Tandy 1000 Series

The Tandy 1000 series was Radio Shack's second attempt at creating an MS-DOS system with the first being the Tandy TRS-80 2000. The 2000 was a huge flop but the 1000 was one of Radio Shack's biggest successes. This article is mostly about the original Tandy 1000 and its 3 variants but there is also a brief rundown of the other models in the series. Although the 2000 was an MS-DOS system it was not fully compatible due to incompatible hardware and the use of the Intel 80186 processor. The Tandy 1000 on the other hand was designed to be PC compatible (actually PCjr compatible) from the beginning.

Tandy's Intentions for this New Computer

In 1983, Tandy Radio Shack knew they had to get into the PC compatible market and had a great idea. Instead of following companies such as Compaq, what if they made a system that had superior sound and graphics to the average compatible? So, they decided to make a true compatible but instead of using the standard at the time, CGA graphics and a simple speaker, what if they utilized the PCjr 16 color 320x200 graphics and 3 voice sound? So the Tandy 1000 was born, released in November of 1984. The initial model had a 4.77 MHz Intel 8088 processor, 128k of RAM, and no DMA (although an expansion card was available the offered this and room to expand the RAM to 640k. Another few features to note is that almost all of the Tandy 1000s used proprietary keyboards and parallel (used only for printers) ports. Also, there were two built-in joysticks ports that used the same interface as the TRS-80 Color Computer Family and a reset switch. Also, soon what was once called "PCjr Compatible" quickly became known as "Tandy Compatible"

Rise in Popularity

The 1000 immediately became a hit and had 3 variations the original 1000; the 1000A, same system with a revised motherboard; and 1000HD, with either a 10 or 20 MB Hard Disk drive. The first new model was released in 1986, the Tandy 1000 SX with a faster 8088 processor, built-in DMA, 384k RAM, and Volume Control. Two other models were also release around this time: the Tandy 1000 TX and the Tandy 1000 EX. The TX was an XT class Intel 80286 system and the EX was an a one-piece machine with built-in keyboard and a proprietary expansion bus.

Legacy

The Tandy 1000 spawned many more models including the last model, an Intel 80386SX processor system with SVGA graphics but still with the Tandy sound chip called the Tandy 1000 RSX. Once VGA became more affordable and the Sound Blaster was released, the Tandy 1000 series soon became obsolete and Tandy started to sell AST computers in place of their own line.

Deskmate

One of the most distinctive features of Tandy 1000s was not hardware but software. Beginning with the original Tandy 1000, all systems were bundled with a multipurpose program called Deskmate. It start as a simple text-based all-in-one programs similar to Microsoft Works for DOS and quickly evolved into a full-fledged mouse based GUI. Deskmate 3, the final incarnation was perfect as a lower-resource intensive Microsoft Windows 3 type shell with even a large amount of 3rd-party software including Lotus 1-2-3 and many educational titles. On the RL, RLX, and RSX; Deskmate had even more functionality with a built-in home organizer and even a very early kind of "Smart Home" control. Generally Deskmate would only run on the model of 1000 that it came bundled with but version 3.0.5 would run on any PC-Compatible including support for VGA although for sound, an actual Tandy 1000 was required. If you want to run Deskmate with full sound, try running it on on DOSBox. A tutorial is here: Installing Deskmate on DOSBox.