive.
However, one neat feature of the HX model is that it can boot from ROM.
So if you have no disk in the drive, and presumably no hard drive, it will boot MS-DOS 2.11 from
ROM.
That's really handy because that means if you want to play a game from disk, for example,
you don't have to boot a DOS disk first.
The HX model was better, but sold for only $699, which was a hundred dollars cheaper
than the previous model.
This was one of the best selling Tandy 1000 machines ever made.
An interesting comparison to make would be with the Amiga 500, which was also selling
for $699 at the time.
There's no question the Amiga was better in terms of graphics and sound, but the Tandy
certainly had an advantage of a much larger software library.
Of course, by the 1990s the Tandy 1000 was starting to lose its competitive edge.
And the competition was coming in on multiple different fronts.
For one thing, Tandy's 16-color graphics and 3-voice sound was no longer at the head
of its game.
Computers with 256 color VGA cards had become somewhat common and seemed to be the new emerging
standard.
And by this time sound cards like the Ad-Lib and Sound Blaster were starting to become
standardized as well.
What's worse, Microsoft had continued to improve Windows and thus Deskmate had fallen
drastically behind.
In fact, by 1991 even Radio Shack's own catalog actually recommended that customers
run Microsoft Windows on most of their high end computers, relegating DeskMate to their
less expensive computers.
The all-in-one computers like the EX and HX had disappeared from their catalogs, although
it can still be seen as a prop for advertising their monitor stand.
Later models like the 1000 RLX actually removed the 16-color graphics system that made Tandy
machine so successful and instead included 256-color VGA graphics, much like the rest
of the market.
However, it did still retain the 3-voice sound chip.
Which, wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
After all, most PCs of the era still didn't ship with a sound card from the factory.
It was typically something the user would buy and install themselves.
So a Tandy system still sounded better than a regular PC.
By 1993, Tandy was no longer competitive in the PC market and so they sold all of their
facilities in Fort Worth, Texas to AST Computer.
Which is interesting because I ended up working for AST starting in 1996 in their tech support
department, and so I actually ended up taking calls every now and then for Tandy machines
because AST had agreed to handle all remaining support for those machines.
While the Tandy 1000 hasn't appeared in many movies or TV shows, it is featured prominently
in the current hit series Young Sheldon in many episodes.
And so that about wraps up this documentary on the Tandy 1000.
I hope I was able to shed a little bit of light on what made the 1000 a special computer
at the time.
It was far more than just an MS-DOS compatible computer, in fact I think that at one time
in history it was the best MS-DOS compatible computer that you could buy.
Now, obviously that didn't last long but nevertheless, I think its very historically
important to put this computer in its place and tell the real story about what it was.
So, anyway, thats about it so, ugh thank you guys for watching!
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