From my own personal assessment, the original 1000 is more a "collectors computer" than an actual "vintage user machine". It lacks support for DMA, and totally lacks support for an 8087, which contrary to common knowledge, is actually quite handy if you have an 8088, especially if it's your only retro-PC and you want to play something that uses it like a flight simulator or Sim City. I'm not poo pooing it by any stretch of the imagination but I am just letting you know there are better options out there for a XT-class retro PC.

The Tandy 1000A is when I feel the series started getting good. The computer in the picture is my own personal 1000A and the one I've been flogging the hell out of for almost 15 years now. To me, this is the ideal XT-class machine for retro-gaming next to the 1000SX. It's got decent support for dual floppy drives, the space between the back of the floppies and the power supply make a good spot for a ghost XT-IDE hard disk installation, and the clips around the motherboard screws make for a really cool spot to put a "Knight Rider" effect HDD LED in for your XT-IDE card that shines through the air-vent without ruining airflow (not like an 8088 needs it much anyway. The only thing to watch out for is some BIOS versions have a problem with the NEC V20, and nobody has told me why. A 1000A with a V20, 8087, and a SmartWatch+ are a real beast of an XT machine, and EEVBLOG modded his to run at a faster clock speed so Overclocking is doable, and he has a schematic for it.

Like I said about the 1000A, since it's pretty much the same machine, you can't really go wrong with an HD either, actually, the HD has provisions for a Hard Disk built in so you might be at some benefit. So it's a great XT-class gaming machine of the time as it's pretty much the same as the 1000A, just with a hard drive from the factory (which most likely is dead by now anyway). It seems Tandy did not sell too many of these and little surprise being as 2 years later an EXTERNAL HDD kit for the 1000SX was around $4000 for 40 Megabytes (that's $1000 a Megabyte Kiddos!). My how far we have come, you could cram a CF-CARD and Reader and an 8 GIGABYTE CF Card in this thing for about $3980 less today and have more space than you'd ever know what to do with.

The 1000 EX would be a good machine if you are short on space, or want something you could setup in your livingroom like a game console or an older computer like the Commodore 64 or TRS-80 CoCo, because I think that's also what it was originally meant for as well. The EX is basically a downscaled Tandy 1000 SX minus one floppy drive but plus a volume control. The OpenSource hardware community today has made it a lot easier to upgrade these Plus-Card based Tandy models making them a more viable solution. A EX with a CF-Card for a HDD and an adapted in Ethernet Card could be a really nice system for someone who wants to play old DOS games and surf shareware BBSes in the 2020's.

Like I said, this was the original computer I owned and I did not recognize it's greatness as much as I do now because it's the computer I cut my teeth on computers with. The Tandy 1000 SX is basically a 6MHz Tandy 1000A, with 2 more expansion slots. That makes this one the best in the series IMHO, as there's no real benefit in having a Tandy in the 286 and later categories IMHO. It also is a pretty easy system to work on. I took mine completley apart and put it back together 100% many times in my teen years looking for ways to upgrade and improve the performance. So a 1000SX is really a fine machine for retro-gaming. There's a reason so many people sing the praises of the 1000SX. The only problem is the price on them has gone up because of this. Hence why I really flog the 1000HD and 1000A as well because they are pretty much teh same machine, just roughly 2MHz slower, and they tend to be more plentiful and inexpensive compared to the mighty 1000SX.

Another fine specimen, and one that might actually prevent some headaches if you want to use floppy diskettes. All you need is some scotch tape and you can convert a 1.44M to a 720K and format it as such. However, this machine does have a particular drawback in that you may have to struggle against MS-DOS in ROM on it. This was a cool feature at the time but a notorious PITA for some people who are wanting to run a later and more capable MS-DOS installation (I run 6.22 on my 1000A for example), which may be required for some software. however, that said, it's an 8088, it has the PC Jr Enhanced video, and it has the 3-voice sound, so it's not a bad machine, just a tricky one from what I understand.

If you are looking to consolidate more, you might be able to eek XT-era out of this slow enough to be happy, and 286-era just fast enough to be happy. So this might be another really good early DOS games candidate. However, if you are looking for a killer, monster 286 system, this ain't it. See, this is what we called an XT/286 system. Basically, a IBM XT Clone (or a PC Jr clone in this case) with a 286 chip in it. That basically just makes it a very fast XT system. Nothing wrong with that, just that it might be too fast for some people and too slow for others. Like I say here Your Mileage May Vary (YMMV). To me this is one I'd pass up because I tend to personally prefer full-blown AT 286 systems as I feel the 286-era was a real underdog that was very underappreciated.

The SL is a fine system. It'd be a good system for someone who wants a machine that handles games in that 1983-1990 era fairly well. With a V30 it could be a real beast in just the right middle road. It's also more common than the older models these days and seems a hair more affordable, though keyboards seem to be difficult to track down (as with any Tandy 1000). The only concern is that XT-IDE interface interfering with a more modern option, like the seemingly ironically named OpenSource Xt-IDE card.

Another fine choice in the lot but basically an original SL with a 3.5" drive in the front instead of a 5.25" drive. Still what I said about the SL stands. Throw in an 8-bit compatible Ethernet Card and an Xt-IDE card with a nice capacious HDD and you have a nice 80's gaming rig that probably won't break the bank too hard.

The 1000TL might be your best bet of the TL series. It's 286, it's 8MHz, it's on an 8-bit bus, it seems to be more common than the SL or RL series, and more expandable than the RL series. It also seems to be more common than the original 1000A/HD/SX/EX/HX models as well. Since you have 5 ISA Slots, would be a good candidate to put a XT-IDE controller and a nice large HDD in with a bunch of SCI and AGI Sierra titles on the drive, and an Ethernet card so you could go surfing and downloading on broadband these days. Not a bad machine, and my personal best of the TL lot because the stripped-down nature offers some expandability the other models XT-IDE controller might give some difficulty to depending on how it's disabled.

To me, I really don't see any real benefit to this system today. It's big deal at the time was having a hard drive installed, and a built-in controller for one (pon a TL you'd need to install a card and a drive). I recall having one of these at one time and it was also still a pain to find the Keyboard as a regular PS/2 keyboard would not work (wrong scancodes). A decent system, yes, but not one of my higher choices given my experiences with it. But that said, I only owned one for a hot minute in 2004.

The TL/3 was another XT/286 system by Tandy. That said, this is one of the better choices out of the 286 systems if you want what's basically a "Fast XT". It also offers the benefits of the front mounted controls and audio management that the TX and older did not have, as well as a fast 10MHz CPU that can be down-clocked to 5MHz. If you want a full featured 286 with Tandy 1000 capabilities, then this would be your machine. That said, you are limited to 768K RAM unfortunatley, and an 8-bit bus, so it's not the fastest 286 you could get your hands on, but it might be a little better than an 8088 or 8086 system from a compatibility standpoint given the extra instructions the 286 offers.

The 1000 RL was the last XT, and I'd suggest it only to someone who wants a 1000 that fits in a tiny space, or has a pressboard IKEA desk that can't handle the weight of vintage 80's x86 aweomeness. It's small, it's light, if you get lucky and find an XT-IDE HDD, you might actually be able to use it a lot like my 1000A. The only problem I see with this system is that you are limited to one ISA slot, so you'd have to choose between a more compatible hard disk controller, and an ethernet card.

Basically it's a micro-sized 1000TX. At the time, this would have been an awesome machine, but today for retro-gaming, for some people who are Tandy purists, the VGA hurts, but for others, it's a real benefit because you can have your 16-color PC JR Enhanced Cake and eat it in EGA 320x200 too. The only problem is that single 8-bit ISA slot. This means the best thing to put in there is some kind of 8-bit compatible ISA Ethernet adapter for networking and that's about it. That said, it would be a good space saver for someone tight on space who wants something that can run games up to the 1991 era. But that XT-IDE interface could bring on some headaches being as compatible drives are impossible to find in 2022.

The Tandy 1000 RSX might be a good system for someone whose interest in DOS gaming drops off at 1994 at the latest. There's nothing wrong with a 386 SX and you could possibly dig up one of those rare IBM "Blue Lightning" BLX4 upgrades for it which makes it effectively a 486 DX-2 from performance specs. It could bridge the gap pretty well between all three eras, but I can't really say for sure. I'm basing all this on my own Compaq Deskpro 386s/20 which has a Blue Lightning chip in it. A RSX with 9MB of RAM and a Blue Lightning an 387 would be quite a beast to behold, especially with an 8GB HDD with Maxblast on it. With a upgrade video card that's fast, say a TSENG ET-4000, you could possibly run The 7th Guest on this thing. But that said, these are one of the rarest 1000's you'll ever come across because they did not sell too well. By that point, most people had moved on from Tandy and started looking to small, independant, local system builders to make their 386 and 486 computers. Anyone ever notice how that era was so devoid of brand names except Packard Bell (for their cheapness) and IBM (because they were the originators). I think one of Tandy's biggest mistakes in the industry was clinging onto that aging PC Jr standard well beyond the point where it was usable. In 1984-1988 it was cool and really put them head and neck above the rest, but in 1991?!? They would have been better off with a generic 386SX clone and maybe add a powerful 386 DX and 486 DX to their product line (which they tried to do with the 2500/3000/Sensation models).