wrote:Thanks! I got the 287 from this Chinese seller who has several: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/261491056000
Seems to work fine.
Thanks for the link. The price is certainly right. I will probably buy a couple for each of my TL/2's.
Installed a Noctua NF-R8 1200rpm fan in the PSU. This one's almost inaudible but seems to push a reasonable amount of air.
Also fit the Gotek and managed to get it hooked up using the original floppy cable & 3.5 drive. The Tandy has 5V on pins 3,5,9 & 11 and 12V on 29,31 & 33, so it's necessary to cut those when connecting a non-Tandy drive otherwise you'll get a short circuit 😵
The Gotek seems to be working fine, I was able to boot from it and play Prince of Persia. My disk image selector doesn't work though so some debugging needed there.
Also fixed the power switch on my Tandy TTL monitor so we're getting towards a complete system. The keyboard should be over the Atlantic about now. Next steps will be to get the XT-IDE and DOM working.
😐 I have to say bjt. This is starting to look like the perfect tandy 1000. The noctua fan, gotek floppy and xt-ide make this an awesome build. I may have to do some similar mods to my TL/2 as well, especially the xt-ide and noctua fan. I may try out one of my vantec stealth fans first though. As for the xt-ide...i've been looking to get one for a couple years now but I've put it on the backburner for now. Anyways...keep up the good work....this is a Very inspiring build.
BTW i picked up one of those 287 coprocessors from that Chinese seller. I look forward to trying it out when it arrives in a few weeks...yeah it will take a while to arrive but totally worth it. Besides I'm not in a rush to get it....I have plenty to keep me busy until it gets here 🤣
Thanks but I think Cloudschatze's already has the title of ultimate TL/2 😀
wrote:Thanks but I think Cloudschatze's already has the title of ultimate TL/2 😀
🤣 good point. It is pretty awesome.
My Tandy enhanced keyboard arrived finally! The local parcel courier was threatening to lose it at the last hurdle but it got delivered on the third try.
It's in need of a clean and is a bit bashed up, both the under stands are missing so I'll need to fashion some kind of replacement.
Put some elbow grease in to cleaning the keyboard. The keys and keybed were actually pretty clean, and just as well because I wasn't able to remove the keycaps with a reasonable level of force. The casing and cable were pretty manky but came up well I think. Stuck a couple of self-adhesive rubber feet on the back to replace the missing legs.
Nice cleaning job bjt. Totally worth every minute and bead of sweat 🤣 ...those keyboards are not so easy to find at a decent price anymore.
wrote:Nice cleaning job bjt. Totally worth every minute and bead of sweat 🤣 ...those keyboards are not so easy to find at a decent price anymore.
They're actually rebranded fujitsu peerless keyboards; which are quite common and can be found fairly cheaply since "keyboard geeks" avoid them in favour of superior switches like cherry, SMK, ALPS etc--although tandy enthusiasts probably want the tandy branded peerlesses which are presumably higher priced solely for the badge.
http://deskthority.net/wiki/Fujitsu_Peerless
They make use of a spring and a rubber cup (a weird compromise between rubber dome and buckling spring), as such the keys feel rather heavy-- they seem to get "doughier" the faster you type.
Unfortunately since I have so many computers and keyboards I had to throw out my peerless to make room.
wrote:They're actually rebranded fujitsu peerless keyboards; which are quite common and can be found fairly cheaply since "keyboard ge […]
They're actually rebranded fujitsu peerless keyboards; which are quite common and can be found fairly cheaply since "keyboard geeks" avoid them in favour of superior switches like cherry, SMK, ALPS etc--although tandy enthusiasts probably want the tandy branded peerlesses which are presumably higher priced solely for the badge.
http://deskthority.net/wiki/Fujitsu_PeerlessThey make use of a spring and a rubber cup (a weird compromise between rubber dome and buckling spring), as such the keys feel rather heavy-- they seem to get "doughier" the faster you type.
Unfortunately since I have so many computers and keyboards I had to throw out my peerless to make room.
Very cool! I had no clue about the fujitsu peerless model. I have to say that around here they don't seem to be common though but I will have to do a search on ebay and see if I can find any. Would be nice to have a backup for my tandy keyboards.
Yep the keyboard is kindy of mushy with a tiny click on actuation. I don't dislike it but it's not as satisfying as a Model F or even the Acer-switched Viglen keyboard I have on my newer machines.
Built an XT-IDE for this machine, this time I used a right-angle connector and added the SMD components on the back to allow switching address for the interface. Looking forward to trying it out, once I have mass storage in this machine things should speed up.
Also planning to install a YMF card (if it works, if not it'll be a SB16), a proper parallel port, and a 2MB EMS card.
Nice soldering skills!! Did you use any kind of flux for the SMD chip?
Yep, pretty sure it'd be impossible without.
Cool i have a syringe of EDSYN which is apparently the best stuff you can get. So i'm definitely gonna try this time to assemble the back side components as well to get the IDE LED functionality.
I got an email from Lo Tech, apparently the PCB manufacturer faced delays so maybe next week i'll receive mine.
For an activity LED you can also just wire it direct between IDE pin 39 and VCC (with a suitable current limiting resistor).
I guess it's best practice to have a buffer but for a small LED it should be fine. I did that for my XT build.
Wow how did I not notice this thread before! I also have a Tandy TL/2 but mine has a 20MB HDD in it that squeaks like hell. Do you know if I could use an IDE to CF card to have a HDD that wouldn't fail on this machine? Also is there a benefit to the 287 co-processor or is that mainly because you can. 🤣
EDIT: Also I see that you guys have discussed putting VGA and Sound Blaster cards in here, is that possible? This would be pretty cool with a real VGA card and a SB16! 🤣
Check me out at Transcendental Airwaves on Youtube! Fast-food sucks!
The built in IDE interface is 8-bit only so it won't work with a CF card unfortunately (hence the XT-IDE expansion).
287 is just because I can and it was cheap.
Both VGA and SB16 are definitely possible. There is a utility to switch between VGA and Tandy video on the fly. However the TL/2 is too slow for many VGA games, so I'm not convinced that it's worth it.
Great update bjt. Can I buy an XT-IDE fully assembled and ready to go? If so, where can I find one? I have searched online, but always come up with sites that show the kit but nothing assembled. I am sure I am missing something.
I'm curious to see how you fare with the YMF card and/or SB16 in this build. That would be great if the Yamaha worked.
wrote:Can I buy an XT-IDE fully assembled and ready to go? If so, where can I find one?
Unfortunately, it seems that no-one's selling ready-made XT-IDE boards in quantity, and those I've seen on eBay have been very expensive.
There's less than £15 of parts in this particular variant, and it's relatively easy to assemble if you leave off the optional SMD parts.
Another option is to use a NIC with an expansion ROM socket together with a multi-IO or sound card with an IDE interface.
You then need to flash a ROM with the XT-IDE bios and put it into the NIC. I'm not clear if this works on systems with 8-bit slots though.
OK, now we're getting somewhere! I had swapped round the 74HCT245 and one of the 74HCT688 chips by mistake 😵 Thankfully they have VCC on the same pin and everything worked fine once they were swapped back 🤣
The XT-IDE BIOS seems to conflict with the Tandy's built-in IDE if it's at C800h, so I switched it to D800h for testing. Would still like to run it in the Cxxx range because I need Dxxx for an EMS page frame. Will try padding the XT-IDE BIOS to put it at CC00h, thankfully it's only 8KB.
The memory map on the Tandy is very congested, E000 upwards is off limits due to the DOS ROM & BIOS.
