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The Tandy Model 2000

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The Tandy Model 2000 SY'S'T' E'M RE VIEW The Tandy Model 2000 A fter six months of intensively using color graphics you'll need a memory-chip the Tandy 2000 alongside an IBM upgrade kit and Tandy's CM-1 RGB monitor. compromise A PC, I can say without reservation All told, a two-floppy, color graphics system that the 2000 is the superior computer. It runs about $4200. between is noticeably faster and has better display options, a superior keyboard, higher disk- INTERNAL LAYOUT IBM PC storage capacity, and more room for expan- A large main circuit board lies horizontally sion. You should choose between the two at the base of the 2000's system unit. compatibility computers based on whether you are will- Cables interconnect the main board to the ing to accept the limited availability of soft- power supply and disk drives. While the and high ware and hardware in order to gain much 2000 has slots for expansion boards, these performance higher performance. boards do not connect directly to the main board. Instead, a small expansion bus SYSTEM OVERVIEW board rises vertically from a connector on The Tandy 2000 is a low-profile unit with a the left side of the main board (see photo BY MARK S. JENNINGS thin, detachable keyboard. You can set on 'At a Glance" page). Expansion boards either a monochrome or RGB (red-green- slide in horizontally from the back and con- blue) monitor on top of the system unit, or nect to the expansion bus board. Four ex- Tandy will sell you a stand to mount the pansion board slots are provided. system unit vertically on the floor. This method of plugging in expansion Tandy used plastic as the main construc- boards has several advantages. First, you do tion material; RF (radio frequency) shielding not need to open the computer's case to is accomplished with foil lining and metal plug in a board-just pop two plastic clips access covers. I'm not big on plastic, but it on the back panel of the computer, slide makes the 2000 lighter than the IBM PC. the board in until it seats, and re-pop the The color is an attractive eggshell white. clips. You don't even need a screwdriver. A small but important feature of the 2000 Second, the entire rear edge of the expan- is a front-panel reset button. Some people sion board can have I/O (input/output) con- complain that hardware reset buttons cause nectors. This alleviates the "connector accidents; however, the 2000's reset button space squeeze" that afflicts IBM PCs with is deeply recessed on the unit's front panel multifunction expansion boards. Third, to prevent problems. A hardware reset but- keeping the expansion connectors on a ton ensures that you can always reboot the separate board allows plenty of space for system, even after a serious software crash. big connectors. The 2000 uses a 96-pin You can also use the IBM PC's Control-Alter- three-tiered Euroconnector rather than the nate-Delete combination to boot the 2000. usual card-edge connector. The relatively The basic 2000 system includes 128K large number of pins provides designers of bytes of RAM (random-access read/write expansion boards with more flexibility. memory), dual 5V4-inch floppy-disk drives, A disadvantage of the 2000's arrange- a monochrome display adapter, a parallel ment is that you need two connectors in- port, and a serial port. Adding Tandy's VM-1 stead of one to connect each expansion Mark S. Jennings (POB 3203, monochrome monitor produces a working board to the main board, perhaps degrad- Durham, NC 27705) is the system for about $3000 list. You can sub- ing reliability a bit. founder and president of Digital stitute a 10-megabyte hard-disk drive for Kinetics, a software-development one of the floppies; this system (with PROCESSOR firm. He received his B.S. from Purdue University and his M.S. monochrome monitor) lists for approxi- The 2000 uses the Intel 80186, an improved from Stanford University: both mately $4500. Monochrome graphics re- descendant of the 8086/8088 micropro- degrees are in civil engineering. quires an expansion board, and if you want (continued) DECEMBER 1984 • BYTE 239 REVIEW: TANDY 2000 cessors used by the IBM PC and most not show as much of a performance to the main board (see photo 1). You other MS-DOS computers. Compared increase when run on the 2000. add the next 128K with another small to the 8088 as used in the IBM PC, The key to fast execution of a pro- piggyback board. After this, you add the 80186 has a faster clock speed gram that does extensive disk I/O is memory with expansion boards that (8 MHz versus 4.77 MHz), uses a full to use a hard disk or, better yet, a use the expansion bus; each board 16-bit data bus, and includes a RAM disk. The 2000 has a hard-disk comes with 128K bytes and sockets number of functions for which the option but doesn't yet have RAM-disk for another 128K. Two expansion 8088 requires extra support chips. All software. Tandy has contracted for the boards give a total maximum memory these improvements do not com- development of a RAM-disk package size of 768K bytes, as compared to promise software compatibility; the and it might be available by the time the IBM PC's maximum memory limit 80186 can execute the full 8086/8088 you read this. Until a 2000 RAM disk of 640K. instruction set and has a few new in- is available, an IBM PC with a RAM Another interesting feature of the structions of its own. The 80186 has disk can outpace a 2000 when run- 2000 is its RAM-based character one drawback: limited availability. ning programs with heavy disk I/O. fonts. While the IBM PC stores the Intel can't produce enough to meet If your program requires floating- pixel maps defining each character demand. point arithmetic operations , a numeric font in ROM (read-only memory), the Do these features translate into im- coprocessor (such as the Intel 8087) 2000 stores the maps in dedicated proved performance? Yes and no. can be the key to fast execution. The static RAM on the main board. This Operations that are "processor- 80186 can use the 8087 but it needs simplifies redefinition of character intensive" (such as recalculating a the 82188 controller chip to coor- fonts. (But don't expect to see propor- spreadsheet) run about two to three dinate. Unfortunately, the 82188 is in tional spacing on the 2000's display times faster on the 2000 than on the short supply and Tandy doesn't ex- like that of Apple's Macintosh and IBM PC. This peps up certain pro- pect to release a coprocessor option Lisa; the 2000's display system is still grams. The 'At a Glance" benchmarks until early 1985 . It won' t require any basically character-oriented.) indicate the performance improve- expansion slots; the coprocessor op- In general, the 2000 avoids the use ment you can expect in this area. tion will be a small board that plugs, of ROM, using only 16K bytes for Unfortunately, the effective operat- piggyback style, onto the main board. boot-up. The 2000 loads the BIOS ing speed of many programs is limited With this option, the 2000 should be (basic input/output system) to RAM by disk I/O speed rather than pro- among the fastest number crunchers from disk rather than using ROM as cessor speed . There is little significant available short of a VAX. the IBM PC does. This lets Tandy make difference in disk I/O speed between frequent changes to the BIOS; how- the 2000 and the IBM PC as shown MEMORY ever, this flexibility might lead to soft- in the benchmark graphs. This means The basic 2000 comes with 128K ware problems unless Tandy makes that programs that read and write disk bytes of RAM chips mounted on a sure that each new version of the files extensively (most compilers) will small piggyback board that connects BIOS is completely compatible with previous versions. The problem has already surfaced in Tandy's version of SuperCalc3, which uses a BIOS that is incompatible with earlier versions. You have to reboot the system before and after running SuperCalc3 in order to run other programs. Tandy has acknowledged the problem and claims to be working on a solution. Another area where the 2000 uses RAM rather than ROM is in its GW- BASIC interpreter. The 2000 loads the entire interpreter into RAM from disk, whereas the IBM PC includes the core of its BASIC interpreter in ROM. The 2000's heavy use of RAM for the operating system tends to eat into the RAM available for programs. Equipped with only the basic 128K Photo 1 : The 2000's main circuit board with standard and optional piggyback boards bytes of RAM, a 2000 has only about installed, each with 128K bytes of RAM. The large white connector on the left is for the 75K bytes of RAM left after loading expansion bus board. (continued) 240 BY T E • DECEMBER 1984 AT A GLANCE Name Tandy Model 2000 Manufacturer Tandy Corporation 1500 One Tandy Center Fort Worth, TX 76102 (817) 338-2390 Components Size: 19 by 6 by 16 inches (system unit), 16.3 by 1.2 by 7.9 inches (keyboard) Weight : 23 pounds (system unit), 2.8 pounds (keyboard) Processor: Intel 80186 Memory: 128K bytes standard, up to 768K bytes optional Display: 12-inch green phosphor or 14-inch RGB, nonstandard input Keyboard : Detachable with 90 keys, standard layout, 12 function keys, separate cursor MEMORY SIZE (K BYTES) DISK STORAGE (K BYTES) control and numeric keypad 0 300 600 900 1200 1500 0 400 800 1200 1600 2000 Mass storage : Two 51/4-inch, 720K-byte, floppy-disk drives Expansion : Four slots, nonstandard I/O interfaces : RS-232C serial port, parallel printer port Software MS-DOS 2.02, GW-BASIC interpreter M Optional Hardware Monochrome graphics $449 Color-graphics chip kit $199 BUNDLED SOFTWARE PACKAGES 0 2 4 6 8 10 Mouse $100 Mouse/clock controller $120 Monochrome monitor $249 Color monitor $799 128K RAM expansion kit $299 External 256K expansion $499 board (with 128K) Internal 10-Mb hard disk $1699 Documentation M] Introduction to the Model 2000: 69 pages MS-DOS Manual: 291 pages BASIC Manual: 366 pages TANDY 2000 IBM PC ® APPLE IIE Reference Guide to the Model 2000: 51 pages The Memory Size graph shows the standard The Price graph shows the list price of a system Prices and optional memory available for the com- with two high-capacity floppy-disk drives, a Base system price $2750 puters under comparison.
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