If you say the word out loud you can clearly hear the 'ur' sound at the end of the word. Most American spellings are just short hands so they don't have to type or write more
@@ZoomPicard This is true, but one thing which gets my goat is most of us Brits have been goaded into replacing "z" with "s" .. so are we now supposed to say we "an-al-ice" things ..? Or use small rodents to shrink a program window etc.. ;) -ize etc. is perfectly correct in British English. I blame spell checkers from the 1980s onward for this nonsense. Whereas logically one would pronounce "color" similar to "collar".
Those old laptops are often much more interesting to me than regular desktops since most times the laptop is more of a time capsule to when it was released.
Tech NOW Ya, oddly enough I was already familiar with him _before_ I saw his vids. He is also on the vcfed forums (vintage computer federation). Then I saw his videos completely by accident, and went, "Hey, it's vwestlife!" Anyone who is a member at vcfed is, of course, going to be interested in his videos... since they refer to what the rest of the world calls "old junk", that we call "interesting, truly engaging electronics history".
if you like this video, you should really watch a bunch more of his. lots of neat old tech, and kind of a different perspective than the rest of youtube.
I bought one of these in 1989 and played Flight Simulator on my lap during my 1 hour bus commute to work. This was the computer I first used Quicken on back in the days when it ran on a single floppy disk. QW.EXE was in A: and my data files were on the B: floppy. This was a major step up from my Tandy 600 since it actually ran DOS.
At my high school back in 1992, my school loaned me out a Tandy 1400 to type my English creative writing work as my teacher had trouble reading my handwriting, remember the machine was as heavy as heck
I like the design, which in some ways seems to have been inspired or based upon a portable electronic typewriter of some kind. I'd take a guess that they got away with a small power adapter due to extensive use of CMOS parts and perhaps even having the BIOS save and restore the state of any particularly power hungry parts between uses. The display is far better than that of IBM's early PC convertible.
Always a joy to see and hear about these old laptops. Your videos about retro tech are always very interesting and a joke thrown in or two as well make each video well worth watching. I am looking to get a Samsung Google Chrome book laptop very soon.
11:25 LIST file selection ❤ - I remember sooo well, using it all the time back in the days. Sooo powerful and quick! Just loved it. Thank you so much for bringing back that memory!
Great video on this machine. The Tandy 1400LT is one of my favorite “floppy only” laptops, along with the Zenith Z-181. The only thing I know of that they made for the expansion slot was the controller for the 20MB hard drive kit, which is fairly rare.
This was an awesome laptop at the time. I had this laptop in high school for three years. This thing was a tank it held up real well. I had the optional modem. I remember using wordperfect 5.1 on this laptop. This video brings me down memory lane.
I just picked up a boxed one of these (video incoming) and it’s a beautiful machines. Well built and a fantastic keyboard. Some neat little features too.
Worked at Radio Shack in the mid 80's. Sold these (well, a few, far less then I wanted to, they were expensive !!!!) as well as played with them in the store. Loved em, all of the Radio Shack Laptop / handheld computer line. 35 years later and I have never owned a desktop, only laptops (since 1994 till the present).
NiCad batteries can last for years when stored and looked after properly, I have a Sony BetaMovie camcorder that has it's original NiCad battery which still works fine, just have to remember to discharge them fully before recharging them to eliminate the memory effect... :)
I did? I thought I received a minor spelling correction, it's amazing how so many people obsess over such tiny little things as though they were huge... :P
I have the one with the hard drive, it's also got an expansion card for a modem, I can't get it to turn on. I took it apart and couldn't find anything wrong with it, idk. I'm just glad to see one working 😊
Reminds me of the Compaq portables of the same era which had a very similar style and were quite popular with executives that needed to work or keep in touch with the office while on the road.
I hope the RTC battery won't leak over the board, even if it works. A very nice machine. I only have one dos laptop, an ESCOM Paradigma II DX4. But it's plastic has become so brittle that the hinges are loose in the case. (And the motherboard is corroded because of a leaking RTC/CMOS battery.) But after a cleanup it still works, only takes a lot of time at the charger (~1min) before it can boot, I suspect the caps first need to charge up. (And they might be in bad shape -- early SMD caps)
I'll bet Sharp made this, or at least had a hand in making it. That display is just like the one in the Sharp PC-7100 and PC-7200, and Sharp liked to put the ability to have more than 640k of RAM and an always-accessible BIOS setup on their computers.
Radioshack sold a 1A 15v adapter with the universal tips way back some years ago. back in 2010 I needed one so I could power my Libretto 50CT, when I had it.
The left-hand bay in the back was for an optional hard drive that cost as much as the computer itself. The 128K upper memory (or even another drive) was supposed dot be for the communication program. At 128K it was amazing what you could fit there in those days. A lot of very useful programs were smaller than 128K, believe it or not. I eventually added a full-size keyboard, used the RGB port for a color monitor, added a mouse, and an external hard drive that went through the printer port and was a whopping 20MB !!
Great video on the 1400LT. Right now I'm getting my brother's old LT1400 going. It all seems to work but I'll be darned it I can figure out why it insists on formatting disks at 360K. I try formatting at 720K but it says something about being beyond the parameters. At least it boots up and runs Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy!
I used to work at Radio Shack in San Francisco back in the 80s. All of us had to take seminars in order to know how to use the computers and be able to sell them and help the customers deciding what was better for their needs.
still own one of these beauties in fully functional state. you can still find some compatible battery packs on the market to fire it up. best pc for old basic games, my 9 yo sun loves it.
Similar in a lot of ways, yet different in a lot of other ways to the IBM PC Convertible. I have 3 Convertibles, they were solid machines. One is still used. I also have the optional thermal printer for them. I'd bet Tandy didn't have any such device.
I've found it's brother - Tandy 1400FD in a dumpster a while back. Sadly I still haven't been able to fix it. The thing just doesn't power on properly (I did get it to display the RAM or something once or twice) when you apply the power. I am thinking that the internal power supply is bad (I already recapped it and it didn't help). I really need to take another look at it when I have some time.
Will do. Though I was also thinking of just replacing the entire PSU board with a custom PSU built from a few cheap modules from ebay. I am not entirely sure that it is the PSU though. I always get the EL backlight, and the LEDs on the floppies (that don't go out). It also refused to boot those few times when it actually powered on and displayed the RAM. It would just spin the floppy, but not actually do anything with it.
Wow. That comparison between the 1988 Tandy and the 1993 Compaq is insane. A perfect demonstration of technological advances between the late 1980's and the early 90's.
To be fair, there were already much smaller and lighter laptops by 1988 -- for example, the NEC UltraLite. They just weren't as expandable or nice to type on as the 1400LT.
If the battery lasts about 1/2 hour with the back-light 'on', I wonder how long your machine will run on battery with the back-light 'off'.... definitely awesome that it holds a charge at all after all the years.
Front-facing dual floppies, a nice keyboard and a battery that's held up over nearly 30 years? Aside from the wonky composite colour I don't think there's anything you could dislike about this!
Can you invert the video on the internal screen such that text shows up as light text on a dark background? I know that was a common feature on laptops with black and white screens, I think some such laptops had a button or a keyboard command or perhaps even a software utility to perform this function.
It is actually already inverse video. The normal DOS prompt text is supposed to be white on black, but the LCD displaying it as "black" (dark blue) on "white" (light blue). And if a program wants to display black text on a white background, it shows up the other way around, as "white" on "black". But unlike some other old laptops, there is no way to flip this around via a hotkey.
I see. Well, I knew it was inverse I just didn't write my question very well. I understand it was very commonplace for black and white laptops to display inverse video, I'm not sure if that was by default or not, but I'm thinking perhaps it was with some at least.
I love seeing The CGA Compatibility Tester in the wild! But did you know the version you used is very old? You should grab the newest one which has more test patterns and bugfixes.
And here and there you will find the cliche comment: "They don't build machines like these anymore"... Well, at that price tag, they'd better be sturdy machines, made to last 3-4 times longer than present day ones... And well, if they did last more than modern machines, that was completely in vain, except for collectors, because PC hardware back then went obsolete faster than it does now!
Pretty much every IBM PC compatible machine ever made is Y2k compliant. Some of them would jump back to 1900 or some other date instead of flipping over from December 31st, 1999 to January 1st, 2000, but even on those once you manually set the date to the correct value they work just fine.
3:22 I just noticed the door is setup in a way to where you'd have to unplug the power to open the door. Let's hope you have a charge on that nicad battery otherwise you'd have to save your work and shut down.
1:34 imagine having a keyboard like that as a teen, when you were trying to play video games at night before a school day. My mom would have been furious. I had one of those 90's cheap keyboards that had a big racket when you pressed the keys. Had to buy one of those Logitech silent ones so mom did not wake up at night and kick my ass. This was in 2005 or so.
Git that clock save battery out of there yo! I just took my 1400 LT apart and the battery had already started leaking. It hadn’t destroyed anything, but it was on the verge of disaster! Also, what’s the polarity on the ac/dc adapter?
Actually in those times that was a laptop and if you have one with hard drive and more sleek profile it was called a notebook. And even in the stores and megazines was a differentiation.
moon bugs great game seems this only run on cga only i had troubles run on vga monitor video nessing up how ever does works fine in dos box using cga mode
Thanks for the reply. Follow up dumb question. Where can I find the disk image file? It would be nice to create one like you did in the video. Nice video by the way. Just pickup up one of these. Just need to find a power supply for it.
Tandy system disk images: www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/system.html Use DOSGWB.DSK within the Tandy 1100FD system disks archive. It also works fine on the 1400LT.
I want a dual floppy/no HDD laptop. They run on practically nothing. My HDD miniscribe mitsubishi laptop weighs a ton, and has to be plugged into an AC outlet at all times. It looks to be about a little smaller than that one, but not by much. That is one thing I have noticed though over the decades...NiCad batteries tend to last the longest of all the different battery types. I reckon this one uses 18670 cells. They are hideously expensive now. Around 7-10$ a piece... The only way to go is to buy some remote control car battery packs and scrap them from those.
Actually it's pronounced "neck" -- or at least it was back in the '80s when they introduced a computer called the NEC Trek, meant to be pronounced "neck trek".
he gets corrected about stuff pretty often, especially this, but if you watch more of his videos you will learn that he almost never makes mistakes of this nature. if he's unsure, he researches the issue and will use whatever he feels is appropriate. i respect him for this. we don't always agree on everything, but when we disagree i know he's got good reason.
The caps lock key on that keyboard is genius! Why have a dedicated button for it right next to the 3rd most used key? Just make it a secondary function like this 30 year old laptop! Maybe it'll even help out with the clickbait craze happening on RU-vid right now... :P
