Recently acquired a rare Tandy 1000 TL/3.

System is in really nice shape, just a little dusty on the inside and no visible rust. Did a brief power on test and seems to boot up just fine.

At some point I'll probably give it a complete teardown to clean out the disk drive, inspect the motherboard and replace the PSU fan.

With this TL/3 in my possession, my Tandy TL trinity is finally complete. 😁

Cool, I had one bookmarked on Marketplace that was out near Peterborough somewhere, is that the one? Though I need to get the tandy virus like I need another hole in my head 🤣. But always thought they were "cute" kinda.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-05, 15:55:

Cool, I had one bookmarked on Marketplace that was out near Peterborough somewhere, is that the one? Though I need to get the tandy virus like I need another hole in my head 🤣. But always thought they were "cute" kinda.

This one came from the U.S.

They're fun machines, one of the better DOS gaming platforms of the mid-80s. 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-05, 15:35:

Recently acquired a rare Tandy 1000 TL/3. […]
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Recently acquired a rare Tandy 1000 TL/3.

System is in really nice shape, just a little dusty on the inside and no visible rust. Did a brief power on test and seems to boot up just fine.

At some point I'll probably give it a complete teardown to clean out the disk drive, inspect the motherboard and replace the PSU fan.

With this TL/3 in my possession, my Tandy TL trinity is finally complete. 😁

Tandy TL Trinity.jpg

That power supply is huge. What is it rated for?

Ordered a Viper V330/RIVA 128 AGP.

Received the PCI version. With a heatsink installed none the less.

Not complaining, given the rarity of the PCI version. IIRC John Carmack used one of these as the target for consumer video card performance when optimizing Quake II, as he had one installed in that fancy $10k portable PC he had.

We shall see if it works.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-11-05, 17:32:

That power supply is huge. What is it rated for?

Back of the case says 1.5 amps @ 120V, so at least 180 watts.

Never mind the trinity, that's a tidy workshop!

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-11-05, 15:35:

Recently acquired a rare Tandy 1000 TL/3. […]
Show full quote

Recently acquired a rare Tandy 1000 TL/3.

Tandy TL3 Case.jpg

System is in really nice shape, just a little dusty on the inside and no visible rust. Did a brief power on test and seems to boot up just fine.

At some point I'll probably give it a complete teardown to clean out the disk drive, inspect the motherboard and replace the PSU fan.

Tandy TL3 Inside.jpg

With this TL/3 in my possession, my Tandy TL trinity is finally complete. 😁

Tandy TL Trinity.jpg

I'm jealous! I recently missed out on a Tandy 1000 EX on marketplace. Came with a Tandy monitor too. Would have made a fun 80s system to play around with. Which one of you guys beat me to it? (-:

I'm not going to buy this retro hardware, but for any fellow Vogons in driving distance, this is available. I'd be tempted, but I've decided that I need to downsize to have a lighter load when I move to a less crowded place that I can afford.

capacitors are like new eh? 🤣.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-11-05, 19:19:

I'm not going to buy this retro hardware, but for any fellow Vogons in driving distance, this is available. I'd be tempted, but I've decided that I need to downsize to have a lighter load when I move to a less crowded place that I can afford.

Living in California that's what, 2 days of rent at current prices? 🤣
It is tempting though...

Does this count? It's got a 486 inside it 😀

Do it compute? Things I have seen Cumana's name on include peripherals and graphical terminals, so I am not sure what I'm looking at. Terminal with local removable disk access?? Or actual smol PC

Lucked into a couple nice things locally yesterday for free!

The two coolest items were an IBM 5151 monitor (which unfortunately may be completely dead - that or my Deskpro isn't working with my completely unknown condition MDA that may just be bad as well), and a Nan-Tan FMA8100 "laptop".

Unfortunately, I don't have the proprietary PSU for the Nan-Tan laptop, so I can't test it. Visually it looks good inside though, pulled the clock battery before it could completely explode.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-05, 22:46:

Do it compute? Things I have seen Cumana's name on include peripherals and graphical terminals, so I am not sure what I'm looking at. Terminal with local removable disk access?? Or actual smol PC

Looks like an accelerator card honestly but it might be a CPU on a riser too.

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-11-05, 21:17:

Does this count? It's got a 486 inside it 😀

A nice one slice RiscPc!
No StrongArm upgrade?

3lectr1c wrote on 2023-11-06, 13:34:

Lucked into a couple nice things locally yesterday for free! […]
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Lucked into a couple nice things locally yesterday for free!

The two coolest items were an IBM 5151 monitor (which unfortunately may be completely dead - that or my Deskpro isn't working with my completely unknown condition MDA that may just be bad as well), and a Nan-Tan FMA8100 "laptop".
unnamed.jpgIMG_5430.jpeg

Unfortunately, I don't have the proprietary PSU for the Nan-Tan laptop, so I can't test it. Visually it looks good inside though, pulled the clock battery before it could completely explode.

Those 5151s tended to have "all" the brightness and contrast control in the top 20% of the knob's range (and pots could also be noisy) when they were a mere 15 years old, so you might need to play with the knobs, up to full range in a dark room to see if you are getting anything or not.

Putting volts to the battery connectors is sometimes a good way to see if there's life in old laptops.

I've had the brightness cranked to max, it shows zero signs of life. No high-pitched noise, sounds of a CRT starting, nothing. That's normal behavior however if they don't have a proper MDA signal coming in, and my MDA card is in unknown condition, so my bets are more on that my MDA card is bad or my Deskpro 286 not initializing it than the monitor being COMPLETELY dead.

As for the laptop - unfortunately, it's weird. It did not come with the battery, and I believe that the battery was an external pack that clamped onto the back somewhere. There is no internal battery bay, but it has battery status LEDs on the front. I know some of the other early Nan-Tans did this too. I can't find an obvious battery connector either, so my only guess is that it connected direct to the main power connector, which is a mini-din similar to PS/2 or mac serial. I could definitely find the cable for it, but it would be getting the right pinout that would be a challenge.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-05, 22:46:

Do it compute? Things I have seen Cumana's name on include peripherals and graphical terminals, so I am not sure what I'm looking at. Terminal with local removable disk access?? Or actual smol PC

It's an Acorm RiscPC 600 with an ARM CPU and a 486 in the second CPU slot 😀

I lucked out as the battery had only just started leaking so was able to cut it off and clear up the area without there being any damage....

No StrongARM 😀

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-11-06, 16:24:

It's an Acorm RiscPC 600 with an ARM CPU and a 486 in the second CPU slot :-) […]
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BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-05, 22:46:

Do it compute? Things I have seen Cumana's name on include peripherals and graphical terminals, so I am not sure what I'm looking at. Terminal with local removable disk access?? Or actual smol PC

It's an Acorm RiscPC 600 with an ARM CPU and a 486 in the second CPU slot 😀

I lucked out as the battery had only just started leaking so was able to cut it off and clear up the area without there being any damage....

No StrongARM 😀

Oh wild, I guess my chances of coming across one of those are next to zero outside of UK. I guess the earlier Archimedes PC emulator thing needed a hardware lift.