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Just purchased a Tandy 1000SX. Need some advice on upgrades I have already purchased and any other recommended upgrades

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First post, by Digitoxin

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I've been looking to pick one of these up for a while now. I finally found a Tandy 1000SX on eBay in very good condition with very little yellowing. It has 384K of RAM and two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives.

I have already ordered the following upgrades:
1. 256K memory upgrade (to bring it up to 640K). I ordered 8 Samsung KM41256-12 256k X 1 chips
2. XT-IDE Deluxe card with 32K EPROM and both an IDE and CF adapter port.
3. 3 1/2 floppy kit with power and pin adapters included
4. IDC ribbon extension cable so I can keep the stock floppy cable and don't have to hack up a new one to remove the twist
5. RGBtoHDMI adapter so I can connect it to a modern monitor.
6. 9 pin male to 9 pin male straight through cable to connect the Tandy 1000 to the RGBtoHDMI adapter

I own a 3.5 floppy drive already, but it is a 1.44M. I was told that this should work fine, but only for 720K floppies. Is this correct, or do I need to get a 720K floppy drive?

Does anyone see issues or incompatibilities that might arise with what I have already purchased?

What is the best way to connect a mouse to this machine?
Will I have any issues installing a Serial/Parallel/Game port card in this machine?
Will the game port work at all since the Tandy already has 2 built in joystick ports or will there be a conflict?

Reply 1 of 3, by infiniteclouds

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I think you need to be careful replacing or adding the 3.5 drives as it sends power through the ribbon cables? That might be the TX and TL only, I forget. Nerdy Pleasures has a lot of great info on Tandy 1000s.

https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/05/ … 000-sx-and.html

Here's one of my threads about using a Compact Flash IDE/XT on it. Tandy 1000, Lo-Tech XT/IDE, CF and DOS 3.x

Reply 2 of 3, by Digitoxin

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Looks like this is only an issue with the TX and HX. SX uses standard molex connectors for drive power.

infiniteclouds wrote on 2022-03-06, 06:50:

I think you need to be careful replacing or adding the 3.5 drives as it sends power through the ribbon cables? That might be the TX and TL only, I forget. Nerdy Pleasures has a lot of great info on Tandy 1000s.

https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2014/05/ … 000-sx-and.html

Here's one of my threads about using a Compact Flash IDE/XT on it. Tandy 1000, Lo-Tech XT/IDE, CF and DOS 3.x

Reply 3 of 3, by infiniteclouds

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As for upgrades to look out for. There is a very rare 286xpress add-on card that fits into the ISA slot while plugging into the 8088 socket via a cable. It allows you to swap between the 8088 and a 286. It's nothing like a real 286 but it's still quite a bit faster. It was made by "PC Technologies" -- if you do ever stumble on one you should nab it -- it essentially allows 4 different speed points, more if you factor in cache on/off.

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