Tandy 1000 HX – Refurb and mods

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… or early SepTandy!

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Intro 2.0

Here I am with another short story about a great retro computer that I was working on some time ago. This time I present you with a Tandy 1000 HX which turned out to be a very cool computer! Turned out, that I’ve never played with such a machine because it is kinda exotic in Europe.

Sooooo … that machine was another custom job for one of my friends. This time it was sent to me for repairs/cleaning/modding. It was in decent shape. To run it, I needed a voltage converter as it runs on 110VAC.

Here is how it looked and worked once it arrived.

Disassembly and cleaning

I didn’t wait much and started the disassembly process.

Motherboard received a warm bath in an ultrasonic cleaner.

The keyboard and case were just cleaned as they didn’t need retr0brighting.

Mods and add-ons

We’ve established a plan for this machine with a customer. We’ve decided that we will install a few mods like:

Let me show how I’ve started with a 3-1 mod. It gives the following features:

  • Expands to 640kb of System RAM and 96kb of Upper Memory Blocks.
  • Adds a 9pin RS232 Serial Port for a Serial Mouse or external Communications
  • Adds an XT-CF-Lite Interface to provide “hard disk” storage and an easy way to

It came in as a KIT so I had to solder it all myself.

I was still missing one chip. I couldn’t source it easily in an original package so I figured I’ll get an SMD variant and make an adapter for it.

V20 swap was a rather painless operation.

Next in line was an MDA2VGA adapter. It came in assembled but I’ve ordered it without a case as it can be 3D printed.

I’ve already used this device and it works extremely well. In this case, it was connected to an external port.

After a while, I had a case ready.

GOTEK as a second drive was next in line. This is how it looked.

Results

It all turned out as an easy refurb. No serious problems, however, I already know from a client that after shipping this Tandy, there is an issue with the “over-sensitive” keyboard. If anyone of you knows what can cause such behavior, please let me know in the comments.

Below are some pics of the final results.

That’s it for today 🙂

Outro

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8 thoughts on “Tandy 1000 HX – Refurb and mods”

  2. Curious – from one angle it looks like this unit had both the 3.5” floppy and also the 5.25” on the right hand side – is that correct?

    Reply

  3. it’s beautiful. My wife, had one similar, i’m not 100% sure but i think it was a Tandy 1000 Color. I recall she had a modem and would write to me using Prodigy. which is how we met on a Michigan Pen Pals BBS in 1994.

    Reply

  5. Nice work with slightly modding to some up to date technologies. Indeed these machines are quite rare and exotic in europe. The customers machine is already pretty clean and bright. Maybe case and keyboard are made of different plastic than C64/Amiga/Atari?

    Reply

    1. Thank you and yes! it definitely is a different plastic! It is less brittle and kinda softer which suggests a different mix when it was manufactured.

      Reply

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