The Tandy 1000 - The best MS-DOS computer in 1984.

Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I was the mechanical engineering manager/ head mechanical design engineer for Tandy Computers in Fort Worth, TX for 10 years (1983-93), from the Tandy 2000 until the division was sold to AST. The Tandy 1000 was my first design there and I am especially proud of the plastic case design that was one piece and attached by 2 FRONT screws. The injection mold for it was a work of art. The sprue was in the middle of the top. As time went on, EMI/RFI became more of an issue and we had to switch to metal cases but to eliminate paint cost and the risk of damage we pioneered the use of vinyl-metal laminates for computer cases. All our sheet metal parts were made in custom progressive dies, raw material off a roll in one end and finished parts out the other end. No secondary operations. This was the most satisfying job I had in my working life, high tech, cutting edge, fast paced, popular consumer products that I could see in any Radio Shack in the country. Not only that but I worked with some of the best people I've ever worked with. Hard to imagine that was 36 years ago near the beginning of my career.

I'm so lucky my dad bought a Tandy 1000 because it was cheap.... But a better kid's computer than the business alternatives. So fun!

These computers put me through college. At 6.25% commission, selling 5 or 6 of these a week with associated peripherals (that $1000 computer became $1600 pretty easily), and suddenly college was an option.

My first job was in the back room of a Radio Shack. I used to build up the 1000 systems when they were purchased. You had to add the hard drive and/or modem, format the hard drive, and install all the software. it was an interesting job.

Tandy was always a mystery to me as a kid. I would see Tandy options when you started a dos game but I had no idea what it was.

I actually paid my college tuition in 1985-89 with this computer typing papers for other students. It's amazing to consider this, but you could pay for your own college with a part-time job, summer job, or doing gigs as I did, typing papers back then.

I really love this video. It's eerie how the ads and catalog pages and shots of the Tandy 1000 you show take me back to that time, when my life was a lot more fun and exciting and filled with promise than it is today. I left a comment a year ago how the Tandy 1000 was the dream machine I never had, and each time I watch this I get the same bittersweet feeling about the one that got away. Boy, do I miss the days when computers were fun.

The MC10 was my first computer. My uncle bought it for me and got me hooked. My uncle later went to work for Tandy and he sourced components to build me a Tandy 1000 when I was 8. We couldn't get a case so he made me one out of melamine. I loved that computer! Thanks for doing this documentary.

When the 1000 was released, I was working at a Radio Shack Computer Center in Atlanta. I remember we would get truckloads of T1000's and they would sell out in a couple of days, and they would be sold out until the following week, or we could transfer one or two in from another store. There was hardly any selling involved; they flew out the door like popcorn. I worked in more of a technical capacity, doing hardware upgrades (installing modems, etc) and writing demonstration software for the floor models, etc. The first Hard Drive we sold for the 1000 was 5MB. (Five megabytes. Not a typo!). Is that wild? But we loved it! Those were the days. Great video!

I love that all the computers in your collection look brand new. It really helps bring me into the time period! :)

I really wish Radio Shack still existed. I always need electronic doo dads, and it would be great to be able to go down the street and find what I need in 15 minutes.

Our families first computer was a Tandy 1000. We used it all the way to 1995, when our neighbor built us a new “multi-media” PC with Windows 95. All of my elementary school and middle school papers were written on it and printed on the Tandy dot matrix printer. My brother still has that Tandy and still uses it for old DOS games.

The 1996 8-Bit Guy AST employee pics alone earn this video a like!

"Wow, a sales price of under 999" the martian says, of the $998.95 computer -_-

What a beautiful tribute to this exquisite machine. Thank you so much for the great work and effort put here. I can feel real love to these babies coming from you man. You sir... are a hero. Cheers

I remember looking for a dos game and then getting so excited when I would see "Tandy 16 color" support. SCORE! I wish I kept my tandy 1000.

Yours are among the best computer documentaries out there. Well done.

When I was a kid, I got an EX. We weren't very wealthy, and buying games were at the very bottom of the priority list (we had government cheese in the fridge lol). I had to make my own. I made many BASIC games including a Photoshop-type app that allowed me to make images, store them in arrays in data files on disk, allowing me to get around the 256k memory limit. Made a poker game using this. Yeah, those days.. and these days, computers are really different.

That was such a good watch! Thank you for doing these. They're a real internet treasure.

Although it was pretty quickly passed on the fast moving market of the 80s, the Tandy 1000 was exactly what the PC Jr should have been, in terms of capability, compatibility, and cost.

I bought my Tandy 1000 at a divorce sale. She was selling her soon to be ex hubby computer and sold everything he had to me for 500 bucks. Being a father of 3 kids and wanted my kids to have access to computers at home I was happy to buy it all. My friends all scoffed at my purchase and yet they all wanted to meet at my house for gaming night most weeks and there was a line waiting to play space quest or police quest on the Tandy. I have to say the Tandy 1000 was a computer that was kept and used longer then most computer systems I ever had. Even when it was getting old and I moved on to a vga machine my kids were still playing and learning on the Tandy. They learned how to write batch files and load a RAM disk with the huge memory upgrade that was in this machine. Made we made a boot disk that created the RAM disk and we had a menu of batch files written down to fire off games and load them or ask to put in a disk and hit enter. My kids really loved dos and were mad when I moved to windows. They thought is was way to slow once the boot disk we made loaded. To this day my kids talk about the fun they had with that machine. Thanks for the video brings back lots of memories of the hours of fun on this machine.

We’ve had tons of great 8 bit guy videos in 2018. Here’s to an even better 2019. Also super excited for planet x3.

Before owning my beloved Amiga 500, my father bought me a Tandy 1000 computer with a 3.5” disk drive. I loved that machine!

“I’m so happy you made this video! My father bought us a 1000 SX and I thought it was crap! It’s a great blessing to know he had gotten us one of the best, and I didn’t even know what I had in front of me! 😭😭😭” (-James)

This channel is oddly calming...

Nice! Never even seen a Tandy machine. My only experience is with the Tandy sound option in DOSBox to get the richer 3 voices in Space Quest :D

The Tandy 1000 was our family computer for many many years. I wrote a few middle school book reports on it in the early 90's using that blue and yellow word processor and printing it on the dot matrix printer. It also had a banner program where you could print out very large words in a banner. 10 year old me would print out swear words then hid the print from my parents. I also learned DOS commands and BASIC on this computer. It lasted so long our next computer was Windows 95. I have many fond memories of copying games from friends and then playing them on this computer. That computer was the catalyst of my love for computers and now at 38 I'm an IT Systems Admin. Great video! Thanks for the memories.

18:52 That slicked back hair tho

Hey, really glad I found your channel. My husband passed away a few months ago, and he was a huge computer geek. I've been going through his stuff lately, and I am finding a whole bunch of computer magazines from the 80s and 90s. I also have a lot of books on Basic, Pascal, and Assembler. I came upon your channel because I had found a 6" floppy drive among the stuff and wanted to show the boys how disk drives worked. I have been trying figure out what to do with all this stuff. The kids have protested my getting rid of his Apple II.

Recently began collecting vintage computers and the Tandy 1000 SX was my first big find! Got it at a recycling plant near my college. Coolest part was that there were still sleeved 5.25" floppy disks labeled for CS courses matching the CRN's of my school! Crazy to think I might own a computer that helped a student like me through his/her degree over 30 years down the line...

WOW, this is a HUGE memory trip. I'm 61 and the first computer I bought was a Tandy 1000, I was hooked. I bought it home and I was up all night until I started to hear the birds in the morning. My first hard drive was 20mb, it was about the size of the external floppy drives. From then to now is such a huge jump in tech. LOVED that machine.... Actually, the movie "Electric Dreams" got me well and truly hooked.

I have a model 100 that I found in the trash at my dad’s shop. I fixed it and it has a math chip in it that at the time costed 1000’s of dollars. I now am learning BASIC with it.

I spent SO many hours playing Thexder and all things Sierra on my 1000HX as a teenager. Man, I miss that computer.

My first computer ever and the beginning of my fascination with computers was the Tandy 1000EX. Loved that computer and I, or should say my parents, bought me all the add ons that were available for it. Playing Space Quest on it was a blast, obviously nothing compared to today's games but back then it was great. Buying and using my first modem and finding out about pirate BBS boards was great but downloading something while someone picks up the phone wasn't a fun time. Loved this video as it brought back so many memories..

Literally discovered this channel a few days ago and it's quickly becoming 1 of my favorite channels on KZhead

Every time you see a reference to Planet X3, take a shot.

Perfect episode. Great return to those times. I like the way you put everything (for exampe prints, videos, advertisments from the era). So good.

Well, this started a flood of memories, thanks for making this video. Reminded me :) of our first digital camera, the Minolta Dimage V with detachable remote cabled or rotating "head", and held what, like 16 pictures? Thanks again.

I absolutely love your videos & documentaries. A++ for a professional and interesting narrative

I love your videos. Even my wife who is not into retro computing enjoys watching them with me. You have a new patron on Patreon ;)

Considering it came with Planet X3, no wonder it was the best! :)

This was the PC of my childhood.. Paving the way for a future in computers...THANK YOU TANDY 1000

In our QA company, these were one of the most requested products that developers wanted us to test on and the units my staff wanted to use personally (including me). We had the choice of any machines of the day and I used a turbo-charged Tandy 1000 for quite some time. Great little machines.

ty!!! i was stuck on mainframes at university during this era. i learned assembly, pascal, cobol and yes even basic. playing and then compiling my own MUDs was my thing.

Am I the only one who paused to read the text at 10:05, a hidden message from the inner David within 8-bit guy?

Thank you for massive trip down memory lane! It's great to see all your machines in pristine condition!

this is a really interesting channel for my taste, your videos are made really well and with commitment.I hope it will continue like this. :-)

Welp, that's it. I've officially watched every video on your channel. What a wonderful adventure it has been. Thanks for all the great info! I look very forward to the next episode!

Fantastic video as always! It's good to see someone bring up that they actually used a FOUR voice chip... granted, that noise channel is pretty hard to use unless you steal the third channels frequencies, but it's still important to note. A lot of Master System games actually use all four voices at the same time, though I have not seen many Tandy games do that (not even Planet X3, because I wasn't able to find a way to make convincing drums without sacrificing that third channel).

Thank you for this video! I remember Tandy as a store in the UK. They shut down in my home town about when you said they did. I have it so little thought until this video

I had one of those. In 1993. It was a hand me down from my FIL after I got out of the Army. I remember it had a 40MB hard disk (a hard card that sat in one of the expansion slots), and ran DOS 3.3, so the HD had to be partitioned into a 32MB and 8MB partition, because DOS3 couldn't see the whole thing at once. I learned DOS on it and that eventually led me to a career in computers.

Great video documentary on the Tandy 1000. I spent many hours as a 10 year old playing games and hacking DOS programs on it. Got me into computer programming. Great memories.

Great video, as always. We had a Radio Shack in our small city in Germany, but they went out of business early due to the success of the C64. So I never experienced a Tandy computer until today. Thanks, sir.

My family bought an AST computer i think it was 1995! But all the knowledge you have in all of these old computers, I am soo impressed, and i follow you channel daily!

Thanks for the Member Berries, the 1000 SL was actually my first box!

Haven't seen any of them during the 80s or 90s in Germany. I did spend my formative years playing on a C16, C64 and Amiga, followed by a friend's MSX. Well done and enlightening, as always. A Happy New Year from a fellow retro tech fan. Even though I don't see it as "retro". After all, I was around when it was up-to-date.

Most people in today's generation have no knowledge of all these early players. Thanks for bringing back some history!!!

I’ve always looked down on Tandy as a brand, but now I kind of want one! The DOS ROM and form factor of the hx and original 1000 👍

I hope The 8-Bit Guy is still alive and living. The history about the Tandy computer is great.

My first computer I owned was a Tandy Coco3 . Then my dad got me a Tandy 1000 HX. Loved that computer. Loved Deskmate. Loved the music program. Funny story. My dad worked at Commodore, so he had access to Amiga Monitors. So when dad got me and my brother a Tandy 1000 HX, he made an expansion card to use the much better Amiga monitors with our Tandy 1000's. Then my dad bought a third machine. We were at radio shack because my Dad was buying the components to make a third expansion card for his HX. The clerk asked my dad what he was buying the components for. And he said "I'm going to connect an Amiga monitor to a Tandy 1000." The sales guy said "OH no, you can't do that, that is not possible!" Then my dad answered, "Gee, I wish you would of told me that sooner, save me the effort of doing it twice already!" He didn't realize he was talking to the guy that designed the VIC-III graphics processor (commonly called "Bill") for the C65!

I don’t understand the ppl who dislike this kind of vids.

Thank you so much for this video, you are a LEGEND. I finally figured out my first computer as a child was a Tandy 1000 EX. I remember I needed a disc just to boot the computer up and without the disc it would not work. The disc was a 1.44" floppy not the older 5" ones. I also don't exactly remember if the disc drive was on the side or in front. It's been so long ago. I remember you could open the top slot as well but I believe my father told me to not mess inside of it. Great video

Interesting - thanks so much for such a detailed perspective and insight into this great computer. At the time, I wasn't even thinking of Tandy computers because of bad memories with the TRS-80 and all my friends having Apple IIe computers or anything else. Plus Macintosh computers were starting to proliferate and I worked at Kinkos and we got like 3 of them + a laser writer printer and I spent A LOT of off work hours just playing around with those computers. What a fun time to be alive.

Had one as a kid, it was awesome being able to hook this up to my buddy's 50" big screen TV to play California Games hours on end!

I still have my Tandy 1000HX from my childhood. It was my first computer and got me into the world of computers. Great little machine for the time. Can’t wait to dust it off and play Planet X3.

Wow am just discovering your channel, thanks you very much for show us all this fancy retro things. Greets from Venezuela.

Really loved this as it, in some ways, is the story of my early computing history as a home user. I owned at various times, an MC10, COCO2, 1000HX, 1000TL/2, 1000SL and I think that might be all of the tandy's. Loved having DOS in ROM and had a hard time explaining it to people at the time who had amiga's, pcjr's or atari's. I also loved the music program as part of deskmate, especially in the later models as they incorporated wave sampling. You could do some pretty sophisticated stuff with sound right off the shelf. I still use the desk I bought for the HX and have used it for every desktop computer. Has a monitor shelf for the win.

I wish you'd mentioned GW-BASIC! It was amazing having access to those graphical and sound features through BASIC. I wrote so many little games...I wish I still had them.

This was my 2nd computer. I had a Texas Instruments TI994a with a speech synthesizer. My Tandy had a cassette drive. I would program basic and even went online waaayy back then on channel one and another site I can't quite remember. But it was legit the first social media.m

I had several Tandy's in the 80's, including several 1000 models. Thanks for posting!

This looked like you went back in time, those systems you showed look out of the box brand new. Thanks for the memory throw back.

MORE 8bit!!!! I'm sooooooo pumped!

As someone who was stuck with CGA for far too long, Tandy graphics would have been great. I remember running the Juno email client in Windows, in CGA's 640x200x2 mode. The program was designed for 640x480 monitors. I discovered a trick to opening the context menu with keyboard shortcuts, and could make it flip between the bottom and top halves of the program, which would allow me to use free email when I couldn't afford to pay for it. This opened up the ability to use services that could request web pages through email, which gave me this peek into the vastness of the internet on the heels of a dying BBS community. As for hardcards, I worked at my high school doing work study during my last year, fixing school machines that near-incompetent tech department couldn't deal with. Eventually the hardcards would stop working, and my computer teacher taught me that the solution was to take them out, sling them around violently, and put them back in. Worked like a charm! Between him and I, I genuinely think we fixed more PCs and removed more viruses than the people who had the job title to do it.

Thank you for this my man. Addicted already 😀

Thanks for the memories. This was my second Radio Shack computer after my Model III and before my Sensation. I felt so state of the art with it since my friends had gone from Atari 400's to 800's to IBM PCs while I still had my Model III. I could finally host them for great games. It was that exact ad that you show at 11:20 that sold my dad on it and I remember the section you highlighted word for word.

Awesome history lesson. It was interesting to see the link between Tandy and AST. My first home computer was an AST 486 DX2 with Windows 3.1.

This was the first computer my parents bought. Seeing that OS again brought back some cool memories.

Just getting to this. Thanks for posting. I was a DeskMate developer at Tandy HQ in 1988 and 1989, so a lot of memories here. Made some lifelong friends there, although I drew the short straw on management.😀

Oh boy it's such fun to see there my first computer and its softwares. Thank you so much !

I had access to a Tandy computer back in HS in '83-84'. It had a green screen, no mouse and I had to put in over 500 lines of BASIC to play a simple tank shoot back and forth game. Extra lines of programming added a hill to shoot over. It didn't have a floppy drive to save the program on, it used a tape deck! It did teach me that I hate coding. Sooooooo much easier these days.

I wish I still had my 1000 SL. That ad brought back memories.

I love watching these vids of older electronics. Fascinating!!!

Hey mate, great channel and videos, thanks!

Loved this computer, our grade school got a bunch of them, my last two years of grade school all my library hours were spent playing games on this.

Wow. In the UK, the Radio Shack stores were actually branded as Tandy, and were the go to place for all things tech, from computers to resistors, and everything in between. I never owned a Tandy machine, but since the local store had operational (and powered) display models, I could hone my programming skills in store on Tandy machines. Thanks for the memories.

My family's first computer was the Tandy-1000 RL. At school we only had the green screen Apple 2E, so I felt like we were really advanced with this bad boy. The only games I had for it were a triple pack that came in a giant tin for some reason. They were Monopoly(which I could never get to run), Risk, and a deluxe version of Clue with extra rooms. Risk got a LOT of play. and, I guess, the awesome hangman included game.

A lot of work compacted in your videos, quite staggering amounts of it!

It's fantastic for me to see my PLUS-ISA/R adapters for the EX / HX appearing in your documentary David - I just love your collection of 1000's too!

My first PC compatible was a Tandy 1000 SL/2. It was a hand me down from my mom's aunt who upgraded to a newer machine. Had 640k RAM, 8086 cpu at 8Mhz, DOS 3.3 in ROM and a 20mb hard card. First game I ever bought for it was Leisure Suit Larry 3 at EB games. I was in heaven.

Very educational you're videos bro I'm glad I subscribed

First computer my family owned and gave me a lifetime of loving PC and tech What a treat to see. Thank you.

Here I am, coming home and craving for quality content to watch. And here is The 8-Bit Guy, bringing me that quality content! Thanks!

Thank you for the good history! In 1989 I started exploring BBS systems on my Tandy 1000 SL and discovered tons of freeware and shareware games. But none of those games supported Tandy graphics and sound, so I wrote my own shareware game for Tansy 1000. It was called Darwin's Arena and you can see a demo of it on my channel named "Banjos and Robots".

This is an incredibly well made video on Tandy computers!

Thanks for this great video - Taking me back to my first store-bought MS-DOS computer after building several 'compatibles' from scratch. Deskmate was a really powerful program. I remember my first 10mb "Zuckerboard" hard drive card.. cost me an additional $600.

I used one of those Tandy monitor stands for my Amiga 500. It worked perfectly!

My chillhood nightmare in MS-DOS : The copied game not working.

Good memories of the good old Radio Shacks Tandy Computer. I remember them floppy drives and loading DOS and the cga monitors. Great Post

8 bit guy makes such a good production, I'm not sure if he works alone, very well spoken and good voice for the job and a lot of attention to details. Definitely good enough to get backed up for televised short documentaries like the Atari history.

In 1983, my ex-wife bought an IBM PC Junior, with no hard drive and 128k of RAM. The receipt showed that she paid $2,000. My favorite thing about it was the IR keyboard, which had a 6-foot range. The keyboard she had with hers did not look like the one you showed. But if I had to go back to 1983, I'll keep my Commodore 64, which I still have and use.