Growing up in a fairly rough working class town in the 80s, Sierra's adventure games, along with SSI and Origin's RPGs, were an amazing escape for a closet nerd like myself. The stories and characters were always engrossing but I think it was the combination of the artwork that made every screen memorable, with the text parser interface that created an illusion of deep interaction that hooked me. Giving the player a large number of commands and then allowing them multiple ways to think through and solve challenges was peak adventure gaming for me and it was when the genre developed extremely simplified point & click interfaces that I lost interest in them. There was just something magical about the 80s and early 90s adventure games that just can't be recreated in modern times.
Me and my dad once had a look at his Amiga 500 in my grandparents’ storage shack, and it was almost completely submerged in water. About 2 years later, i took it into my care, tested it, and it works almost flawlessly (except for a busted keyboard control circuit). It doesn’t even show any internal water damage on the motherboard. These 80s computers are incredibly tough
From your own interview the Tandy guy said they used dishwashers to clean the boards. Hence they probably spec'd parts & boards that could take water exposure. Yes I used to be a factory worker at a board/product house. There were "solvent" and "water based" parts, solder, etc. for the cleaning stage.
I found those wire key cap pullers, as well as being able to get in places you don’t want, tend to twist the key caps off. That’s usually okay, but sometimes it isn’t. I prefer those plastic ones with the little nubs to grab the key cap, there’s no chance of extending beyond into bad places. Ultimately, having both kinds is always a good idea rather than being stuck with one kind! The plastic ones are usually cheaper too, so should be easy to grab one or two.
I always paint the metal when I remove the rust. Silver spray paint for the first coat, and then a coat of matte clear. The result closely matches the look of the gray coating on most 90's cases.
your voltages are all accurate. +12V has a wider operating tolerance than +5V. I'm an arcade game technician, our power supplies run 13-14V. that was my main takeaway lol thank you for saving pre-war technology
I highly recommend playing all the Space Quest series. I grew up playing SQ1 and 2 on a 286 pc clone with a PC speaker. It blows me away how great the Tandy 1000 sounds.
I had one of these, with that exact monitor. It was given to me as my first computer. It powered up but wouldn't boot, it had a floppy but no hard disk, the ones that did used a 20mb "hard card". A friend of mine found a replacement floppy salvaged from another machine and I found an XT IDE controller card with its own BIOS to trick it into running a 40mb IDE hard disk. I installed DOS 6.22 on it and it was what I used to learn DOS on, trying different commands to see what happened. You're right about the keyboard, those machines were very proprietary and really didn't play well with aftermarket hardware, which is why I couldn't just buy an off the shelf replacement floppy drive for it. Looking back, I probably could have cleaned the read/write heads on the one that was in it.
The Apple ii had low-res and high-res graphics that allowed for four lines of text. Since Sierra Online games started on Apple II, it probably set the style/mechanics of their adventure games when it came time to do it on the PC.
That poor Tandy! This day in age, who would leave a computer like that just sitting out in the rain like that?! You don't have to be a "computer guy" to know these things hold value. Can't wait to finish watching this one. 😎
The "1000" line went on a bit too long, IMO - it became hard to keep (and still is) the differences between them straight - I still couldn't tell you without looking it up what the difference between a TX and a TL are, and that's before you get into the lower-profile variants. But I totally get why Tandy kept the brand going, since it was pretty hot for a long time - Some time later the war between price and performance killed the formula, as nobody would be buying a 286 in the 486 era and Tandy couldn't get the price lower. And VGA pretty much killed Tandy graphics, at least above the very bottom price points, say around 1991 with SVGA for Windows 3.1.
Hello retro hack shack I enjoy watching you cleaning and fixing the Tandy 1000 although I remember those never had it. I always had the Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64 which I really enjoyed probably my all-time favorite game would be hero. Thanks a lot for your videos appreciate it.
King's Quest and Space Quest were my goto games back in the day. I got Space Quest the day it hit the shelves at my local Radio Shack!!!
Growing up in a fairly rough working class town in the 80s, Sierra's adventure games, along with SSI and Origin's RPGs, were an amazing escape for a closet nerd like myself. The stories and characters were always engrossing but I think it was the combination of the artwork that made every screen memorable, with the text parser interface that created an illusion of deep interaction that hooked me. Giving the player a large number of commands and then allowing them multiple ways to think through and solve challenges was peak adventure gaming for me and it was when the genre developed extremely simplified point & click interfaces that I lost interest in them. There was just something magical about the 80s and early 90s adventure games that just can't be recreated in modern times.
That Tandy is a survivor! Very glad it's still working and now looking great.😊
Me and my dad once had a look at his Amiga 500 in my grandparents’ storage shack, and it was almost completely submerged in water. About 2 years later, i took it into my care, tested it, and it works almost flawlessly (except for a busted keyboard control circuit). It doesn’t even show any internal water damage on the motherboard. These 80s computers are incredibly tough
Another system has been salvaged.
Thanks Aaron!
What an epic score!
From your own interview the Tandy guy said they used dishwashers to clean the boards. Hence they probably spec'd parts & boards that could take water exposure. Yes I used to be a factory worker at a board/product house. There were "solvent" and "water based" parts, solder, etc. for the cleaning stage.
Played all the Sierra games back in the day, but especially Space Quest. I had so much fun with it.
I want to play through it now
I found those wire key cap pullers, as well as being able to get in places you don’t want, tend to twist the key caps off.
That’s usually okay, but sometimes it isn’t. I prefer those plastic ones with the little nubs to grab the key cap, there’s no chance of extending beyond into bad places.
Ultimately, having both kinds is always a good idea rather than being stuck with one kind! The plastic ones are usually cheaper too, so should be easy to grab one or two.
I always paint the metal when I remove the rust. Silver spray paint for the first coat, and then a coat of matte clear. The result closely matches the look of the gray coating on most 90's cases.
Awesome job getting that Tandy 1000 working and cleaned up! Awesome video as always!
Awesome job, looks absolute great and fantastic, especially how the keyboard turned out. 👍
Interesting system and video. Never seen a Tandy pc at all over here.
your voltages are all accurate. +12V has a wider operating tolerance than +5V. I'm an arcade game technician, our power supplies run 13-14V. that was my main takeaway lol thank you for saving pre-war technology
I had a 1000 tx with a 20mb hard card. I played a lot of space quest on it. I loved the sarcastic comments the game always came back with!
I highly recommend playing all the Space Quest series. I grew up playing SQ1 and 2 on a 286 pc clone with a PC speaker. It blows me away how great the Tandy 1000 sounds.
Thank you Dont think we ever had a Tandy 1000 isales in New Zealand
I had one of these, with that exact monitor. It was given to me as my first computer. It powered up but wouldn't boot, it had a floppy but no hard disk, the ones that did used a 20mb "hard card". A friend of mine found a replacement floppy salvaged from another machine and I found an XT IDE controller card with its own BIOS to trick it into running a 40mb IDE hard disk. I installed DOS 6.22 on it and it was what I used to learn DOS on, trying different commands to see what happened. You're right about the keyboard, those machines were very proprietary and really didn't play well with aftermarket hardware, which is why I couldn't just buy an off the shelf replacement floppy drive for it. Looking back, I probably could have cleaned the read/write heads on the one that was in it.
Awesome! I love first computer stories.
My first computer was a 1000HX with this monitor. Single 720k 3.5" floppy and 256K RAM. DMP132 for the printer.
The pots on my CM 5 were frozen when I got it too, DeOxit time! Its a good looking monitor.
My first IBM PC Clone was a Tandy 1000, But my favorite computer are my Radio Shack/Tandy CoCo's.
Coco was my first
Great work on this old Tandy computer! Can you use a mouse with it, like with DeskMate?
Nice colours on your shirt……!
Thanks
The Apple ii had low-res and high-res graphics that allowed for four lines of text. Since Sierra Online games started on Apple II, it probably set the style/mechanics of their adventure games when it came time to do it on the PC.
my mother used too had Tandy 1000SL and she worked on Word Perfect and Coral draw
Old PCs were made to survive a nuclear war :)
Technically I think old PCs still would *run* nuclear wars...
How do you like or dislike the Zoyi ZT-703S?
I like it! It's been my daily driver since I did my review video.
Grew up with a Tandy TX.
You could almost say “it’s too good to be true.” 😅
3.20.22. Gah, I still remember that.
That poor Tandy! This day in age, who would leave a computer like that just sitting out in the rain like that?! You don't have to be a "computer guy" to know these things hold value. Can't wait to finish watching this one. 😎
You wouldn't believe what people drop off at ewaste.
@@RetroHackShack Just thinking about what's been forever lost, hearts my heart.
Early Tandy computer didn't have bios settings. All the settings were jumpered on the board.
👍👍👍👍👍👍
👍
The "1000" line went on a bit too long, IMO - it became hard to keep (and still is) the differences between them straight - I still couldn't tell you without looking it up what the difference between a TX and a TL are, and that's before you get into the lower-profile variants. But I totally get why Tandy kept the brand going, since it was pretty hot for a long time - Some time later the war between price and performance killed the formula, as nobody would be buying a 286 in the 486 era and Tandy couldn't get the price lower. And VGA pretty much killed Tandy graphics, at least above the very bottom price points, say around 1991 with SVGA for Windows 3.1.
Hello retro hack shack I enjoy watching you cleaning and fixing the Tandy 1000 although I remember those never had it. I always had the Commodore Vic 20 and Commodore 64 which I really enjoyed probably my all-time favorite game would be hero. Thanks a lot for your videos appreciate it.
To answer your shirt, Kristen.
You didn't clean the keyboard cable?
Yeah. It might not look like it, but I did.
This is a totally off topic comment. Is that an old Ping Pong table? LOL. My parents repurposed a table as a dinner table when I was growing up.
thanks for sharing