Tandy 1000 EX 3.5" floppy drive upgrade

[@alexreventlow]

Just did this to replace a drive on an HX. Had to also cut out the power lines and add some colored wires with dupont connectors to run power to the molex on the floppy. Worked great!

[@cbmeeks]

You have a very good way of explaining things. Please do more Tandy 1000 EX videos! It's a very underrated computer that never got much love on KZbin.

[@BlackDragon-xn2ww]

the plug in the connector is easy to remove and better then cutting pins off the main board

[@infinitecanadian]

Your videos are ever a treat to watch.

[@petti78]

A bunch of drives still have config jumpers on the board when you go and look. Usually they are made with resistor links or somesuch, so with a bit of reverse engineering you can find what connections to make or break to change the drive settings. Some times they are even marked on the board. This coming from a guy who's made several "modern" PC drives fully compatible with Amigas.

[@wisteela]

It's cool that they made the external drives able to use both sizes. Nostalgia Nerd also did a good video about the cable twist.

[@izools]

Just a little tip for similar situations in future - application of just a moderate amount of force on the ribbon cable connector forces that pin through the blanked off hole on the connector. I've encountered this issue so many times and as long as you line things up right and give it a squeeze, you're golden. You do have to apply some pressure of course but in my experience it's never been enough to risk breaking the PCB.

[@TortureBot]

izools that's a good tip. Heck, you could just keep an old PCB that was trash around that had the proper sized pin, and I mean only a single pin would be needed, and use it over and over again to break that little key out of the hole. If it ever did break the PCB, it was junk to begin with, so nothing is lost. And we all have junk circuit boards lying around, right?

[@TuApk]

Wow, you are getting up like a rocket, i like how you explain all

[@txd]

I have watch most of your recent videos including this one. Theyre really great. Everything about them is super. The narrative the filming the content. Love it :D

[@dLLund]

thank you for posting. you explained and demonstrated the why & how of the cable mod very clearly.

[@kevinthompson4138]

keep up the good work hope to see more on the tandy 1000 in the future

[@jonnycando]

Just caught this one and want to mention...if you put a 3.5 disc into a 1000EX you have sort of made a Tandy 1000HX! I had one of those and surprisingly capable it was. Tandy graphics were superb in their day too! I modded mine with an internal hard drive kit and that made it run really well!

[@JamesPotts]

A hot paperclip can melt a hole in one of those keyed connectors.

[@osgeld]

the oldschool way was just a barbed filler tab of plastic which could be picked out with the tip of a knife

[@BlackEpyon]

Or just find another cable without the keyway.

[@780tech]

They can ! I tiny drill bit works as well, I use to do it all the time.

[@MattyStoked]

Great content! I'd love to find one of these older PCs. Informative video mate, top drawer.

[@royflaugher5608]

This computer can support a hard disk drive. I had one of these as a kid and it was fully maxed out, other than the vic20 CPU you had in this. I had the 5.25 internal drive, 3.5 external and an external 30mb hard drive. Along with the 640kb RAM.

[@NintenloupWolfFR]

I added a zip 100 drive on my tandy 1000 sx, so once dos is started from the floppy and the driver for the zip drive is loaded and the shell line is added in the config.sys, it's all good. I just need to add a 720k drive to the drive b and it should be all good. Great video too ^^

[@alritedave]

That would have been a beast for a home PC in the 80s.

[@karim2k]

The one I used when I was a kid did have double density 3.5 floppy drive and 128 internal memory

[@omarhammoud7223]

Thanks Adrian, Great Video, Thanks again

[@branpurn]

Think you'll include a demonstration video of some games/software in action?

[@DoRC]

looks good! in my understanding it is possible to add a hard drive with a custom Isa adapter but I've never done it.

[@BlackEpyon]

Indeed it is. The lo-tech IDE-CF card www.lo-tech.co.uk/wiki/Lo-tech_ISA_CompactFlash_Adapter_revision_2b with a PLUS-ISA adapter or ribbon works well. I didn't have enough room, even for that, due to the dimension constraints on an I/O card I put in, so I prototyped my own PLUS version on a perfboard: www.mediafire.com/folder/bokkx6dycikaw/Tandy_1000_EX-HX_CF-IDE

[@osgeld]

I have a zenith 8088 laptop (pre supersport) and its 720k drive was only reading 1 side, no problem I will just toss a generic drive in there and it spins up, then does nothing, so I am going to try flipping those two connections, thanks for the tip

[@osgeld]

well I finally got around to this and it works, but my main problem is still there as the zenith only reads and formats as 360K .... which is bizarre as the system only came with 720K configurations, more reading to do I guess

[@sgkonfetti]

If you want to install harddisk, you can install a hardcard/filecard (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcard) or a SCSI-Controller. The SCSI-Controller owns a bios, that recognize the harddisk.

[@dLLund]

had a thought. your previous video said [i think] there was a button on this pc to allow you to boot from the b: drive, presumably external. if you used the 'straight thru' [ie untwisted] cable, could you then boot from the INTERNAL 3.5" D1 b: drive ? i guess you'd then need your custom twist for the EXTERNAL a: drive. fun to tinker :) . thanks again.

[@TheLemminkainen]

You can also mod the floppy drive to DS0 from DS1 there in solderpads inside to make a bridge :) Just like modding PC drive to Amiga

[@dLLund]

adrian - might one desolder that one pin, instead of snipping ? are there any inexpensive adapters for cf/sd that plug into the fdd connector ? i'm only familiar w/ ide adapters. thank you. take care & stay safe.

[@lavenderfox2430]

Hi, I have a Tandy 1000SX with a 5.25" drive on DS0 and the 3.5" on DS1. The 3.5" drive seeks on initialization and does everything a 3.5" drive would do, but when it comes to accessing data after initialization, the head will not move. I've cleaned the drive heads with isopropyl and tried other diskette drives to no avail. For my setup, I'm using a straight through wire for the 3.5" and 5.25" drives.

[@780tech]

Beautiful video, only thing I would have done differently is punch a hole through the pin connector that's blocked instead of physically modifying the connector on the Computer

[@herbiehusker1889]

Could you have done this without cutting the pin? modify the cable connector or something?

[@KennethScharf]

Could have also drilled out the connector on the cable. BTW, you might be able to mod an old 8bit ISA HD adapter to work on the old Tandy. I don't know if the bios would support it, but you could boot to a HD via a floppy. IIRC there might have been some 8bit ISA cards made to use IDE drives in old XT's.

[@playero35]

Oh Man, glad I found your channel. I took out my good ol' Tandy 1000 TX just to find that both internal floppy drives are not working. That means that I will try to modify a cable to use a different one. Now, another odd thing happened, the first days the Tandy monitor was working fine, and then, looks like is on but there is no signal. The problem here is that since it is a CGA monitor, there is nothing I can use to test, and same goes with the Tandy internal graphic card. I can still use the RCA output to a TV. I know that I might be able to get a VGA card, but I want to use the propietary 16 colors thingy. Any idea how to verify where is the problem?

[@jstinn123]

Hi there, I just got my own Tandy 1000 HX and it boots! Mine has 2 720k floppy drives installed. Now my mission is to clean it up and find some way to get software on it. You mention that a 1.4M drive can read and write to a 720K drive? could I use a usb to 1.4M disk and copy files to a 720k disk?

[@emuboy85]

I'm really enjoying you videos of the Tandy! have you thought to put a Gotex drive instead of the floppy?

[@RatRodArgentinaJorgeENuviola]

i have a question, but for another idea, i have a clone turbo xt, nec v20 (have ten really jaja) y want overclock de cpu, i think in change the cristal....in the datasheet the pin 9 is the clock, a wanna make this but i need you opinion

[@johneygd]

I assume that A diskettes could store twice as much data then even double sided floppy B disks, right. Either way, interesting upgrade.

[@omarhammoud7223]

The 1000HX is slightly more complicated, you need to cut PIN's 3,5,7,9,11 as they carry +5V from the motherboard and you also need to cut PIN's 29,31,33 as they carry 12V from the motherboard. The HX internal 3.5" drive powered the drive straight from the motherboard, if you connect them straight to the new drive you will blow it, which i did, lucky i had another one and did the drive select mod that you just did, but i tied PIN 12 straight to ground. Also did you get the 5V from the Tandy PSU ?

[@omarhammoud7223]

Thanks Adrian, I now have it fully functional, I used your technique of powering the drive from the internal power supplying, I have a small issue with drive select where both drives can't work at the same time however I'm extremely happy with the result and much appreciate your support

[@BlackEpyon]

I happen to have an HX. My dad tried to upgrade the floppy in such a fashion (it used to be his), and learned that the hard way.

[@brother_dana]

@@omarhammoud7223 Adrian's cable mod only works for using a single drive A. For a second drive (B) the cable has to modified differently.

[@omarhammoud7223]

@@brother_dana do you have the instructions on this ? i did it however want to know if there are better ways

[@TheEPROM9]

Another advantage is 1.44MB FDD's are actualy obtainerble.

[@DamienCooley]

Got a question for you if you have time. I have a Tandy 2500sx that appears to be similar for the drive situation. Would this work the same for a 2500sx? I want to replace the built in 3.5 drive if possible.

[@AnOfficialAndrewFloyd]

Good to see you kept the 5.25" floppy drives. You could provide a service that lets people see what's on their old floppies and copy them to 3.5". I have some single sided PC disks I would like to get transferred.

[@brother_dana]

or just email them the data lol

[@drlegendre]

Where did you find the internal daughterboard for the memory expansion? Do you know of a source?

[@cbmeeks]

Also, do you know if you could use a GoTek instead?

[@hansoak3664]

Oh no... Hot needle, small drill bit, any number of ways we opened up those keyed cable connectors. We never snipped a pin off of the motherboard. That hurt to watch!

[@adriansdigitalbasement]

Why? It's an unused pin anyway.

[@hansoak3664]

@@adriansdigitalbasement 1) It's easy. 2) Resale back in the day 3) Get off my lawn! lol I started out as a hobbyist on early 8-bits and it later became a career. I messed with that stuff daily. Excellent video series. Enticing me to get the last original boxed HX and Tandy CGA monitor I have, but never used, out of the garage. Still triggered, though. ;) Carry on.

[@KilravockMusicSWS]

What mouse are you using, how did you attach it?

[@tomluptowski]

I loved my Tandy100ex back in the eighties. I learned BASIC on it and wrote a pretty good graphics paint program that took advantage of the enhanced CGA mode on the Tandy 1000's. It's called PIX1000F and is still available for download here. www.oldskool.org/guides/tvdog/graphics.html, I haven't seen it since the late eighties would love it if you tried it out and let me know what you think.

[@ZombieRyushu]

Are you familiar with LoTech EMS cards ? I have a Tandy 1000 TL and have a Lotech EMS Card with 2 MB Ram I can't get to address.

[@ZombieRyushu]

This is a relatively new device from Lotech. I'm having conflicts with other devices in my system.

[@BlackEpyon]

I think the TL couldn't handle more than 128KB past the standard 640KB, and that was only for the video RAM.

[@Revoku]

so instead of removing the blanking plug in the cable socket, or taking a hot needle n making a hole in the blanking plug, you cut a pin off the motherboard? bit extreme, but well played lol

[@Cybernetic_Systems]

All you need is a straight thru 34 wire cable and then set the floppy drive to DS0, I actually make a cable kit for the 1000 EX. Then you don't need to cut pins out etc. www.tindie.com/products/CyberneticSys/tandy-1000-ex-internal-35-drive-conversion-kit/

[@kennethwadejohns8561]

10 and 12. 11 stays in its original position.

[@markpstapley]

Why didn't you fit a Gotek floppy emulator rather than a 3.5in floppy?

[@EdiWaruwu-di1xl]

No telefisi

[@Cybernetic_Systems]

G'day Adrian, my PLUS-ISA/R Adapters for the 1000 EX /HX are now available and work great! kzbin.info/www/bejne/iaWbf6ttnq10aNE

[@sarreqteryx]

why did IBM do that, it's so bloody stupid.

[@matthehat]

It stops the motors of both the driv4es running at once, and means that end users don't have to change jumper settings on the disk drives. It's not ideal since you lose the ability to add two extra drives, but at least it prevented the drives from wearing out faster

[@triumphmanful]

This computer is cave man hardware. Get a MAC !

[@1ol17]

Mac Suckssss

[@herbiehusker1889]

more like man cave hardware. I want one! Macs are overpriced.

[@chloedevereaux1801]

how the hell do you get pins 14 15 16 17 18 from 4 cores????????