abc@brl-tgr.ARPA (Brint Cooper ) (05/26/85)
I'm helping my son put together a Tandy 1000 system as a HS
grad present. We're getting add-ons from third parties
whenever it's convenient and profitable.
Presently, I'm somewhat stuck on the color monitor.
Can someone provide me with specs suffcient to select a
monitor from off the market? I don't even know if the RGB
signals are analog or digital. Is there an interface problem
to worry about? What is the bandwidth of the Tandymonitor?
All help will be appreciated.
Regards,
Brint
ARPA: abc@brl.arpa
UUCP: ...{decvax,cbosgd}!brl-bmd!abc
Dr Brinton Cooper
U.S. Army Ballistic Research Laboratory
Attn: AMXBR-SECAD (Cooper)
Aberdeen Proving Ground, MD 21005-5066
Offc: 301 278-6883 AV: 283-6883 FTS: 939-6883
Home: 301-879-8927jrodrig@edn-vax.ARPA (Jose Rodriguez) (05/28/85)
I bought last February a t1000 and got some info I could share. The first thing I decided was that I wouldn't go with Tandy peripherals whenever possible because I found them to be ridiculously overpriced. Related to monitors, as far as I understand, any monitor that works with an IBM PC will work with the t1000. I got the Sears' TV/RGB monitor and I am very pleased with it. Apart from the nice features it has, I found its color quality acceptable (in the other hand I have little experience with RGB monitors so maybe someone else has a different opinion). The cost was around $350, a very good deal. After that I decided to add one of those half length RS232/time-date cards to the system. I got one from a small outfit in Rockville MD. for $90. These cards can be easily found in Byte, etc. (I can get the addr if you are interested). I has worked fine, the hardware expansion slots (as far as I can tell) are fully PC compatible. One small caveat, which I found very annoying when I tried to install the card: PC cards have a metal tab that sits perpendicular to the card and is used to secure the card to the chassis. This tab extends for half an inch below the card to fit in these little slots the IBM chassis has more more strength. Well the Tandy doesn't have the slots, as a matter of fact there is almost no distance between the mother board and the bottom enclosure. Solution: cut the bottom part of the metal tab or (what I did) remove the tab from the card. My second addition (just done this weekend) was to add a second drive. I ordered a Teac 55b from California Digital which came rather promptly (two weeks). By the way, related to another discussion going on, those people seem ok, if a little bit disorganized - they quoted me (because they didn't have drives in stock) a longer period of time. After I got the drive, had to get the mounting hardware (just some screws). Then when I go to connect the drive, the cable doesn't reach . The original drive in the machine is a Teac 54b (has anyone seen these advertised?) which have the edge connector at the opposite end of the 55b. Off I go to Radio Shack to get the parts to build a second drive. I got them, build the cable, connect it all together and voila it works. To test it I decide to kermit down some stuff (around 400k) to see how it works. First thing I noticed: the damn drive is noisy! Every disk access KLUNK,swish, KLUNK. It seems the head is lowered and raised with springs and electromagnets. I did a fair amount of downloading, and it seemed to work but I had some intermittent problems. The machine hanged twice - I don't know why maybe it was because of kermit, maybe not. The reset button is very handy. Then the next day, I tried to format a diskette in the drive and it went ok, but after creating a large file I had trouble with subdirectories. I could mkdir them but when I tried cd it just wouldn't change. I reformated the diskette and all went well. A friend of mine suggested a problem of alignment of the drive, does anyone know what it could be? All in all I am very satisfied with the machine but I am somewhat curious about the drive. My next addition would be the memory/DMA card. If I can be of any more help please do not hesitate in contacting me (e-mail is best). Sorry to be so verbose. Jose Rodriguez SDC McLean R&D jrodrig@edn-vax P.S. If you get a third party drive, get the manual. It is useful when configuring the drive as drive B.