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!
Now that's a computer name I haven't heard in a long time. I remember using one in the early 90's.
I had an IBM PS2 back in the day, and my best friend had a Tandy 1000. As much fun as I had with my PS2 (with a blazing fast 10MHz chip, and an 8-bit Sound Blaster), I envied that Tandy. Once I added my 2400 baud modem, though, I had a one-up on him. :D
Tandy with 256k memory was my first. I think we got it late 80s early 90s. MS Dos, Marble Madness, Thexder, some horrible winter games where I learned about the cross country skiing with shooting, good times :)
Had a Tandy 1000 TL (286, 8 MHz) with a 10MB hard card.
Tandy 1000 was my computer alongside a Mac SE for years until I got a 386SX.
Loved that thing to death. Still wish I had it.
That was a neat watch. I grew up in the early 90s and used to play a bunch of games on a Tandy. I was too young to ever pay attention to the model though.