Tandy 1000

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A Tandy 1000.

The Tandy 1000 is a line of home computers designed by the Tandy Corporation to be 100% compatible with IBM's PCjr. It was first released in November 1984, within a year of the PCjr's release, and sold through Radio Shack with a very competitive price tag. Initially, the system used nearly identical hardware to the PCjr, but, while IBM dropped their PCjr line after only a few years, Tandy continued to upgrade the 1000 significantly, improving its on-board graphics and audio. The line lasted 9 years before finally being discontinued in 1993. Because the Tandy 1000 line was based on PCjr, it used the same Intel 8088 CPU and Texas Instruments SN76489 for sound (eventually replaced by the NCR 8496). Later models used the 80286, and 80386.

Personal

My uncle had a Tandy 1000 which my cousin and I used to teach ourselves BASIC using the GW-BASIC dialect that came with it. We also played a wide variety of games, many of which took advantage of the Tandy 3-voice audio chip, especially the Sierra On-Line graphic adventures.

I've never owned a Tandy 1000 computer, but I have used one a fair amount.

Review

Good

  • Like the PCjr, the graphics and audio capabilities were quite impressive for a home PC that wasn't intended to be a dedicated gaming computer.
  • Unlike the PCjr, Tandy continued to increase the quality of the hardware, ultimately making it superior to the IBM AT and XT models as well.
  • The system had a lot of built-in hardware on the main board including RGB and composite video output, a simple sound device, a serial port, a printer port, and two joystick ports.
  • The keyboard had a "hold" button that would pause the computer pretty much anywhere.
  • The manuals were very impressive, not just giving detailed explanations of the hardware and software, but also including a full programming guide for GW-BASIC and Intel assembly!
  • The built-in audio included the typical PC speaker as well as the Tandy 3 Voice audio, and the PC had a built-in speaker as well as a line-out jack allowing for easy amplification or recording.

Bad

  • The designers unwisely altered one of the IRQs in a later model breaking audio and joystick backward compatibility with a lot of software.

Ugly

  • Nothing.

Software

Applications

Games

In general, games were not made for the Tandy 1000 since it used an ever growing compatible CPU architecture. Instead, every game that would work on the Tandy 1000 was either originally made for PCjr or MS-DOS, and then made to be compatible with the Tandy's graphics and audio hardware. Although, not every game took advantage of the superior media capabilities.

Programming Languages

Media

Documentation

Videos

The 8-Bit Guy, review.

Links

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