Just a few comments about this episode. I originally created this video for the side channel, CGQ+. In fact, once it was done I uploaded it to that channel so that Patreon supporters (Patreon? Who said Patreon?) could have early access. A good friend convinced me that for a variety of reasons, I should release it on the main channel instead, and it really got me thinking about some things. I'm sure it hasn't escaped anyone's notice that I don't upload nearly as often here anymore. I never intended to be the "launch video guy" or the dude who reads old magazines, though I do love making those videos. I started a RU-vid channel as a way to have fun and goof off while being creative. I did stupid stuff like the "Explosive Diarrhea" review , the Neo-Geo Pocket Color reaction video, the RC Pro-Am video where I taped a video camera to the top of a cheap RC car, all because they made me laugh and because no one watched my show anyway. I used to get excited when any of my videos reached 100 total views. But when the channel got bigger things got formulaic and less creative because I spent more time worrying about living up to the expectations of both fans and critics and stopped just having fun. On the other channel I have a blast making videos for a smaller audience because I defined from day 1 that I would just make whatever random stuff I wanted to. But the fact is, a lot of the videos that got uploaded over there and only seen by a relatively small number of people should have been uploaded here, and that's going to change going forward. I mean, look at this video. It's ridiculously almost 2 hours long, about a 30+ year old computer sold across America by chain of strip mall electronics stores that sat in between a Pay-Less Shoe Source and a Sally's Beauty Supply or a 31 Flavors and a Ross Dress-for-Less. I had so much fun making this video, and that's what Classic Gaming Quarterly was always supposed to be about.
It seems as if most of my favorite RU-vid creators have run into a sizeable amount of burn out and haven't made regular videos in some time. I think what you are doing here is brilliant. Your charm is well suited both formats, off the cuff/walkthroughs and scripted content. I thoroughly enjoyed this, thanks!
My first DOS compatible was a Tandy 1000 RLX w/single speed CD and Monkey Island 2. This kind of video is exactly why I am here... Thanks! Sorry that RU-vid is a PITA. I'll be watching 100% Spot on with Radio Shack's top 5 adjacent businesses!😂
Yeah, once things become a 'job' they suck out our energy and creativity. CGQ+ may have a smaller audience, and I'm one who follows there too, I enjoy simple videos, even if you're reading old magazines or talking about our past in the 80's and 90's, or Christmas specials, packages you receive from all over the world, etc. Sometimes you give us the impression we're old friends talking and chilling out.
It's impossible to overstate the amount of nostalgia I feel when seeing the Tandy logo. Getting a new Radio Shack catalog, or even just a sales flyer, was an event in my childhood and I would read them cover to cover like some kids would read a comic book. Our local Radio Shack was a bit of a larger format store, in the mall right across from the Ames anchor store entrance. Going into Radio Shack back then was like walking into the future. I could have spent hours at a time just looking at (and dreaming of having at home) the computers, games and peripherals on offer. It really was an amazing era and I think a lot of younger people won't understand how fascinating early PC technology was. And by extension Radio Shack's role as something of an institution for that early tech, especially if you lived in a rural area where specialized computer and technology stores weren't exactly commonplace. Thanks so much for putting this video together. 👍
Completely agree. I grew up in PA and in multiple small towns. One had a Radio Shack downtown and it was the most tech filled space in town. Back then most people didn’t have computers so we were in a special club.
Absolutely! This was a key factor in this machine that people today don't understand. They had a ready to go sales and support network for it in the Radio Shack stores. That was really critical back then! Lack of a dealer network is what really doomed the Amiga. In my area, we had the venerable MicroCenter store, which carried Macs and PCs, software for both, books and peripherals. They even had OS/2. But no Amigas. There was no internet back then to read up on stuff or make purchases. You got your info from books and magazines. There was mail order for stuff, but your average normie wasn't gonna buy a bunch of parts from Computer Shopper (remember that one?) and go it alone piecing it together.
oh man, my first computer was the original Tandy 1000. with the double 5 1/2" floppy drives and the big red power button and a monochrome monitor. had so many great games on it like Kings Quest, Pac-Man, Spy Hunter, Sharks, Frogger.
Loved this movie-length episode. I used to use a Tandy in school sometimes. My middle school still had a computer lab full of them in the late 90s. Played some Oregon Trail and other edutainment titles. I think we had ones with the TL2's case design - it seems more familiar than the first generation case. Cutting in all the old commercials was a great idea. They're a lot of fun. Along with the catalog pages, they helped give some context for the era Tandy lived in. I enjoyed the in-depth look at the CPU & settings, and all the games. It felt like being over at a friend's house and checking out a cool piece of hardware.
While I was stuck with a secondhand TRS-80 Color Computer 2, I lusted after this machine. What a wonderful trip down Tandy memory lane-thank you for your work!
Love that you showed off Space Quest 3 use of the DAC! Thanks for remembering that. Loved the video! And yea...Tex Elec makes some fun stuff for Tandy's. Now I need to do that fan mod myself!
I owned a Tandy 1000SX growing up... such fond memories of that computer.. I still remember playing Summer games, lode runner, space quest, kings quest, etc... good times!
Great video and fantastic machine! I really like how Tandy tried to make the machines nice looking and not simply boring IBM clones like Compaq and many others did.
I worked at an egarbage heap at a thrift store once harvesting pcbs and vacuum tubes, and I busted open probably 3 dozen Tandy's. I also tore up a silicon grafix indigo. Didn't know what it was at the time or I would have brought it home and restore it
I worked at Radio Shack back in those days. I think the /3 models (TL/3, SL/3) had switched to ps/2 style connectors and included the mouse from then on. These were good machines in that time. And very price compatible. And you hit it on the head that the reason for the odd parallel port was not for the purpose of being unique or separate but because RS had already had printers for more than 14 years or so. And in the old days, every manufacturer had different specs because there was no standard until about 85 or so. And even then the "standard" changed constantly. It wasn't until about 90 and on that the wide variety of machines/brands/etc started to settle down really well. Nice machines for the day!
Yay! My favorite channel is back! So good to see you Chris. I never had a Tandy, we had Commodore 64 (lived in Poland, all we really had) & then a Packard Bell when I moved to the States. Played the DOOM shareware to death on the Bell. Now please do a video on the PsOne in '98.
Another great video, very informative and entertaining. Thank you Chris! We never had a Tandy computer, which is strange because I loved going to Radio Shack with my dad. I was only about six or seven when I joined the free battery of the month club which I thought was so cool. Thanks for the tip on the Radio Shack catalog website, I find that extremely interesting.
"Resident Tetris" is in the form of a type of program called a TSR or (T)erminate and (S)tay (R)esident. This allows you to say load lotus 123 and work on your spreadsheet when the boss is looking, but then hit the hotkey combo to switch control of the computer over to the TSR, in this, a game. Usually TSR programs were utilities and fax programs and the like.
Stunts and Test Drive II didn't share an engine -- otherwise, great video and great demonstration of what makes the Tandy TL series unique and set them apart from other Tandys and systems of the time. I appreciate showing off some of the Deskmate software.
Ahh my dad had this one and gave me the CoCo2. I think I eventually ended up with the TL/2. I don't recall mine having a hard drive. I do remember booting the drive with one disk, then getting to a DOS prompt and swapping disks to whatever game I wanted. I had Test Drive I and eventually II (as seen here). I loved those late 80s Porsches and dreamed of owning one when I got older. Now I'm well of age to own one and the more affluent have priced them far out of range! Fun memories on the PC though and going to the local Radio Shack.
These we just a dream as a kid, our first computer was windows 95 /pentium 75 and we were only able to afford it because my mom's work was offering special to their employees but this also helped them phase out typewriters in the office,encouraging everyone to become comfortable with computers
Man this seller was lucky. We had such a hard time trying to get rid of our old Tandy TL from 1989. With a load of floppy discs, original monitor/keyboard and the huge daisy-wheel printer. Listed it several times on Craigslist with no takers and ended up trashing it. I guess people in NYC weren't interested.
The first home computer I ever interacted with was a friend's Tandy Color Computer 2. It was mind blowing at the time. I mostly went to PC clones from there, so I never knew much about the later PCs like the 1000 from Tandy.
I agree there is just something about 5-1/4" floppy disks. Even though they were largely obsolescent by the time I had a IBM compatible PC at home, I just really like the look and feel and there is something satisfying about inserting the disk and lowering the locking arm on those drives.
@@zed-xr4353 Everybody can know I'm a weirdo. It's fine. I used to store my 5.25" floppies in a wooden slide out drawer...and the drawer had a pressed wood smell to it that added to the floppy smell. I still have that pull out drawer but not the wood surround part of it...and I found it recently in a box...and it still had that smell of wood and floppy plastic. It was like a drug hit of playing Sierra games smacked me in the face. :)
Alla Turca was the demo tune from the battery powered keyboard my family had from the late 80s early 90s. My brothers would drive me crazy by playing that demo song over and over. lol I just had a slight PTSD episode hearing it again in all its midi sounding glory.
Watching this vid I came to realize my dad had a crazy good computer back in 1991 lol. I always thought it was crap because we had it until like 1999, but it musta been a beast back in 1991 when he first put it together: Intel 486 dx33mhz with 4MB RAM and a 1MB ISA VGA card that supported up to 1024x768 @60hz with 16bit colors, and a 14” SVGA monitor too. And a 100MB hdd. The only thing it lacked was a CD rom drive.
IIRC didn't those Tandys have proprietary connectors, other things? I seem to recall buying my 1st internal 3.5 hddd for my generic 286 and noticing Tandys were "different"
The Tandy 1000 series is such a great line of machines. PC’s in general kinda bore me. They were either boring business machines and then generic white boxes. Don’t get me wrong tho, the gaming on them could be terrific. But I kinda always feel with the 1000’s, Tandy kinda went “Ok, let’s see if we can make these fun” with their Tandy graphics and sound. And as such, such a huge step up from CGA and the PC speaker. I haven’t had my HX or 1000 out for a while. Might have to change that.
Test Drive II The Duel!!! I played that on my grandma's computer when I was a kid. Can't remember what PC, but I definitely recognize the joystick in your intro, so maybe it was a Tandy. Tried to get a sealed copy of The Duel for my collection but at the time the prices were nuts.
I got a Tandy similar to this from my grade school when I was young. It would not boot to DOS in ROM, so they thought it was broken. I took it home and reseated the floppy drive cable and all of a sudden it booted. So it seems the ROM DOS won't boot without a floppy drive hooked up. At least that was the case with mine. That was a good computer. I wish I kept it.
The Space Quest 3 title makes a great showcase of the Tandy XT vs 286 machines... on the 286es, the logo pieces *slide* into place (etc) but the XTs will merely pop in. There's lots of other bits where the 286 is just very enhanced... made me wish my parents sprung for the TX instead of SX! ;-)
Right there with you on dos 5. I ended up using dos 5 on all the retro pcs that it was appropriate to run on because I had working 720K dos 5 disks that came with a computer my parents bought in 1992. It seems like there aren't a ton of benefits OR drawbacks to using dos 5.0 or 6.22 on retro machines, since they'll both run essentially any dos software and the primary benefits of 6.22 are the addons it came with. I just use 5 because it was the lazy option, but there's no real reason not to.
I had one with the 30 mb hd upgrade kit. I played space quest 3 on it with Tandy sound by the way don't touch the metal plate. It also had a talking parrot.
What do you mean that looking at old computer hardware insides is not interesting? I believe is just as amazing as the outside and the software, so please do, I want to see more inside of old computers, I love to see how the old computers and consoles that I had when I was little look from the inside,... I love old tech hardware, its fascinating
I have a full working 1000 T/L and original monitlr (not the 2) and I've replaced the hdd with CF card reader. But I got a vga card for it bc some games weren't loading displaying using the TGA graphics and some were crashing when loading the TGA versions on some discs. But then worked with vga. But then using VGA caused me to lose sound or music in some games. Then I found a utility the lets me switch between both tga or vga when I need to but I've not tinkered with it recently enough to try it.
@@CGQuarterly thats a good question. Are you asking without the vga card installed? Bc that comes with video memory of its own. I originally attributed game crashes to possible corrupted sectors of old physical media floppies. Other than during the installation of the dos and desk mate to the cf card I've not messed with bios much to make note of my ram use
RadioShack’s biggest issue was they were never able to move on past their early success, they felt like they never kept up with the scene, sort of like burying their heads in the sand and continue doing the same thing-sort of stuck in time. It was a fun place to come in, but as you said you’d go get your electronics somewhere else
I wish Radio Shack remained being an electronics store. Once they started removing certain electronics and replacing with cell phones - it was over. I recall the last Shack store I went to, it was basically a cell phone store - seems to coincide with their demise.
I have physical copies of a lot of them, just from scouring the thrift stores back in the day. A good place to look for downloadable copies is The Internet Archive.
Mine was a version that came after the TL/2; but it was my 1st computer. Man I never tough CD-ROM drives were an option for computers in the 1980s. Since my 1st real induction to the CD-ROM was part of 1st big computer move DOS to Windows 95; and man it was not easy to learn. It was the computer I got after that with Windows 98 that I finally cound work with it without any iusees since at that point I learned how to use it and doing thing's I never did before. The cost was sread out since at the time my mom worked for school borad and my dad worked for PHI so didn't pay like the $3,000 shown in the video.
I noticed that your TL/2 has some empty RAM sockets. Should be 4 of them. What you can do is install 4 4464 type RAM chips into those sockets and then set a jumper to give you 768K of RAM. The advantage of doing this is that the extra 128K of memory will be used by the video controller giving you back 128k or there abouts of conventional memory. I did it to my 1000 TX.
The TX/TL series machines had 286 processors but they were still XT class machines otherwise. Likely Stunts would run a bit better on a 286 with a fully AT compatible board.
My first computer, Tandy 1000 TL2. Meant to buy it when it was put on clearance, but missed it (I worked at Radio Shack). The guy who bought it returned it, in pieces, and brought it in in a little red wagon. Once it had been returned, I bought that immediately and reassembled it. Worked great for many, many years. It'd forgotten that the power switch was a foot or so long. Love the original diskette box there on the right.
u should be able to switch to resident tetris from inside any other non protected or "real" 8088 mode dos app. like from inside edit, or dbase for example.
Minor correction... Not " in ROM on the hard drive". ROM is a chip on the motherboard. Hard drive is hard drive. Even machines with no hd had the ROM... All of them did. A minor point but an important one.
The PC only made it as a game platform when VGA graphics was introduced in the late 80s. Prior to that Commodore had the best computer gaming both the 64 and the Amiga.
I know very little about the mechanical parts of a computer but wouldn't you want to keep an older vintage computer with its stock parts? Is it not like people who collect older cars? They usually try to keep it as stock as possible, im just curious, thank you.
I didn’t do anything destructive to the computer. The hard drive appears to have died after I bought it, and those hard drives are a bit hard to come by so I chose to go with the CF card solution, but I could totally take that back out if I found a replacement hard drive.
Great video, i didnt own any of this stuff but my friends all had them, brings back so many memories when i was younger. Watched nearly all videos on your channel, keep it up!
1:29:18 I love golf games too, one of my favourite games for the neo Geo AES is big tournament golf, I can play that game for hrs, one single button gets me hrs and hrs of fun, Ans yes I do own a copy of that game and yes I paid over $2.5k for it back in 2007 everyone called me crazy, right. Now. Its costs way more then that, the same thing with my metal slug games, my mom called me crazy. When I fly out to Japan to buy of those games, spend over 30k in Japan, now only couple of games are worth the $30k, and I loved my trip to Japan, that was one of the best times of my life, I almost stayed there for ever, its an amazing country, only thing I don't like is the earthquakes lol they got a very big one while I was there.. A different time a few years ago
Hello, I recently came across a Tandy 1000 with CM-11 monitor. (Think it's the same one used in your video) Would it be possible to hook up an RGB scart computer with an adapter? I want to hook up a SCART device to the monitor using an adapter.
You may say 80s but this computer did not exist in the 80s. The Tandy 1000 SX/TX line were the mid-80s Tandy machines that were the best for DOS gaming until 1990.
Chris, Commander Keen is famously EGA, not VGA. I know it blew my mind as well when i realized that, use of color is so good! In fact all pre Wolfenstein 3D ID Software games were EGA. BTW i seriously consider Secret of the Oracle as greaterst platformer ever. And Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion as top 10 as well.
Id say an Amiga 500 smokes the Tandy 1ks for 86-91 era US/EU region computer games. Once 91-2 rolled around and vga with 3/486 though? Pc won. I'd also say an Amiga isn't a bad choice given the absurdly fanatic fanbase that still make fantastic upgrades. The ACA500PLUS is basically a no brainer for any 500 owner. Still, if you simply must be a x86 person? Tandy 1ks are the only choice for gaming in that era. Unless you are a crazy person who likes CGA 4 color.
No way Doom would run on this PC. It's not even fast enough to run Wolfenstein, which also requires a CPU capable of running protected mode software. But there were of course many variations of the Tandy 1000, and if you had one with a 386 or better in it, then you could run more games.
What a great video! I just acquired a TL/2 yesterday (recapturing my youth). Came with no floppies and no hard disk, so I'm obviously going to be installing a solid state solution. Do you have a link to any of the utilities you used here, such as the SETUPTL2 executable?
I still really do not understand why people needed computers at home back then. Perhaps they were sold of some kind of marketing fantasy that their lives would become better and they had plans to do all sorts of stuff. I'm not saying literally nobody did anything with their computers back then. Sure there might've been some nerds who did stuff nd the bragged about it, but really what did they do? Someone should make a documentary about that. Like how many people did their taxes on their computer? I understand that if you have a (home) business
