The Ultimate Notebook PC of 1989 - Tandy 1100FD
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2022
- With its low cost, light weight, and lightning-quick access to DOS, the DeskMate GUI, and a word processor with spelling checker in ROM, the Tandy 1100FD was the ultimate notebook computer of 1989 -- or so claimed Radio Shack. But is it worth owning today as a vintage PC?
I also discuss its successor, the Tandy 1110HD, and fraternal twin, the Panasonic Business Partner 150 (CF-150B).
See AnotherMaker's video about disassembling the 1100FD and replacing the floppy drive belt: • Tandy 1100 FD Teardown...
Download images of the 1100FD's original MS-DOS and DeskMate system disks here: www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/...
Replacement floppy drive belt: console5.com/store/msx-floppy...
#tandy #laptop #septandy 
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See AnotherMaker's video about disassembling the 1100FD and replacing the floppy drive belt, coincidentally uploaded the same day as my video: ruclips.net/video/duNrFlcDgzc/видео.html
Hey thanks for the shout out!
Had 1. Went through 1 additional drive in the 5 years or so I had it. The drive belt was the weakness.
What I love about VWestlife's old computer videos is that he always demos what a typical owner of those machines might have used them for back in the day, instead of showing only videogames. Every other channel is guilty of that!
I never noticed that! 🤯
Or benchmarks modern games with much older components
well he is showing general pcs. most of the other tech channels are doing reviews of gameing desktops/laptops.
i know! i could not care less about retro gaming. i like computers. i like computing.
Video games are usually a benchmark that pushes the hardware. Plus it's the most interactive.
I wish a radioshack museum existed somewhere. That or a digital VR version to experience all the products they once manufactured and sold. With a digital sales rep waiting to greet you when you walk into the store.
If something like this doesn't exist on the likes of steam VR, it needs to be!
RMC just uploaded a video in a faux/proxy 1980's UK software shop. If'n you're feeling a need for some retro tech simulacrum.
I think VWestlife should take his collection and open a museum!
I miss RadioShack my mom worked there for a while and it was awesome. Like for example my mom would be able to get me movies or music whenever reach the store not on the official release date so I'd always get albums and movies a few days early but later on when I worked at a video store well after radio Shack was gone I was able to do the same for my mom with the early releases of the movies
There is a computer history museum.
Does anyone remember the smell of most Radio Shack stores?
To me I remember it smelling like those batteries they gave away.
We were such hooligans back then, someone taught us how to format the hard drive on the computers.
I have a Panasonic CF150B (my first laptop, which I bought in 1991 on closeout) and a Tandy 1100. Both are still terrific. One point that you missed: yes, the Panasonic did have a backlit screen, which burned through the battery life, but the 150B also has a switch option that turned off the backlighting. The screen remains fully functional without the light, and saved a ton of battery life.
The included word processor looks so clean and it's pleasant to look at. For times when I have to type out a long document, I prefer such UI over what modern word processors offer.
Cannot you use a software like Wordpad for the body of text and later use a software like Word for layout and fonts?
@@duskonanyavarld1786 I suppose I can. Never thought of that. Thanks👍
Deskmate was awful to use, I had one of these machines. I bought a 1Mb RAM upgrade that gave it a massive RAM disk, from that I ran Q&A write, far better. Long battery life, I threw it because the floppy drive stopped working.
The Tandy 1100FD was my PC through all of my college years. Mainly I ran PC-Write (another word processor), and Procomm Plus. I had the internal 2400 baud modem, so I was able to use the machine as a remote terminal. I didn’t play many games, but when I did it was usually Tetris.
Thanks for the lead on a replacement belt!
I like this guy's uploads. He always has something interesting to show. His relaxed and mature manner is appreciated, though he does get excited when looking at rare tech.
It's also his casual-ness and straightforward approach to presenting tech 👏
Add to that his great sense of humor! He never fails to make me smile.
@@ceticobr Agreed
No clickbait, no shilling crap, no begging for likes or subscribes... just a straightforward presentation of cool stuff. Keep up the great work. 👍
One of the last big RUclipsrs who starts with a cold open.
It might not be good for action retro games, but text adventures and interactive fiction would be great on this little device!
Yes, I was thinking about that too lol.
Play some good old Wasteland!
We used to have one in the prop library. One of the few functioning props we had.
Why couldn’t I own this back then?
It has everything I didn’t understand I needed.
I bet the automatic screen blanking is a holdover from the Panasonic version to save on the EL backlight. My Sharp PC-7000 had the same thing.
Disk 2 has a setup program to adjust the dimming
This has to be preserved
These portable laptops are still good
good for what? even Vwestlife has to admit that they are practically unusable because the floppy belt deteriorates, the HDD is dead and or the battery will die.
On top of that the display is awful , nobody would want to work on that for an extended period of time, and the software is very limited.
These are just novelty items, fun to collect (I do that myself) fun to fix and see if you can get them working, but not for doing any real work.
It's like driving a T-Ford. Very cool to do that once on a lazy sunday afternoon , unusable for daily use.
Long time listener. First time caller.
Love the videos, keep 'em coming!
When I think 1989, I never really think that small of a portable computer, I think more of the macintosh portable (pretty sure that was 1989). Very cool, thanks for showing it off!
Laptops this size were _just_ coming to market then. I remember reading reviews. They were very limited even by the standards of the time but the computer press coined the new term Notebooks to differentiate them from the older 15lb laptops.
There were battery operated portables before that. They tended to be character based though, not dot matrix (bitmapped). The real problem though was batteries and the disks themselves. Most software was still on 5.25" disks and nonvolatile memory and hard drives was just too expensive and for the hard disks, not well suited for portability. 5.25" disks are large and so are the drives.
While NiCad batteries existed, they still needed to get better. Lithium ion batteries existed, but were too expensive. Lead-acid batteries are not at all suitable for this application. Very poor energy density and very sensitive to being "over-discharged" They are just not suitable to power a computer for hours on end. They are highly suited to short intense energy draws, not long drawn out low-amperage draw. Running it dead even one time can destroy the battery.
Kinda reminds me of a Zenith SuperSport ZWL-184-02 that I used in the Navy in 1990 but I was able to use WordStar, Dbase 3, and other regular programs like a regular desktop. The pilots I worked with were envious of it except for the Mac guys who were quick to point out the things a Mac could do better. Fortunately the Zenith worked just fine to write the flight schedule, update the pilots' flight hours, and other administrative needs.
It's adorable, I love it!
I suppose no fans means it's actually suitable as a laptop too, as in on your lap, unlike most. And no backlight to hurt your eyes, although I do remember the Gameboy, getting enough light was often a challenge.
I used it
I wanted that laptop. It really was a great deal.
too bad it doesnt have a monitor output, I would be all over this, and as far as the current on the PSU you are most likely right about the backlight, but also charging a dumb battery (lead acid or ni-cad etc) usually requires a bit more current than running the machine
^ Zot.
Always happy to catch one of your videos straight out of the oven.
I had one of those! I ran Word for DOS, Lotus 123 and Kermit with an external modem. I only used the included word processor for note taking, for which it was perfectly adequate. I used it well into the nineties.
I'm still amazed about how snappy feels that smooth experience.
And still, I'm still surprised if that ROM can be upgraded.
Would be helpful to get a look inside at the ROM chip. Perhaps upgrading it with a socket and flashable EEPROM is possible today. Obviously this was built to a price point, but would have been nice to be able to flash it the same way people could upgrade their BIOS flashing from DOS.
I loved mine. I got it around 2008 and it had a great design. Good to know that the HD variant is a bad buy as well.
For a battery you could use two LiFePO4 batteries in series, as their nominal voltage is 3.2 volts. Two of them would be 6.4 volts which should be close enough.
@@voltare2amstereo Lithium batteries have more density tho. Ni-Mh also don't seem to lke when they're charged from a non zero level IIRC.
@@voltare2amstereo NiMH require constant current charging. Being a lead-acid battery, the charging circuitry is going to be constant voltage.
I agree that LiFePO4 is the way to go, as long as the open-circuit voltage of the charging circuit doesn't exceed 7.2V.
I did exactly that. I have 6 small flat LiFePO4 cells in series-parallel with capacity than the original pack. It will charge from the original wall adapter but it takes a very long time so I added a socket wired direct to the batteries to plug a charger in. The original floppy drive was completely dead, beyond just the belt so I fitted a Gotek and now the battery pack lasts about 8 hours.
As soon as I see your notification... Instant Click!! Always something good to see! 😊👍
Remember these from the paper advert brochure, along with the desktop PCs, they were very expensive, that was in Scotland btw
Fun flashback!
Thank you.
These laptops need to be preserved
I always love your computer videos and this is definitely one of the best yet
man, brings back memories of starting qbasic. Tandy was one of the first machines I had access to.
Awesome. My first PC, I got one in 90, def no hard drive, so it wasn't the updated one. I had Atari 400, then Amiga 2000 in the decade before it. But wanted a simple portable word processor for school. I may have somehow moved papers from it to the Amiga for refinement and printing, or may have printed from the parallel port. I can't remember. Thanks for taking the time to cover it.
I owned one. It was awesome. The biggest frustration was swapping disks to use WordPerfect. I think I ended up blowing the power supply trying to do something woth charging the battery. Sometimes I miss the simplicity of it - or my life back then. Thanks for taking me back down nostalgia lane.
This is an amazing little notebook and very capable. It would easily handle school work, basic accounting, and programming. Tandy was really at the top of their game back then. The screen lag brings back memories of trying to play games on this gen of Notebook. :-)
I actually owned this Model of this laptop with built-in Deskmate back in 1989\1990. It was pretty limited in its use with its single floppy, monochrome screen, slow speed, etc. (even back then). For simple word processing and such it was ok and it was under $1000 as I recall. Used it in high school for a few years back then with a simple Tandy/Radio Shack dot matrix printer.
This man never disappoints. I love this channel!
I was reminiscing about this little guy a few months ago. I had one of these, but didn't get it until 92 or 93 I think. I wrote a lot of BASIC on it. I didn't really know anything about computers, but I was super excited at the idea of having a laptop. Thanks for covering all the lesser known technology too.
I hope you're well, sir. I have been enjoying the Shango066 series on that stereo AM radio greatly. That radio station tour was most excellent.
Oh yes this is the guy that gave Shango the radio you spoke of, fine radio that was.
I don’t remember the exact model, but my mid-90s elementary school had several Tandy laptops like this with no backlight. I used to sit outside at recess and write Logo programs.
Great video on this old Tandy laptop!
Cute laptop! I would imagine a lot of travelling business people bought them back in the day and maybe university students / professors.
Also the last comment about hearing crickets in silence seemed like an indirect shout out to my comment on the Magnavox clock radio video! I got a big goofy grin thank you!!!!
Neat computer. Reminds me of my early high school days when word processors was peak computing.
I had this and loved it in ‘91 or ‘92.
I was in 8th grade. I was a cool nerd. I brought it to school, effectively I might add.
Man, those Zip drives sure are handy. Pretty funny to see one of those hooked up to something of a completely different era.
Love your videos they're always interesting
Taito, that's a name I haven't heard in several years.
Great video of this neat little computer.👍🇺🇸
This beauty boots up faster than any modern computer! Great find. I had no idea they made non backlit CGA screens!
Not all of em, but it's pretty quick. If I set my laptop to skip bios wait time I'm in windows in under 1.5 seconds, however I usually have my bios set to wait 2 seconds so i have a chance to enter it if need be
Very comprehensive review.
I remember when you were making videos around ten years ago, I was a sub then and I am now.
That's one heck of a portable. I feel like I need to conjure up a custom DeskMate app for this, this machine is begging for one 😁. Very nicely edited video, by the way. Thanks for showcasing this!
As soon as I saw the screening also thought it looks like an oversized Game Boy screen. Very interesting computer.
As a kid I tried out one of the first mac laptops and even in the 90's I struggled to be able to see the mouse pointer. I considered it to be unusable. These days I still play with the amstrad ppc, the mono graphics give games a nice look.
That 2 second boot time though.
Bet your NVME SSD can't do that. lulz
Lovely little machine!
Thanks for the video, Kevin.
Please, update us on your Jetta, soon
Great demo, cool laptop
I always like videos about old laptops like this, and this one sure didn't disappoint!😁🖒
Word-processing and BASIC were all I needed in 1989, so this would have been perfect for me, but aged 15, owning a laptop seemed an impossible dream - I had to make do with my Sinclair ZX Spectrum...
good video review. i thoroughly enjoyed it
Great video, you're good at typing, thanks for a great review, hugs to you and your family 😃
You didn't see the takes where I made a typing mistake. ;)
I like this neat little laptop. It is perfectly adequate for some word processing, spread sheets, and the like. Nice form factor.
With the successor being named "1100 HD" I initially expected it would have a higher-resolution display (maybe 350 lines like Hercules or EGA, up from CGA's 200), but I'm old enough I should have realized it would have referred to the harddisk...
man, 30+ years of progress and some computers still can't hit 5 hours of run time on a charge. I bet people back then figured we'd have computers that lasted weeks by now
The only laptop with a battery that lasts more than 5 hours these days are Chromebooks, or if you use Linux on a SSD.
It hurts to see. My acer laptop lasted 11h when brand new (now only lasts around 5h) but then I start checking laptops to buy and many are between 4 or 8h. Worst part, some of them even have enough space for a bigger battery but choose not to.
A modern laptop can watch 4k video while still getting 5 to 6 hours of battery life. Battery life hasn't change much, but processing power definitely has.
@@EmergencyChannel some laptops last over 20 hours so but since they have large and bright high resolution screens and very powerful energy hungry processors, even though they have much higher capacity batteries they dont have weeks of battery life lol
Nuclear batteries ftw.
I really loved Tandy back then. Bought a 1000HX in 89 and it was awesome, despite only having 256k of RAM.
Another great video once again. Top3 channels on RUclips.
Very cool, I'm a sucker for anything that can boot from ROM. Love your videos VW, interesting, laid back and touch of humour :)
Happy SepTandy!
My first was a Coco2, then a 3, then a 1000HX. Still have them all and last month broke them out of storage.
Coco3 won't turn on. Legs corroded on 512kd expansion ram ics. Fixed!
Coco 2. Took out of service because it crashes and radio shack couldn't fix it. Some quick probing found cold solder joints. Fixed!
Next -Fd501 controller. Note written on it:. Too expensive to fix and I bought a Disto Super controller with RTC. So Radio Shack, what can be so expensive to fix about a cartridge pack with a Fdc IC, a PROM, and a couple 74ls logic IC'S???? 5 minutes with an oscilloscope and I find a bad hex inverter holding CPU halt low. Removed and it fires right up! Bought a gotek for my FD501 and now I have 2 controllers and 2 drives I always wanted!
Glad their computers were better than my local Shacks troubleshooting skills....
Side note...glad I kept everything. I think I have every accessory for it, and some seem quite valuable these days. Thanks to mom and dad for getting me this machine and launching my career in IT. May they both rest in peace.
I remember using one of these when I was little.
This is super cool. We had a brother word processor in the early 90s, I think this would've been a better option. That keyboard sounds great too!
non-backlit lcd screens are great. i wish more companies would invest in e-ink and make a modern laptop with an e-ink screen.
What a cute machine.
Man. I would've been two years old when this was new, but it reminds me of how insanely cool I thought later subnotebooks like the Toshiba Libretto were when I was young. It's still pretty impressive how functional these small machines are, honestly.
Nice laptop love green screen! So vintage pal
The existence of the "Tandysonic" computers is so weird to me. The idea of a juggernaut like Panasonic putting their name on someone else's hardware instead of selling their own...
The Japanese used to have that Trojan horse strategy of getting a foothold of a foreign market by joining forces with local companies or licensing their IP. It was something they copied from their experience with the car manufacturers, even if not all markets and industries had the same draconian import restrictions to skirt.
Panasonic wasn't successful with computers at that time anyway (Toughbooks would be available from 1996 onwards), Japanese PCs back then lived and died by their success or failure in their home market, and there it was NEC or bust (with MSX being a minor player).
The Japanese didn’t have much success in the American pc market
Great video, love the 640k quote.....
I could’ve been a novel writer in a coffee shop back in 1989! 😮
I loved the Tandy machines with DeskMate. Those were the days!
looks like a great piece of hardware
Interesting to see this and how InfoWorld compared it to the Toshiba T1000, which was my first hand-me-down computer from my dad. If I'm not misremembering, his T1000 had a 2400 baud modem, CGA video port, and some sort of early flash memory hard drive that you could write to and that would stay, as long as the battery didn't completely drain. I was using it to play games and go on Prodigy in the early 90s until my dad bought me an LC III+. We sold the T1000 at a garage sale to a college student, which was a shame, since I would love to play with it now. I hope she got some use out of it for writing papers, though!
What a fantastic example
this channel is the only reason I watch TV
Greetings from Poland.
In 80's, when the Poland officialy was "People Republic od Poland" (PRL), and due to poor communistic economy system there was problems to get even really basic everyday-use goods, paradoxically there was some ways to get computer, and quite much younger people there was buying a computers - for US dollars (US Dollars was in PRL in some time legal, and in some other time forbidden - quite interesting story...) in some kind of "exchange-shops" for capitallistic western goods, or from "private-import" (just smuggling from Germany...) - it was very expensive, but many people was determinated enough, to save that money... That was mainly ZX-Spectrum (and many clones....), than little later (when prices dropped a little...) a C64+Datasette (5,25 drive was horribly expensive, the datasette Was practically only way to load and exchange software, i personally knen only one person that have 5,25 drive for C64...). When the iron courtain fallen, and Poland was transformated to "fledging-capitalism" possibly was to get Amiga (A500/600/1200 mainly, but in certain time Amiga was top seller in Poland..), and very expensive, but avalaible for "non-government usage" PC's - mainly used ones from Germany, France, Netherlads, etc... sometimes in really weird configurations, for make it's price acceptable for customers... But what i just want to say: I't is really shame, that Tandy was wide-unavalaible in Poland and Europe - there was really interesting constructions, targetted for "best usability and best capabilities in price", such brand was really needed in post-soviet and post-communistic countries in europe that time...
PS: Sorry for flimsy English..
I wish we could get newer screens like these for cheap nowadays.
well presented.
I remember those when I was in college. Zenith had a similar one, blueish screen
Great device, great price, especially compared to the awful heavy and expensive 286 and 386 laptops of the time. Our flight crews in our airline carried them loaded up with a takeoff performance program, that they would use to calculate the tailplane setting based on the weight and balance data that we gave them. Instant on, light, portable, long battery life for the time.
"It has 640K of RAM, which ought to be enough for anybody"
I understood that reference
interesting in magazine at 1:34, the Canon CLC500 Color Laser Copier, with PS-IPU add on box, might of be the real start of the Desktop publishing as was known it, the new idea, of getting document without just copying them, but actually, printing out as master first generation documents right out of the copier, straight out with out get made some how, take artwork and placing glass copying part, and then selecting how many copies you wanted making?
with the added benefit you also got a high speck digital scanner out of it too, for you PC/mac
Nice find !!!!!
Even for those days the $4000 price tag for the TI was a lot to ask. I bet not very many sold.
I had that same hard drive do the same thing in the video I did on my Packard Bell PB-286NB laptop. What a mess!
Very cool!
very nice little machine....i love radio shak.....
That was my first “good” computer from when I was 13. My old man bought me an old out of date Atari 520ST back in 1988 or so as a Christmas present. It was good for the most part for a kid of 7 years old. I learned BASIC on it and played some games.
Andy Pandy the Retro Tandy... :P
As for its functionality, it may not be the "powerhouse" of the desktops of the era, but for portability, it seems pretty nifty for what it is, given the era of mobile digital working was becoming a thing, portability over performance counted... :)
Will the ROM version run DesQView? Combined with the 2400 baud modem, that opens up some interesting BBS possibilities. Also, since it has a parallel port, using an OPL2LPT could also be interesting for some Sierra games on this thing. The fact that it works with the external floppy drive over parallel port is cool too.
I wanted something like this so bad when I was a kid. I went to the Dayton Hamvention with my grandfather in the 90s and found one for $50 ... it didn't turn on but the guy selling it promised that it only needed a new battery. Imagine my disappointment when I got home, connected a 9.5V power supply, and it didn't turn on. The guy lied and that sucked! It would be another ten years before I finally got a portable computer (Thinkpad!) and I used and loved that thing for another ten years. Good memories and a hard lesson learned at 8 years old.
I still have a box of parts and a Toshiba 1000SE Not as impressive speedwise at an 8086 at 7.2Mhz. But It came with 1MB RAM with 384K used as a battery backed Ramdisk. I used with an RC Car battery pack
That old laptop kicks ass over most MSbob bootup times today
I just love how the calendar at 2:34 shows the year of 2050... So that's how the notebooks in 2050 will look like! :D
Fantastic!!!
I got a Sanyo made Commodore 286 laptop years ago. It had this Conner 20MB hard drive, but it already had the "head stuck in parking track" fault so when I opened it up to fix that, I noticed the rubber seal turned to a very snotty substance so I removed it and stickytape-sealed the hard drive. It's probably still working but I rarely use it as 20MB in a 12 MHz 286 ain't much space.
A cool experiment might be to take a modern digital photo and downgrade it to a small gif or similar to see how it looks on the LCD. I do this on my Apple IIe and it's quite fun!