30 Jun
1997
30 Jun
'97
11:35 a.m.
On 01-Jul-97, jpero(a)mail.cgo.wave.ca wrote:
Ok, put in generic 1.44 mb floppy drive and Pow! Why?
that oddball
I don't see much point in this though since the HX's controller won't
handle the 1.44 meg drive anyway. Plus, it'd be easy enough to add a floppy
drive to it, but supposedly neither knock-out plate has been punched out
behind either of the drive bays! This is what prompted my original post.
I think it used V40 cpu and, it will support 640k by
itself by adding
two bank worth of 256k x 1bit chips and move a jumper, it's on the
little board with one chip on it. The 62pin bus is backwards and
upside version of XT bus! Quite a project by itself to create a mini
adapter using 62pin to a 90 deg slot to use MFM/RLL smallest hd
controller but very doable via a small homebrew PCB.
Otherwise use 8bit rom based scsi controller instead and find a
small scsi hard drive which is much easier and more pleatiful.
Actually, it's an 8088 running at like 7.16mhz I believe. One needs the
PLUS Memory board to add the memory above 256k, the DMA functions, and the two
additional PLUS connectors for the additional cards. That's a neat idea about
the SCSI though...heck, it'd be a cinch fitting one of the newer drives into
one of the 1" x 3-1/2" drive bays. The only problem would be power to the
drive, since as you've already mentioned, Tandy likes to send the power
through the ribbon cable.
In truth, 1000HX is very nifty machine in
appearance and size. But I wished Tandy kept their heads and made
more useful design in that same shells with 386 and pentium chips in
it. :))
Yes, true, but XT class machines were still pretty much the norm for the
low-end in '87 when the HX appeared. I'm glad to be getting another one
though and remember 'PCM' making a big deal about the machine, asking if it
might not be the best 1000-series machine up to that time. Too bad Tandy
didn't at least make it a 286 like the TX which came out about the same time.
Jeff
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Amiga enthusiast and collector of early, classic microcomputers
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