Chris: Thanks. I actually bought a complete set of manuals from this guy in Cleveland, including a set of boot disks. Being temporarily bored with some of my other projects, I thought I'd give it a go with a Tandy 2000 emulator using MESS. If that doesn't work, I think I have enough random info to build one from scratch. Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ Web site: http://www.altair32.com/ /***************************************************/ -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chris M Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 6:51 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: Re: Needed: Tandy 2000 manuals Otay I know I'm late in responding to some of this stuph, but here goes What pray tell are you attempting to create an emulator for Richard? I do have a copy of each, but I don't think I'm going to be lending them out anytime soon Took me a long time to get replacements for the originals I guess I tossed We can discuss this further off-list if you should so desire Why me. Lord why me LOL --- "Richard A. Cini" <rcini at optonline.net> wrote: /***************************************************/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

Chris: This is an exercise in learning more than anything. I worked for Radio Shack in the late'80's when they used the T2K for the Store Operating System and I always thought it had great graphics. After reading the Technical Reference Manual I'm beginning to appreciate how oddly designed it was. When it was introduced in 1983 or 1984, PCs already existed for 2+ years so why, oh why, did they decide to ignore the "PC compatible" trend. They must have gotten the SMC chips on special because so far I haven't found anyone else who used them. The only stuff that works is programs which are either designed specifically for it or uses only MS-DOS system calls. BIOS source, bootstrap code or anything like that that you could provide would be greatly appreciated. Rich Rich Cini Collector of classic computers Lead engineer, Altair32 Emulator Web site: http://highgate.comm.sfu.ca/~rcini/classiccmp/ Web site: http://www.altair32.com/ /***************************************************/ -----Original Message----- From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Chris M Sent: Monday, October 09, 2006 7:06 PM To: General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts Subject: RE: Needed: Tandy 2000 manuals Dude, bless your heart. But why a T2K emulator??? It's really just a botched up peecee lol. Phun to play with, but I ain't sure I'd devote that much time creating an emulator for one. To each his own though and don't let me discourage you. What would really be cool IMHO is a replacement for it's weird SMC CRT controllers and FDD data seperator. Whether concocted from discrete logic or an FPGA sort of thing. If you say you have the manuals, then I guess it's done. But if you should need anything, heck I'll scan them for you. I would say the primary source of info on the thing is USENET or of course Google groups. There's a few peeps on there that actually worked on it supposedly. There also the yahoo group, and I have to tell you there are LOADS of experts on there LOL LOL. I do have most of the original BIOS source code. A few errors. The dude I got it from was working on a primarily software "patch" for want of a better term to make it 100% peecee compatible. He never finished snifful. I'll pass on whatever you want from that stash, but I'm afraid it's not much more then that. Good luck! --- "Richard A. Cini" <rcini at optonline.net> wrote: /***************************************************/ /***************************************************/ __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

On 10/9/2006 at 7:29 PM Richard A. Cini wrote: Although it's hard to believe in retrospect, this was not at all uncommon. There were still a bunch of manufacturers out there who thought that they could "do better' than IBM at PC design. There was also a mistaken notion that all one had to do was to be MS-DOS compatible. If you think about it, how many systems around this time were truly "PC compatible"? How many had Microsoft BASIC in ROM? While you might have been able to boot PC-DOS, trying to run BASICA would result in failure. There were a few applications that relied on the BASIC ROMs being present. Didn't the Tandy 2000 use an 80186? IIRC, the 186 offered higher speeds and integrated peripherals--a reasonable choice for a personal computer. Heaven knows, they weren't the only one to make the 186 blunder. Although we remember some of the big players, such as AT&T and Tandy, there were many many others. How many folks, for example, have a Stearns PC in their collection? (8086, made in Minnesota). All had varying degrees of "PC Compatibility". If you wanted a PC compatible, you bought something made in Taiwan. Cheers, Chuck

On 10/10/2006 at 11:24 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote: I think it's odd that most of the CP/M software that I've encountered that requires a Z80 CPU (and not, say, an 8080/8085) was written in the twilight of the CP/M 8-bit systems, after the PC had made its debut. Cheers, Chuck

On 10/10/2006 at 3:42 PM Chris M wrote: Several more--one I was directly associated with was the Durango Systems Poppy--186 with optional 286 on the mobo. (The socket for the 286 was present on all models, but not always populated). If so, that was almost criminal. The integrated 20 bit DMA in the 186 was superior to the 8237+4 upper bits latch kludge in the original PeeCee. My first XT-Taiwanese clone had the BASIC ROMs copied from my 5150. I still have it. AFAIK, all of the no-name Far East clones all duitifully had an extra EPROM socket or two, even if they were never sold with the socket(s) populated. Cheers, Chuck

On 10/10/2006 at 4:29 PM Chris M wrote: One of the benefits was that code was in a standard location and RAM locations used by BIOS had a known assignment. There were early programs that simply used far CALLs to invoke bits and pieces of BIOS ROM routines. For many years, Phoenix tried to keep routine entry points the same as IBM in their BIOSes. Writing a BIOS that was "functionally" equivalent often wasn't good enough. Cheers, Chuck