| TANDY 1000 SERIES - A GRAPHICAL GUIDE |
So I'm not reinventing the wheel here, this is my little page on the Tandy 1000 series as that's the PC I have been using since day one. My first PC was a Tandy 1000 SX I got in the fall of 1997 as a moving away gift from my sister.
To Understand the Tandy 1000 story, you have to understand the IBM PC Jr. Story. In 1983, IBM released a "home version" oof the PC, the 4860 PC Junior. This system differed in that there was no provisions for a 8087 Math Co-Processor, only a single 360K Diskette Drive, 2 Cartridge Ports like a game system (seldom used), and a horrible, wireless, chiclet keyboard that was a nightmare to type on (but offered the benefit of overlays for software). However, it contained two major upgrades from any PC at the time - full 16-color graphics at both 160x224 pixel resolution, and 320x200 "hi" resolution, as well as a 3-voice Texas Instruments sound chip used in Arcade machines to give the PC Jr. a more elaborate sound scheme. It sounded a lot like the Creative Labs Gameblaster that came later, or an MSX system. So Tandy was looking to release a PC compatible that their TRS-80 users could move up from, and this was it. Basically, the Tandy 1000 is an amaglamation of TRS-80 peripherals, PC Jr. Extended functions, and pretty-much at least 95% PC Compatibility, 100% once the software makers kept up with it's idiosyncracies. Problem was, when Tandy was getting ready to launch the 1000 in 1984, IBM's PC Jr was a flop, so they had to shift focus from the "PC Jr." side of the machine, to the plain PC Compatible side. GOOD TANDY 1000 RESOURCES There have been a lot of great pages and resources on the 1000 over the years. A lot of these I still use today for fetching Tandy specific stuff.
TV Dog's Tandy 1000 Archive SUB PAGES OF THE TANDY 1000 ON THIS SITE
Information on PC Jr/Tandy 1000 Video Standards Information on the PC Jr/Tandy 1000 Audio System A Compatible Games List for the Tandy 1000 Series I Design a GamePad for the Tandy 1000 Series My attempts to develop a working LightPen for the early Tandy 1000 models with the port |
