4 ms·

The neighbors had a Tandy 1000. One of the lower models, I don't remember which one. It didn't have a hard drive, only had 384KB of memory (not sure, it didn't

The neighbors had a Tandy 1000. One of the lower models, I don't remember which one. It didn't have a hard drive, only had 384KB of memory (not sure, it didn't have 640k so it wouldn't run some DOS games I brought over), but it did have a 720kb 3.5" disk drive (which couldn't read my 1.44MB disks) We mostly played around with Deskmate and GWBASIC, but my friends mother was taking computer science classes and gave me a floppy with Turbo Pascal 2.0 on it. That was a big deal. I had a 386SX at home which was pretty low end, but this computer was quite a bit older than that, but she did buy it new. I remember the guy from the store coming over there to set it up, I want to say they paid $599 for it.

vikingerik 4y ago
That's an oddity; there was no Tandy 1000 model that came with 384 KB RAM and a 3.5" drive. The SX and SL had that amount of RAM but a 5.25" drive. The TX and TL had a 3.5" drive but 640 KB RAM. Was DeskMate in ROM? That would narrow it down to an SL or TL.
- sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
  If they're misremembering the RAM size, could be the RL. I had one, and I recall it came with 512KB RAM expandable to 768KB via installing a couple DIPs into sockets.
  - vikingerik 4y ago
    The RL came with a hard drive, so bluedino's wasn't that one.
    - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
      Old reply but you're talking about my childhood so I'll do it anyway :) The 1000RL definitely did not come with a hard drive by default. I added a 20MB hard drive to mine a year or so after my family bought it. 3.5" 720KB floppy was the only built in storage. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_RL-series_and_RSX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_RL-serie... the RL/HD had the HDD preinstalled, that may be what you're thinking of.
- robotmechadog 4y ago
  Tandy 1000 Ex/HX had 256k… adding the MemoryPlus DMA upgrade board got you to 384k. The HX had a 3.5” drive and DOS in rom. I remember impressing my friends by booting to cmd without a floppy inserted. “Wow you have a hard drive?” Lol no.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - u345w45u 4y ago
    We didn't have much money, so until 1997 my home computer was a 1000 hx. dos 2.11 in rom, but you had to boot 3.2 from a floppy to run a lot of "newer" software. the memory upgrade card got you to 384, then you could buy a tube of ICs to fill out the rest of the dip sockets on the memory card for a beastly 640k
- bluedino 4y ago
  ROM, and like I said so t remember the exact amount of RAM, I just know it wasn't 640k. And it only had a single 3.5", no 5.25" drive. I had both drives in my 386 so tradings software disks was always tricky.
  - Falkon1313 4y ago
    The Tandy 1000 SL/2 had DOS and DeskMate in ROM, a single 3.5" 720K floppy, and shipped with only 512KB of RAM, which wasn't enough for some games. You could upgrade it to 640KB though.
troymc 4y ago
Ah yes, Turbo Pascal 2.0! My brother and I got it as a shared birthday gift. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what happened to GOTO, which we had used a lot when programming with GWBASIC.

vikingerik 4y ago

That's an oddity; there was no Tandy 1000 model that came with 384 KB RAM and a 3.5" drive. The SX and SL had that amount of RAM but a 5.25" drive. The TX and TL had a 3.5" drive but 640 KB RAM. Was DeskMate in ROM? That would narrow it down to an SL or TL.

sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
If they're misremembering the RAM size, could be the RL. I had one, and I recall it came with 512KB RAM expandable to 768KB via installing a couple DIPs into sockets.
- vikingerik 4y ago
  The RL came with a hard drive, so bluedino's wasn't that one.
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 4y ago
    Old reply but you're talking about my childhood so I'll do it anyway :) The 1000RL definitely did not come with a hard drive by default. I added a 20MB hard drive to mine a year or so after my family bought it. 3.5" 720KB floppy was the only built in storage. Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_RL-series_and_RSX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tandy_1000#Tandy_1000_RL-serie... the RL/HD had the HDD preinstalled, that may be what you're thinking of.
robotmechadog 4y ago
Tandy 1000 Ex/HX had 256k… adding the MemoryPlus DMA upgrade board got you to 384k. The HX had a 3.5” drive and DOS in rom. I remember impressing my friends by booting to cmd without a floppy inserted. “Wow you have a hard drive?” Lol no.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- u345w45u 4y ago
  We didn't have much money, so until 1997 my home computer was a 1000 hx. dos 2.11 in rom, but you had to boot 3.2 from a floppy to run a lot of "newer" software. the memory upgrade card got you to 384, then you could buy a tube of ICs to fill out the rest of the dip sockets on the memory card for a beastly 640k
bluedino 4y ago
ROM, and like I said so t remember the exact amount of RAM, I just know it wasn't 640k. And it only had a single 3.5", no 5.25" drive. I had both drives in my 386 so tradings software disks was always tricky.
- Falkon1313 4y ago
  The Tandy 1000 SL/2 had DOS and DeskMate in ROM, a single 3.5" 720K floppy, and shipped with only 512KB of RAM, which wasn't enough for some games. You could upgrade it to 640KB though.

troymc 4y ago

Ah yes, Turbo Pascal 2.0! My brother and I got it as a shared birthday gift. We spent a lot of time trying to understand what happened to GOTO, which we had used a lot when programming with GWBASIC.