All my content and ptohos
Tandy 1000EX
In 1980s Tandy was known in the U.S. of their TRS-80
line of home computers. Although PCs were typical office/business
computers, release of IBM's PCjr made many companies to sell PCs
re-designed for home computing applications. In late 1984 Tandy released
Tandy 1000, a PC-compatible computer with some PCjr compatibility. Sold
in their Radio Shack shops, PC became more popular than PCjr. Contrary
to typical PCs, most peripherals were on mainboard as specialized chips,
not in expansion boards.
In 1986 after success of Tandy 1000 and its variations, Tandy released
Tandy 1000EX, a compact PC-compatible system, marketed as computer for
PC beginners. It contains quite comfortable keyboard and 5.25" floppy
disk drive in a single casing. It can use monitor or a TV. TGA graphics
chip extended CGA to 16 colors in more graphics modes and 3-voice sound
synthesizer, clone from PCjr, is still present.
The system has no ISA slots, but 62-pin goldpin connectors for boards
stacked in parallel to each other. Not many expansions have been made,
but the most popular were 256/384kB memory expansion boards as the
computer had only 256kB of RAM on its mainboard.
Software bundled with Tandy PCs was always interesting. Here it's an
early version of DeskMate called
Personal DeskMate
running on MS-DOS 2.11. The GUI shell had, on the desktop, widgets like
calendar, calculator od notepad, as well as documents grouped by their
type and set of PIM/Office programs which could be launched by opening a
document or from menu. As of 1986 on a PC, not Mac, it is quite
impressive. 1000EX has no software in ROM, as later Tandy PCs had.
| Manufacturer | Tandy |
|
| Origin | USA | |
| Year of unit | 1986/7 | |
| Year of introduction | 1986 | |
| Class | XT | |
| CPU | Intel 8088 | |
| Speed | 4.77MHz 7.16MHz |
|
| RAM | 512kB (256kB on board, 256kB on expansion), expandable up to 640kB | |
| ROM | BIOS | |
| Graphics | CGA (TGA - up to 16 colors) | |
| Sound | PC Speaker improvaed by Tandy chipset to 3-voice synthesizer | |
| System expansion bus | ISA using pin connectors | |
| Floppy/removable media drives | One 360kB 5.25" floppy drive (embedded), possible to use external FDD | |
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| Hard disk: | None |
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Peripherals in collection: |
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| Other boards:
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Memory expansion | |
| Non-standard expansions: | None | |
| Operating system(s): | MS-DOS, originally 2.11 + Personal DeskMate shell |
My unit was purchased in a bad condition, having bad RAM and incomplete keyboard. It has been restored. Missing plastic cover for expansion slot has been replaced with another piece of plastic. Currently it runs well except floppy disk drive which is a bit out of alignment and can't read last tracks of some disks.
| Contents: | Starting, usage | Pinouts | Links |
|
Starting The machine is in most aspects PC-compatible. It starts, then boots OS from floppy disk. If external floppy disk drive is connected, it may boot from external disk. Most BIOS revisions then swap external and internal drive letters, so external one becomes A: and internal B:. This allows to omit bad floppy disk or use software on floppy disks in different formats. System disks are in fact installation disks. They are copied/installed to user's disks in Tandy 1000, so you must have another blank disks to make system floppies from "raw" installation disks. On single-disk systems copying requires swapping disks. Personal Deskmate is relatively slow on 1000EX and requires much disk access, so before using it make sure the disk drive is in a good condition and floppy disk has no (or all marked) bad sectors on its surface. DeskMate is operated from keyboard (Function keys!) or probably with joystick attached to its port (analog). |
 From Wikipedia, originally C. Howell |
According to this source:
Printer port (edge connector, upper side is 1,3,5...):
| 1 | /STROBE | 2 | GND |
| 3 | D0 | 4 | GND |
| 5 | D1 | 6 | GND |
| 7 | D2 | 8 | GND |
| 9 | D3 | 10 | GND |
| 11 | D4 | 12 | GND |
| 13 | D5 | 14 | NC |
| 15 | D6 | 16 | GND |
| 17 | D7 | 18 | GND |
| 19 | /ACK | 20 | GND |
| 21 | BUSY | 22 | GND |
| 23 | /PAPEROUT | 24 | GND |
| 25 | /SELECT | 26 | NC |
| 27 | /AUTOFEED | 28 | /FAULT |
| 29 | NC | 30 | /INIT |
| 31 | GND | 32 | NC |
| 33 | GND | 34 | NC |
Floppy disk port (edge connector, upper side is 1,3,5..., counting from right):
| 1 | +12V | 2 | +5V |
| 3 | +12V | 4 | +5V |
| 5 | GND | 6 | +5V |
| 7 | GND | 8 | +5V |
| 9 | GND | 10 | /INDEX |
| 11 | GND | 12 | /TRK0 |
| 13 | GND | 14 | /STEP |
| 15 | /SIDE | 16 | /MOTOR |
| 17 | /DIR | 18 | GND |
| 19 | /WPROT | 20 | GND |
| 21 | /RDATA | 22 | GND |
| 23 | /WDATA | 24 | GND |
| 25 | /WGATE | 26 | GND |
| 27 | NC | 28 | +12V |
| 29 | /DSELECT | 30 | +12V |
Joystick connector located near FDD:
1 - Y
2 - X
3 - GND
4 - FIRE1
5 - +5V
6 - FIRE1
Joysticks are analog.
Monitor output:
1 - GND
2 - GND
3 - Red
4 - Green
5 - Blue
6 - Intensity
7 - Green (monochrome)
8 - HSYNC
9 - VSYNC
https://web.archive.org/web/20080530020034/http://retrograde.trustno1.org/tandyroms.htm
- Tandy 100 line ROMs
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/1kfaq.html - Tandy PCs FAQ
http://www.brooksdeforest.com/tandy1000/ - Some games for Tandy 1000
which make use of Tandy's hardware.
http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/catalogs/1987/pages/183.jpg -
1000EX in 1987 Radio Shack catalog,
http://support.radioshack.com/productinfo/DocumentResults.asp?sku_id=25-1050&Name=Tandy%20Desktops&Reuse=N
- Radio Shack documentation
http://www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/index_html - TVDog site with
information and photos of different Tandy PCs,
ftp://ftp.oldskool.org/pub/tvdog/tandy1000/ - TVDog's FTP related to
Tandy 1000 series.
https://winworldpc.com/product/tandy-deskmate/personal-deskmate -
Personal DeskMate Screenshots, binaries and manual.
